# Making a virtual copy of an original AFTER editing it



## oleleclos (May 8, 2017)

Hi everyone, I hope you don’t mind me sharing a little Lr detail that I have only worked out recently myself. It may be blindingly obvious, but it wasn’t to me 

After having edited a picture, I sometimes find myself wanting to take it in a different direction without losing everything I have done up to that point. OK, I should have made a virtual copy to start with and worked on that, in which case I would still have direct access to my unchanged original, but of course I don’t always know at the beginning that I'm going to want that at the end...

I could make a virtual copy of the current state and then return to scratch in the History panel on the original and start the new edit from there, but although that virtual copy would have all my edits, it wouldn' have the History, and I like to keep that.

What I do instead is return to the beginning of History and from that point I make a virtual copy, because doing that will not erase the subsequent history. I then make sure to move the History pointer back up to the top of the stack again in order to keep those edits, and then set to work on the virtual copy.

Hope this makes sense.


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## Johan Elzenga (May 8, 2017)

Did you ever consider to hit the 'Reset' button after you created the virtual copy? That should do the same thing (but without the need to go back and forth in the history), unless you apply a preset upon import.


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## oleleclos (May 8, 2017)

Thanks, you're right. Create Virtual Copy followed by Reset does the same. So much simpler


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## BobMc (May 8, 2017)

One option you can use: 

After you create the VC from the Master (original photo) that you have edited as you have described having selected “Import” in history, hit G to go back the Grid view in Library , select the VC that has no changes.  Then select “Set Copy as Master” from the drop down menu under Photo (see below).

Each Data Base record in the Catalog points an image.  When you have two VC’s there are three such records.  The only thing that distinguishes the Master from the VC is a flag in the data base record. All the command “Set Copy as Master” does is switch the flags.  The VC becomes the Master and the Master becomes a VC.

This lets you restore an unaltered copy of the image as master.


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## Johan Elzenga (May 8, 2017)

I'm not sure why you would want to do this. The master remains unchanged if you make a virtual copy and then hit 'Reset'.


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## oleleclos (May 8, 2017)

BobMc said:


> ...This lets you restore an unaltered copy of the image as master.


Thanks, that would let me retrospectively create the situation I should have created to start with (only I didn't know it then): an unedited master and VCs with all the edits


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## Johan Elzenga (May 8, 2017)

oleleclos said:


> Thanks, that would let me retrospectively create the situation I should have created to start with: an unedited master and VCs with all the edits



If that is what you want, you can do it fully automatic if I'm not mistaken. I never use this and I can't check it right now (typing this on my iPad), but if I remember correctly, Lightroom has a preference option to automatically create a virtual copy if you edit an image.


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## oleleclos (May 8, 2017)

JohanElzenga said:


> If that is what you want, you can do it fully automatic if I'm not mistaken. I never use this and I can't check it right now (typing this on my iPad), but if I remember correctly, Lightroom has a preference option to automatically create a virtual copy if you edit an image.


Thanks, interesting option, but I don't think I want to do that with ALL edits. Only those where I find out later that I want to try a different approach, and I now know how best to do that


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## Hal P Anderson (May 8, 2017)

JohanElzenga said:


> Lightroom has a preference option to automatically create a virtual copy if you edit an image.



I can't find this, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist. If it did, we'd be getting fairly frequent posts asking where all the virtual copies are coming from.


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## Johan Elzenga (May 8, 2017)

Hal P Anderson said:


> I can't find this, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist. If it did, we'd be getting fairly frequent posts asking where all the virtual copies are coming from.



Maybe I remember it from Aperture...


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## oleleclos (May 8, 2017)

It does seem to exist - and cause confusion 

Apparently it happens when you edit with Soft Proofing on; here's a discussion of it: Automatic Virtual Copies |Adobe Community


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## Johan Elzenga (May 8, 2017)

Yeah, but that's not what I remembered. I think it was indeed in Aperture, where virtual copies are called 'versions'.


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## frozenframe (May 9, 2017)

I'm going to throw this out here as a possible alternative to VC. It's using the *Snapshot* and *History* functions. Here's Adobe's video tutorial/explanation on it. Even though they're both available in PS, Adobe chose to make it better in LR, by retaining them forever. In PS once you close PS, they're removed. 
Work with snapshots and history | Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC tutorials


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## oleleclos (May 9, 2017)

Hi Ron. You’re right, snapshots are much more useful in Lr than in PS (not that I know that much about PS anymore; I gave it up in favour of Lr, but I did use it heavily for more than ten years). 

However, I don't think snapshots would be a substitute for a virtual copy for what I want to do, which is to go back to the original and take it in a different direction while still keeping my first edit including its full history.


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## frozenframe (May 9, 2017)

oleleclos said:


> Hi Ron. You’re right, snapshots are much more useful in Lr than in PS (not that I know that much about PS anymore; I gave it up in favour of Lr, but I did use it heavily for more than ten years).
> 
> However, I don't think snapshots would be a substitute for a virtual copy for what I want to do, *which is to go back to the original and take it in a different direction while still keeping my first edit including its full history*.


Well my understanding is that's exactly what using Snapshots with History does. The history for each snapshot is retained. Take a snapshot when you make your first edit, or before you make any edits, then proceed to edit. Take snapshots along the way and you can instantly revert back to a _any_ state. Click on one of the snapshots, then in the History, you can go back to a previous edit of that snapshot. Then go off in another direction. 

I do admit not a lot of difference between using snapshots and virtual copies. The main difference is the VCs have their own history, where the snapshots do not.


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## Johan Elzenga (May 9, 2017)

The main difference is that virtual copies are like real copies. So you can have a color version and a B&W version next to eachother. A snapshot only allows you to toggle between versions.


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## Hoggy (May 11, 2017)

A snapshot retains all editing/develop _instructions_ (minus flip/90deg-rotation info - an Adobe oversight), but does not retain all the info that would be in the history panel (after you've cleared it).  For myself, I've long since dropped caring about that for the most part - as after any amount of time, they no longer mean anything to me anyways.  And not clearing those history steps also bloats the catalog big-time - I think every history step listed is a complete snapshot internally.  In place of the history info, I use snapshots which can be named anything you like - so I put much more useful information in those names.

A useful feature of snapshots is that they allow you to embed all the editing into xmp when/if you 'save metadata to files'..  Allowing a belt-and-suspenders backup of all your settings, if that sort of thing is important to oneself.  When you make a snapshot of a VC, you end up embedding those develop settings into the main file's xmp.

I actually find both snapshots _and_ VC's very useful to me for different purposes, and use Rob Cole's Snap-and-Mark extension [tied to my middle mice buttons] to auto-fill the 1st part of the snapshot name with the copy name for VC's (or "m" for masters) and then date in database format, which then prompts me for the rest of what to put in there.  Those snapshot names are allowed to be quite long, and when you hover over them in the snapshots panel, that full name shows.  With this extension, you can format your snapshot name with any metadata info you might want, in any order you might want, although it can be a bit 'geeky' to set up unless you use some of the included presets.  It can also mark your edit history steps, if you want it to - the 'mark' will show as a history step, but without settings attached to it.  And you can choose to snap and/or mark.


FYI - for those wanting a belt-and-suspenders backup of ALL settings for VC's (differing keywords, etc.) there is also Rob Cole's xEmP plugin to create separate ".xmp" files for them (or read _from_ them).  That plugin is also useful if you want to make or read separate ".xmp" files for DNG's/jpeg's/tiff's as well - which could be useful to some.  It can also be used to transfer the same settings between/among DNG/native-raw/jpg/tiff files, for free. (i.e. like if you want to mass-change from DNG back to backed up native-raw's (base filenames would need to match before you do the 'read'))

Since Rob Cole went MIA, his plugins might be hard to find.  If anyone's interested, let me know, and I can try to get those up as a public Google Drive share.


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