# Smart Collection: criteria for selecting virtual copies (or not) as the case may be?



## theMusicMan (May 8, 2012)

Hi All

Can someone please advise me as to what the criteria are (is) for selecting virtual copies (and the inverse i.e. NOT virtual copies) please?

Many thanks
John


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## Jim Wilde (May 8, 2012)

John, you don't need a Smart Collection. VCs are one of the options that you can select in the Attribute section of the Library Filter bar. See screenshot. It's a toggle switch, and is adjacent to the Master Photos switch.....so to see only Masters and not VCs you would select the Master Photos switch, reverse for only VCs. And both off or on will display the lot.




However, if you DID want to do a Smart Collection, try Copy Name>Isn't Empty. (Copy Name >Is Empty) would be the inverse.


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## theMusicMan (May 8, 2012)

Once again Jim, that's spot on.  Many thanks for the prompt and first class advice.


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## lyn (Apr 30, 2013)

*Smart Collection for edited Virtual Copies*

_When I first startedusing Collections, I followed someone's advice and always clicked 'createvirtual copy' -- so I now have a huge number of unused/useless VCs that I wouldlike to clear out. Is there any way to 1) filter to show all virtual copiesthat have not been changed (but keep the ones that I have edited or changed inany way, 2) delete the unchanged virtual copies but keep the collection that holdsthem intact? Would a Smart Collection show me which VCs have been edited? How would I set that Criterion? I can picture a work-around for the second part by color codingall the unused VCs along with their original, deleting the unedited VCs, goingto the folder and selecting all the colored originals, dragging them to the collectionand then removing the color label. Cumbersome, but do-able.?_
[QUOTE=TNG;109785]John, you don't need a Smart Collection. VCs are one of the options that you can select in the Attribute section of the Library Filter bar. See screenshot. It's a toggle switch, and is adjacent to the Master Photos switch.....so to see only Masters and not VCs you would select the Master Photos switch, reverse for only VCs. And both off or on will display the lot.

View attachment 2259

However, if you DID want to do a Smart Collection, try Copy Name>Isn't Empty. (Copy Name >Is Empty) would be the inverse.[/QUOTE]


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## Jim Wilde (Apr 30, 2013)

Hi, welcome to the forum.

You could setup a smart collection like this:



This would give you all the VCs that haven't been edited. One word of warning, though.....if you've ever used the "Set Copy as Master"  on any of your VCs, the Copy Name doesn't switch, so you end up with the new master having a Copy Name and the new VC not having a copy name. This smart collection could therefore pick up some masters rather than only VCs.....easy enough to check by using the Attribute option in the filter bar on the Smart Collection contents and check for any masters lurking there.

Once you have the smart collection populated with true VCs, click on the SC to put all these unedited VCs into the grid, click on Ctrl+A to select them all, then (without clicking anywhere in the grid or filmstrip to change the selection) click on All Photographs then hit the delete key....you'll get a confirmation message asking if you are sure you want to delete xxx VCs, check that the number matches the number of images in the smart collection and (assuming it does) click on OK and you're done.

If you are really deleting lots of VCs, might be worth taking a catalog backup first just in case you have a subsequent rethink.


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## MarkNicholas (May 2, 2013)

Regards "has adjustments", I presume that this means "has different settings to the default setting" ? What if the default settings were changed since a particular photo was imported. Would it think that that photo has changes ?


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## Jim Wilde (May 2, 2013)

You mean if no changes are made to an image, then the default settings are changed, does Lightroom think the image has been changed? I would have thought not, as changing the default develop settings is not retrospective (i.e. the changed settings do not get applied to already-imported images), but easy enough to test if you want to be certain.


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## lyn (May 3, 2013)

*No changes to the virtual copy*



TNG said:


> You mean if no changes are made to an image, then the default settings are changed, does Lightroom think the image has been changed? I would have thought not, as changing the default develop settings is not retrospective (i.e. the changed settings do not get applied to already-imported images), but easy enough to test if you want to be certain.



I wanted to show VCs that have never been edited. Thanks so much.


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## MarkNicholas (May 3, 2013)

TNG said:


> You mean if no changes are made to an image, then the default settings are changed, does Lightroom think the image has been changed? I would have thought not, as changing the default develop settings is not retrospective (i.e. the changed settings do not get applied to already-imported images), but easy enough to test if you want to be certain.



The next time I have a spare moment...


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## Jim Wilde (May 3, 2013)

Well, if I get a spare moment before you I'll test it myself.


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## MarkNicholas (May 5, 2013)

MarkNicholas said:


> The next time I have a spare moment...


Well what I thought would be a 2 minute experiment turned into quite an interesting (and as yet unresolved) investigation. Its difficult to report what actually happened because I am not really sure. I used an empty catalogue and created the smart collection and imported a single photo which I reset to the empty catalogues default settings. I created a virtual copy and as expected it was recognised as VC with no adjustments. I then selected the master, changed the sharpening setting and reset the catalogue defaults. The VC was still recognised as an unchanged VC. I then selected the VC and reset it (to the new catalogue settings) and it was still recognised as an unchanged VC. I turned off LR and an again just to make sure it had updated. I then manually changed the sharpening setting of the VC to what it was originally and it was no longer recognised as unchanged. At that point I created another VC from the master with the new sharpening settings. The second VC was identified as having no changes as expected. I created another couple of VCs from the master with different sharpening settings and fiddled around. I eventually ended up with 4 VC's all with identical settings and all as per the catalogue default but only 2 were recognised a having no changes. In the time available I was not able to fully work out what was going on. When the 2 VC's that were not recognised as unchanged were reset they were immediately recognised as unchanged even though the actual settings had not changed !Quite bizarre !! Will have another play later.


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## Jim Wilde (May 5, 2013)

Thanks for that, sounds interesting.

I'll leave you to play with it then, I'm currently playing with a possible new variation of the old "import direct from camera into a date-based folder system and Lightroom somehow adds the computer's time-zone offset to the image capture time when calculating the dated folder names" bug.


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## MarkNicholas (May 5, 2013)

After a bit of further play I went back to the point where only 2 of the identical 4 VC's were recognised as having no changes. I then went to history and applied the "copy history step settings to before" to these 2 photos and they were immediately recognised as having no changes. It therefore seems that the criteria by which LR decides whether a photo has adjustments is not by comparison with the current settings and the default settings but by comparison with the current settings and the history step that is saved for the purposes of the before view in the before/after comparison.


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## StarkmanAlive (Sep 29, 2014)

You know, when I use a Smart Collection to see only virtual copes (initially to see only those that have develop adjustments, but even just to find virtual copies in and of themselves), I get more than just virtual copies. I set the first criteria to File Name / Type > Copy Name, and the second criteria to "isn't empty." Any ideas more than virtual copies show up? And it's Lightroom's discretion as to which non-virtual-copy images show up.


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## Jim Wilde (Sep 29, 2014)

Have you checked in the Metadata panel to see if the Copy Name for the non-VC files is empty? You can manually give any file, not just a VC, a copy name.


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## StarkmanAlive (Sep 30, 2014)

Jim Wilde said:


> Have you checked in the Metadata panel to see if the Copy Name for the non-VC files is empty? You can manually give any file, not just a VC, a copy name.



Yeah, they sure do: they all say "Copy 1," which must be the default LR makes for them when you create a virtual copy and, say, turn it into a master, I'm thinking?


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## clee01l (Sep 30, 2014)

The Filter bar has a Attribute filter for Virtual Copies.  I know this is not available in a Smart Collection, but why not use this option from the filter bar?


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## StarkmanAlive (Sep 30, 2014)

clee01l said:


> The Filter bar has a Attribute filter for Virtual Copies.  I know this is not available in a Smart Collection, but why not use this option from the filter bar?



Oh, I do. Somewhere I read, though, that you can find VCs using Smart Collections. That's all.


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