Multiple crops/styles of the same photo?

[OdiN]

I am not sure lightroom can do this, but if not, I wish it could.

I am running my first batch of wedding photos through Lightroom and I'm really liking it so far.

However, there are some photos which I would like to do one of two things, or both:

1 - 2-3 crops. So an 8x1', 5x7 and maybe a 1'x1' crop of the same photo. Any way to make more than one crop and have it export those crops as different photos?

2 - Apply effects - B&W - so say I want a B&W of a photo, I would also like to export the color at the same time. Is this possible?

Thanks for any help!

 

[Steve Crane]

Create as many virtual copies as you want different crops. Each can then be cropped independently, have different effects applied and be exported as different images.

 

[OdiN]

Well I know that I can do that - I was hoping for multiple crops without doing that.

It will work that way though.

My only other question is about naming files. Say I have two crops - I would prefer to have it list the crop dimensions in the output file, but the only thing I can find is the original pixel dimensions from the metadata.

Any ideas about that one?

 

[Steve Crane]

There is a metadata item called Cropped that gives you the pixel dimensions of the crop. I suspect though that you want the crop ratio, in which case your only option seems to be to manually enter that in the Copy name field of the virtual copy. Here is a sample of the file name that can be generated using the Dimensions, Cropped and Copy name items. I manually entered 8×1' into the Copy name field.

{Copy name} - {Cropped} - {Dimensions}
​

results in

8×1' - 1653 x 2'67 - 35'4 x 2336​

 

[Victoria Bampton]

If you don't want to use Virtual Copies, you could also use Snapshots, but any file can only be in a single snapshot state at one time, so it's not as much help when you want to export.

 

[Mark Sirota]

For naming, what I do is put the aspect ratio or color treatment (e.g. "4x5" or "grayscale") in the Copy Name field, and include that token in the filename template.

 

[Brad Snyder]

And for printing, I'll build subcollections for the different aspect ratios, so I can batch the output and lab upload.

(Hmm, I'm gonna' have to think about Mark's method, that'll save some confusion I think)