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Library module Promoting Virtual copies

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bill.fischer5

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If I promote a virtual copy to master that has been edited and cropped can I go back to "As Shot" should I change my mind about the crop?
 
Yes. Masters and VCs are the same, in terms of most of the things you can do to them. I think writing metadata to the file is the only exception.
 
Yes. Masters and VCs are the same, in terms of most of the things you can do to them. I think writing metadata to the file is the only exception.
Hal: Thank you for responding to my question. I am in the process of organizing my photos and consolidating my LRC catalogues into one. This has been a very long ardus project over several months.

I am in the process of cleaning up a LRC catalogue that I created from several merged LRC catalogues. I have lots of duplicate photos that are connected to copies of the same original file residing in different directories. These photos have been worked on at different times in different catalogues. I am trying to eliminate as many of the exact duplicate original files as possible before I assign unique file names to the rest. There are some copies that I know I have work that I want to keep that are on VC's. I want to promote those copies so that when I delete the rest they will not be deleted. My understanding is that when you delete a master copy the VC;s that accompany it will also be deleted. This is why I am asking if the copy. stored on ky computer is now the cropped image or the same original that came off my camera (as shot)

Also could you elaborate on you comment about writing metadata to a file. I may need to know that.
 
Since there is only one physical copy of an image, only the metadata for the master copy will be written to the image file if you choose to do that. This isn't likely to be a problem if you keep good backups of your catalogue.
 
My situation is complicated by the fact that over time I imported the original physical copies into different catalogues. Often residing in seperate directories. So when I merged the catalogues I do actually have more than one physical coppie. One of the things I am hopping to accomplish is to eliminate those duplicates physical copies. The problem is I don not know which ones I want. A further complications is that I have lover 20 year of photos from many sources so file names are not unique. Some file names belong to several different physical images (negatives). . My merged catalogue has about 106,000 images. My guess is that only 35,000 are unique negatives.

So my question is will the metadata from the master that I have demoted to VC be on the new master?

I just ran a test on the metadata issue.. You are correct the metadata did not transfer to the new master. This is a big problem for me. I am still interested in you import on the mess. I just ran a test on the history issue and everything cam over so that is good. It looks like the physical "negative" was not changed.
 
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What metadata specifically are you worried about? Camera data should be the same for all copies of the image including VC's as should capture date/time (unless we're talking about scanned images). Other metadata like title, caption, keywords, country, state/province, city etc. can be different on the master vs. any VC's created from that master. If you convert the VC to be the master the VC's metadata should come along with it as seen in LrC and the metadata from the old master will follow that version now known as a VC.

But, again this is only information kept in the LrC catalog. If you then want the metadata from the new Master to also be on the phyisical file rather than the metadata from the used to be master then you need to save metadata to disk which should over write the prior masters informaton with the informaton from the VC which is now considered the master in LR. If that makes any sense - or was even your question :)

Dan
 
What metadata specifically are you worried about? Camera data should be the same for all copies of the image including VC's as should capture date/time (unless we're talking about scanned images). Other metadata like title, caption, keywords, country, state/province, city etc. can be different on the master vs. any VC's created from that master. If you convert the VC to be the master the VC's metadata should come along with it as seen in LrC and the metadata from the old master will follow that version now known as a VC.

But, again this is only information kept in the LrC catalog. If you then want the metadata from the new Master to also be on the phyisical file rather than the metadata from the used to be master then you need to save metadata to disk which should over write the prior masters informaton with the informaton from the VC which is now considered the master in LR. If that makes any sense - or was even your question :)

Dan
Thank you Calfidan this is useful. I mostly cae about KWS. Location data should be the same unless one was imported from an SD card and another copy was imported from other software like Apple photos (which does not transfer location for everything depending on how it was imported).

I need to think carefully about this . There may be different KWs in both copies that I want. It looks like in that case I would need to individually go through these images and apply the ones I want manually. That could be daunting.
 
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Thank you Calfidan this is useful. I mostly cae about KWS. Location data should be the same unless one was imported from an SD card and another copy was imported from other software like Apple photos (which does not transfer location for everything depending on how it was imported).

I need to think carefully about this . There may be different KWs in both copies that I want. It looks like in that case I would need to individually go through these images and apply the ones I want manually. That could be daunting.

First, there is nothing sacrosanct about a Master Copy. There can be multiple “copies” of the information stored in the Lightroom Catalog. The Copy name is unique for each. The Master copy copy name is “null” (empty) unless you change it. The second copy called a virtual copy has a default Copy Name of “Copy 1” unless you change it. When you create a virtual copy, it takes all of the metadata from the copy used to create it. That includes keywords UP TO THAT POINT. Keywords added to that copy (master or virtual) afterward become unique to that copy. When you promote a virtual copy to Master, the only thing that changes is the order in the series of copies that point to one and only one master file. You can not create two copies of the same file without reimporting (from a different source) and creating duplicate masters. IOW if you import from an SD card and from Apple photos, you have two different master copies of the same image pointing to two different image files.. The new master copy retains the Copy name assigned to it and the virtual copy that was master still has a copy name of master or what ever copy name you assigned to it when it was master.
Each copy will retain the develop history after the point of creation and a single history entry of the develop settings up to the point of creation.


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First, there is nothing sacrosanct about a Master Copy. There can be multiple “copies” of the information stored in the Lightroom Catalog. The Copy name is unique for each. The Master copy copy name is “null” (empty) unless you change it. The second copy called a virtual copy has a default Copy Name of “Copy 1” unless you change it. When you create a virtual copy, it takes all of the metadata from the copy used to create it. That includes keywords UP TO THAT POINT. Keywords added to that copy (master or virtual) afterward become unique to that copy. When you promote a virtual copy to Master, the only thing that changes is the order in the series of copies that point to one and only one master file. You can not create two copies of the same file without reimporting (from a different source) and creating duplicate masters. IOW if you import from an SD card and from Apple photos, you have two different master copies of the same image pointing to two different image files.. The new master copy retains the Copy name assigned to it and the virtual copy that was master still has a copy name of master or what ever copy name you assigned to it when it was master.
Each copy will retain the develop history after the point of creation and a single history entry of the develop settings up to the point of creation.


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Whow! what a mouth full! Thank you for that through explanation. I need to go over it several time to digest it all. I think I understand better how lightroom works.

My most important issue with VC / Master's is that I do have imports of the same pictures from different sources that reside in separate directories in my catalogue. In this catalogue I merged several catalogues. Pictures from all he merged catalogues are now side by side by capture date. I did this so I can choose which copie I prefer. (Various work has been donec on some of them while they were in other catalogues or programs 'Aperture, Apple photos, Iphoto, Elements'. This means I have several copies of the same file in my finder. My goal is to delete that copies I don't want and hopefully move the negatives into my date sorted file folders. When I delete I do not want to lose the the chosen VC and the physical file it is attached to . Since there is not a batch "promote" function in LRC it would be hard to solve this that way. Is there a way to handle this?

Before I move files I will need to assign unique names as there are different pictures with the same file name built up over time. They come from camera that use the same naming naming format or that have started numbering over again. I wish I had realized that 20 years ago. .
 
It sounds like you may have many duplicate (master copy) images instead of virtual copies. I think you need to sort that issue out. I don’t think renaming files is going to help you Lightroom does not care what the file is named. The Operating System will not let you put two files with the same name in the same folder. If you try to move a file into the folder where one with that name already exists, the OS will complain or offer to append a “-1” to the second file.

FWIW, I have many files that use the same file name in my Lightroom Catalog. They were shot on different dates, by different cameras. Since I file images in date named folders as suggested by Lightroom, I never have a naming collision.


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Thank you Cleo: The whole point of my project is to re-organize as light room suggests in date folders. I am doing by month though. Perhaps by day would even be better. That works for the future. For the present I may have to settle for keeping the various masters in the folder the are in now. I will move it to the same external hard drive and have them as sub folders under "Unsorted by date". That will solve the operating system issue. I still have the issue of not accidentally loosing a Virtual Copy that I want to keep when deleting . I was hoping to clean up my files and only have hard copies of useful files. I have a lot of storage being used up by thing I do not want
 
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