Virtual Copy Problem in Catalog.

[cgatlan]

Hi All,

What a great Site, found completely by accident when attempting to google my problem. Bookmarked now, and hope to become a regular.
I've also searched here for my problem, and found a couple of threads that were close, but not the same thing, and i think unrelated.

Ok, on to the background and the problem...
I was reading Scott Kelby's LR for digital photographers book (excellent read btw), and it had a suggestion for picking out possible good B&W images. It basically suggests making a New collection from a nice large group of images, and ticking the box to create a virtual copy in this collection, then you would select all the images in the collection, and make them greyscale, so you can get a 'first pass' at them to see if any could make striking B&W's..

This I tried, but when selecting images for my new 'virtual copy' collection, I selected approx 2'''+ images, created the new collection and ticked the box for virtual copies.. It took some time, but sure enough the collection was there. I selected all images and while still in library mode, select the quick develop saved preset for greyscale. This started to make all the images greyscale. I left it for a few minutes, came back and noticed when scrolling down, that it only made the greyscale whenever I moved onto the fresh thumbnails (obviously taking some time to update the thumbnail previews). Realizing that I had over 2'''+ images in here, I wanted to start again but with a smaller number, so I deleted the collection and selected the filter for virtual copies and deleted all the virtual copies.

Unfortunately when creating new collections, and I have some of those images that I had in there earlier, I notice there is 2 of many of them, and the second copy is greyscale.. I cannot delete them in collection view, so when going to all photos in folder view, I select virtual copy filter - none there?! - however if I create a NEW virtual copy of one of the affected images, it produces TWO virtual copies, and naturally one of them is still greyscale..

Anyone encountered this? anyone know how to remedy this.. I just hope I don't need to use a backup of my catalog - I backup every day, but earlier today made some massive changes to many of my photo's and keywords and deleted quite a few, so I'm hoping not to return to yesterday's catalog backup ?!

Many Thanks in anticipation of assistance

 

[Mark Sirota]

Welcome to Lightroom Forums!

After you convert to grayscale (you can do that by pressing V, even quicker than applying the preset), you need to render previews. I'd recommend rendering standard previews for all 2''', go to sleep, and check on it in the morning.

 

[Brad Snyder]

cgatlan, and if it will help, you can remove the unwanted VC's directly from the collection, and Lr entirely, with shift-ctrl-alt-Delete, (shift-cmd-opt-Delete on Mac?)

 

[cgatlan]

Thanks for the replies guys.
Mark, I left it for long while, like you suggested..
I returned to LR and noticed many of those images now had a 2 in the top left corner - meaning they were stacked. So I unstacked them all and then out popped the greyscaled VC's. And now they have been deleted. Seems the problem has been solved.

I guess what happened was, when creating a collection full of over 2'''+ VC's then batch greyscaling them, deleting the entire collection and removing all VC's - that is probably some very intensive catalog work and would take time to do, perhaps I was been inpatient.

As I type I'm backing up my catalog again and sighing with relief.. Thanks Again Guys.