Here’s how virtual copies in Adobe Lightroom can help you make better photos, more often.

Lightroom Is A Metadata Editor

The first thing that needs to be understood is that you don’t actually change photos in Lightroom.

I know that might seem like a strange statement, but stay with me as it’s a critical distinction that needs to be understood.

When you move sliders within the Lightroom Develop module you’ll usually see the appearance of the image you’re working on change.

However, the change or changes you’re making are virtual.

In other words Lightroom is simply showing you what a photo would look like if you were to actually apply those changes to a copy of the original image.

And that, my friend, does not actually occur within Lightroom. That’s because Lightroom is a metadata editor.

Lightroom can change image data, a bit like updating a recipe, but it can’t make changes to your actual original images.

Believe me, that’s a good thing. Let’s say you’re new to post processing and you make a bunch of changes to an image.

Cool dude!

A year later, with the benefit of experience, you decide that you would prefer to process that image in a different way.

In Lightroom that’s easy. You simply adjust the degree to which you’ve moved certain sliders and, if need be, move other sliders until you achieve the desired result.

In doing so you’ve simply updated the recipe for how you’d like that image to look.

It’s like looking into the larder and deciding to bake a chocolate cake one day and a strawberry cake the next.

Awesome!

With Lightroom nothing’s written in stone because Lightroom doesn’t actually save any of the adjustments you’ve made into your original photos.

You simply save those adjustments to the recipe associated with specific photos each and every time you exit (i.e., close) Lightroom.

The fact that it’s the recipe, rather than the original image, that’s changed is one of the most unique features associated with Lightroom.

In other applications you might actually be saving the changes you’ve made on any particular day into the original photo in a way that’s irreversible.

In that case you might imagine baking a chocolate cake. Great, but you can’t suddenly make it a strawberry cake.

Okay, you can decorate it with strawberries, but that’s just not the same thing.

Lightroom and Photo Storage

It might also help to understand that your photos are not actually inside Lightroom.

They’re most likely stored on your computer’s hard drive or an external or portable hard drive.

It’s important to understand that Lightroom is software that allows you to access your images on one of those previously mentioned devices.

Lightroom Is A Virtual World

You can then use Lightroom to make virtual changes that will be applied to a copy of the image in question if and when you export it.

What your images look like within the Lightroom interface is simply a guide to how a copy of that photo would look if exported.

If you want to share a photo with the world you need to Export it from Lightroom.

It might help to understand the word Export as Save As.

In other words you’re telling Lightroom to apply any changes you’ve arrived at within the Lightroom interface to a copy of your original photo.

But your original photo is not actually changed. Ever!

This is important for a number of reasons. For a start it’s a good idea to downsize your photo for sharing on social media and via email.

But you wouldn’t want to downsize your actual original file because, in doing so, you’d limit your ability to print that file at a later stage.

What Is A Virtual Copy in Lightroom?

There’s a feature in Lightroom that allows you to make one or more virtual copies of any images you’re accessing from within the Lightroom interface.

Remember, Lightroom only records and, when you instruct it to, saves the recipe you’ve applied when editing a particular photo within Lightroom.

While an actual copy would produce a new file, with the same file size as the original image, a virtual copy created in Lightroom is tiny. It’s only a few kilobytes in size.

That’s great because virtual copies take up virtually zero space on your computer or your external or portable hard drive.

This allows you to process several versions of the same file and then quickly and efficiently scroll from one version to the other within the Lightroom interface.

You might think of it as creating several different recipes which you can apply to a single, original image.

Export and, if you like, share a black and white version today and, perhaps, a tightly cropped color version tomorrow.

In each case your original photo remains unchanged which allows you to continue to experiment with the way you’d want it to look in the future.

How To Locate A Virtual Copy in Lightroom?

If you need to locate all of the virtual copies in your Lightroom catalog simply navigate your way to the Library module and hit the g key to bring up all your images in the Grid mode.

Next hit the "\" key to bring up the filter menu.

Now select the Attribute option from the top of the Lightroom interface.

From the far right of the Attribute click on the middle of three little box shaped icons.

All the virtual copies you’ve previously created in Lightroom should now appear. You can limit this search to a particular folder or, if you prefer, extend it across your entire Lightroom database.

How To Remove Virtual Copies In Lightroom?

To remove all the virtual copies in your Lightroom catalog follow the above procedure, after first selecting All Photos from the Catalog panel on the top left of the Library module in Lightroom.

Next select all the virtual copies (Control+A on a PC, Command+A on a Mac) and press the delete key.

A dialog that reads Remove the selected Virtual Copies will appear with the options Remove and Cancel.

Click remove and all the virtual copies will be removed from your Lightroom catalog.

Can you Duplicate an Image in Lightroom?

As mentioned earlier a virtual copy is not, strictly speaking, an actual copy of an image file.

The same concept is true when it comes to a duplicate file. A Lightroom virtual copy is not an actual duplicate image.

Rather a virtual copy is a tiny thumbnail, of just a few kilobytes in size, that shows one or more virtual changes your make to a file which do not change the actual original file on your computer or external hard drive.

From within Lightroom select an image and right click (Option+Click on Mac) the filename or thumbnail. From the options that appear select Create Virtual Copy.

The virtual copy will appear, right next to the original file, in the filmstrip along the very bottom of the Lightroom interface.

You'll recognize the virtual copy, in either the grid view or from the filmstrip, as displaying a turned page on the bottom left corner of the thumbnail.

Virtual copies allow you to make multiple versions of a single image, for the purpose of comparison, without taking up more than a tiny piece of space on your hard drive.

What Is A Lightroom Snapshot?

In addition to virtual copies Lightroom offers an alternative way to copy an image. It's called a snapshot.

A snapshot is a way by which you can keep more than one version of an image at various stages of your processing workflow.

In doing so all of the current settings relating to how you've developed that image, up to that specific moment in time, are recorded.

This allows you to experiment with both the original color file and, where appropriate, a black-and-white virtual copy of that image.

Adobe Lightroom RAW and JPEG Files

Virtual copies in Lightroom give you the opportunity to process different versions of the same original image without changing the actual original camera generated file.

That’s because Lightroom is a metadata editor. In simple terms whenever you develop/process an image in Lightroom you’re creating or editing a tiny sidecar file.

Let’s say your image is called 835124.jpg or, in the case of a Nikon RAW file 835124.nef

The sidecar file created would be called 835124.xml

That sidecar file is placed inside the camera generated jpeg file. You won’t even know it’s there.

In the case of a camera generated RAW file the .xmp file is stored in the same folder on your hard drive where you place the original RAW file.

Think of it like a recipe with simple written instructions listing the various changes/edits you’ve made to the image in question.

Just remember that these changes are virtual. The original file remains unchanged and can be accessed at any stage, even years after you’ve post processed the file in Lightroom.

And, unlike actual copies, each virtual copy created in Lightroom only takes up a few kilobytes of space on your hard drive.

This enables you to process many versions of many images in your Lightroom database without taking up more than a tiny bit of extra space on your hard drive.

Through the process of comparison you'll be better able to decide whether a color or black and white rendering is the best option for the photograph in question.

Black-and-white photography is just one way by which you can open yourself up to a whole new world of creative exploration.

In doing so you’ll discover and then cultivate your own, unique creative self.

I hope you’ve found this article on Lightroom virtual copies to be both interesting and informative. I’ve deliberately repeated some of the information so as to make it easier to absorb and remember.

If you live in or around Melbourne, Australia and you’d like help understanding how to set up and use Lightroom feel free to contact me directly.

I love Lightroom. It’s the application I recommend most often and, with proper instruction, you’ll find it will open up a whole new world of creativity.

Glenn Guy, Travel Photography Guru