Lightroom Quick Tips — Why You Should Use Virtual Copies

How to use the Lightroom Virtual Copy feature.

In this video I give you a quick tip about why you should be using Lightroom virtual copies.

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Adobe Lightroom is a power house of image editing and organising software. One of the key features is the non-destructive workflow. This is where the original image file is never adjusted. Lightroom simply creates a reference to that file, within the catalogue, and that is what you edit and see within Lightroom.

Sometimes though you might want to edit the image in a number of different ways. This could be a colour version, a black and white version or simply a re-visit to an image you have edited before. Thankfully, Lightroom provides this feature allowing virtual copies to be created. This is where Lightroom creates another reference file from the same original, and untouched, image file meaning you then have two versions of the same image within Lightroom that can be edited in different ways.

To create Lightroom virtual copies simply select the image you want to copy, right click and select ‘Create Virtual Copy’. To then edit a previously edited image from scratch — right click the newly created copy and under ‘Develop Settings’, click ‘Reset’.

Lightroom virtual copies are a powerful and simple feature that can easily be used in your Lightroom workflow.

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