DJCard wrote:
... When you “move” photos into Lr, you’re just creating virtual copies within Lr that you can now organize into various kinds of Collections and then edit those virtual copies. Using “Collections” is a great way to organize WITHIN Lr...
Just to clarify the terminology.
You do not 'move' photos
into LR.
On import, you have the option to 'copy' or 'move' or 'add'. *
If you 'copy', the original file remains where it is. You just make a copy in a new location and add a pointer to the new location into LR.
If you 'move', the original file is copied to a new location and then deleted from the original location, and a pointer is added into LR.
If you 'add', the original file remains where it is and you add a pointer to that location into LR.
And you never create virtual copies within LR. LR never contains the images. It only contains pointers to the image files. 'Virtual Copies' in LR are actually just an additional set of edit instructions attached to a given image file pointer.
If the original file is on a card, you don't want to use 'add'. If you do, LR will only know that the file is on that card and when you remove that card from the reader, LR will no longer have access to it. For that reason, you want to copy or move the file to a permanent location in your computer (or a permanently connected external drive).
Further, 'move' is not really recommended. If you encounter a glitch, the file may get copied to a new location but get corrupted in the process. Since move then deletes the original file, you will lose the file. You really want to leave the file in the original location (copy) until you have verified that the file in the new location is viable.
Personally, I don't import my files to my computer through LR. I use a different program, which renames the files in the process. LR is capable of renaming the files and copying them to your computer, but I add the date and time to the filename, and LR will only add the time to the filename with 1 second granularity. I use Downloader Pro, which can add the time with 0.01 second granularity, which separates burst shots nicely. (Since I have switched to a Mac, Downloader Pro is not supported on the Mac so I had to write another program to do that, but it is still possible).
* I have left out 'Copy as DNG' because this is a special purpose option, only useful (IMHO) for new cameras that are not supported by your version of LR. It is otherwise equivalent to 'Copy'.