Lightroom and Archive Photos (Page 2): Interesting. I just figured this out last night as I was trying to take a few files and paste them on to my Flickr page. I made the realization I...

346pak Loc: Texas

Interesting. I just figured this out last night as I was trying to take a few files and paste them on to my Flickr page. I made the realization I HAD to export them in order to preserve the changes made in the program. I still haven't gotten my head around that completely to understand if I like it or not. That now means I need an export folder to keep all my manipulated files. I see another external hard drive in my future.......

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

MtnMan wrote:

I was reading one of the recent Lightroom threads ... (show quote)

The way Lightroom does not "corrupt" your images, is that it creates a sidecar file that records the changes you've made.
Delete the sidecar file, and all your changes are gone.
I don't use Lightroom myself, but have "touched up" raw images in Photoshop Elements.
Even when I open that same raw file in Rawtherapee, the changes I made still are there, which means that Rawtherapee reads Adobe's sidecar file.

What I have done, is "archive" the Photoshop Elements installation file AND the registration key, on the same external drives where I back up my photos. With the introduction of a new operating system, I also update those installation files, if needed.

Searcher Loc: Kent, England

Morning Star wrote:

The way Lightroom does not "corrupt" you... (show quote)

That is good news (for a change) so if you "lost" Lightroom, all your Lightroom edits in the raw files are still available to Rawtherapee.

Since LR does not assign jpgs or tiffs with xmp files, I wonder how to preserve the integrity of these without resorting to the Export function?

romanticf16 Loc: Commerce Twp, MI

MtnMan wrote:

I was reading one of the recent Lightroom threads ... (show quote)

What you have said is true of any "lossless system" it only stores instructions and shows a thumbnail of the final version until you hit "export". The advantage is the space and speed of working on the smaller thumbnail images instead of the huge RAW images, which can be stored externally and accessed only as needed to export an image in your choice of format. You really haven't lost anything, as you always have your originals, and you can also have duplicate copies of your Lightroom master storred too. It sounds like you are looking for reasons to dislike a wonderful product or don't understand it?

romanticf16 Loc: Commerce Twp, MI

MtnMan wrote:

Sure for ACR. But try opening the image with a non-Adobe product, e.g. Picasa picture viewer, or any other jpeg or tiff viewer, and see what you get.

ACR uses the same system as Lightroom to interpret the "sidecar" files.

(PS: I'm not sure what you'd get in Elements. I suspect you'd get the edited image if you went to the Elements version of ACR. But you might get the original otherwise.)

There is a preference in Lightroom to attach the EXIF files upon export- it needs to be checked for the information in the DNG file to stay with the exported jpeg image.

RedIris Loc: MN, USA

Lightroom doesn't have Save and Save As. It ONLY has Export (along with Import). EXPORT does save your edits as jpg or tiff and, I believe, a few other extentions.

so yes, you need to export your edits to jpg..etc.

DNG is a much greater problem.... Other editors don't accept dng. Some pros have run into problems by importing as DNG.

Searcher Loc: Kent, England

romanticf16 wrote:

What you have said is true of any "lossless s... (show quote)

Lightroom is the core of my computerised digital universe and unless something much better comes along it always will be. The problem that MountainMan posed, is not a loss of originals but a possible loss of edits. I have invested many hundreds of hours editing in LR, and because I do back up originals and catalogues very frequently, have not really given any thought to the fact the my copy of LR may suddenly decide not to work. I will not have lost originals, but as MountainMan has said, how to recover the edits if LR is not available. I do not want to export every image I edit, so now we know that raw files + the xmp files can be read and rendered by at least one other program, at least those edits are safe. My take on this now is how to salvage the jpgs, tiffs and pngs which do not have sidecar files, and again without having to export them every time.

rpavich Loc: West Virginia

jerryc41 wrote:

That's why I always do the Export. When I export a modified image to a different folder, the original is still in its original state, correct?

Yes, and this is why when I archive, I just archive a tif file at full size.

I know that people always want to have the "untouched" photo, but I'm not in the Photog business and once a photo is complete, I archive it if it has some significance to me, or post it somewhere or whatever.

MtnMan Loc: ID

overholm wrote:

XMP is the file that contains your edits.

I understand that. But they are not applied to the photo. They are just a file of computer code. Reading them might be interesting to some but you need a program like ACR or Lightroom to apply them to the image you look at.

TerryG Loc: Atlanta, GA

Keepsake wrote:

Would it not work to first export as a PSD file that will save the changes and the export again as a jpg file to be able to share and print it?

I don't think you even need to export as a PSD. You can make a "virtual copy" in Lightroom which creates a new PSD file with all the adjustments you have made to that point. On a Mac, I just click on Command ' (asterisk) and a new virtual copy is created. Not sure if that helps with other non-Adobe programs but at least if your Lightroom catalogue gets lost or corrupted you have a copy saved in your library which has all adjustments in a new image.

TerryG Loc: Atlanta, GA

TerryG wrote:

I don't think you even need to export as a PSD. You can make a "virtual copy" in Lightroom which creates a new PSD file with all the adjustments you have made to that point. On a Mac, I just click on Command ' (asterisk) and a new virtual copy is created. Not sure if that helps with other non-Adobe programs but at least if your Lightroom catalogue gets lost or corrupted you have a copy saved in your library which has all adjustments in a new image.

I think I said it wrong. You don't necessarily get a new PSD file. That just happened to be the file format I had been using. If I make adjustments to an NEF file and then want to create a virtual copy, I hit Command ' and it creates a new NEF file.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

MtnMan wrote:

I was reading one of the recent Lightroom threads ... (show quote)

There is no electronic format that is safe for posterity. If you are worried about posterity you should be printing out your photos. Adobe's approach is not going the way of the dodo anytime soon. Unless every one backs up all their pictures to the newest technology every few years, sooner or later the hardware that contains all this images will become incompatible. Do you still have a 5" or 3.5" floppy drive reader? Do you know anyone with a tape backup hardware any more? I still have some now unreadable backup tapes. Why do you think even jpeg of tiff will be around forever? Forever is a long time. Do you think someone's grandkids will be looking in their attic fifty years from now find an old hard drive full of pictures and be able to read it? In short I really wouldn't worry about your edits in Lightroom. You should be exporting the ones you want to share to jpeg or tiff. Exports contain all the edits. Other than that, I really wouldn't worry too much.

MtnMan Loc: ID

TerryG wrote:

I don't think you even need to export as a PSD. You can make a "virtual copy" in Lightroom which creates a new PSD file with all the adjustments you have made to that point. On a Mac, I just click on Command ' (asterisk) and a new virtual copy is created. Not sure if that helps with other non-Adobe programs but at least if your Lightroom catalogue gets lost or corrupted you have a copy saved in your library which has all adjustments in a new image.

As I understand it the virtual copy does not create a copy of the image file. It just sets up another sidecar file with that images edit instructions.

Even if it created a copy of the image file you'd still have the issue this thread is addressing: you can only access the revised image with Lightroom or ACR. (Not sure about Photoshop or Elements)

My Lightroom files are saved as DNG files.

MtnMan Loc: ID

mwsilvers wrote:

There is no electronic format that is safe for pos... (show quote)

We have some photos of great grandparents that are about 100 years old. We also have hundreds of slides going back 50 years...and although we still have our old slide projector it won't work forever...so we have a project to digitize them.

I believe that jpeg and tiff files are likely to be accessible forever because they are so common. While the physical media for storage will change that doesn't affect the digital files.

Not so for how Lightroom stores images. The vast majority of people with electronic access of any kind can access jpeg or tiff files. A vanishingly small minority (I'm sure well under 1%) have Lightroom or a related Adobe product that can access them.

Of course the unedited files should always be readable if you store them as jpegs, tiffs, and maybe DNGs. Maybe not if you store them as RAW files because there are so many different formats and they change over time.

markly86 Loc: Humboldt County CA

And given Adobe recent actions with Photoshop, I fully expect that to access any photo in an Adobe format eventually will require some type of membership and an ongoing fee.