copying photo's in lightroom

[5teve]

Hi guys

simple question here i hope!

im tagging some pictures as an easy way of getting a collection from multiple folders so i can send the pictures for printing..

is there any easy way after i have filtered by the tag to copy the files (they are all jpeg) into a separate folder? i dont want to export as i understand it degrades them? I'm surprised i cannot find a copy to folder button!

Thanks

Steve

[Venturi]

Hi Steve,
With the way LR is setup there's no need to physically copy photos to multiple folders. You can simply create a Collection and either
a) Add the "original" to the collection. Or,
b) Create a virtual copy of the photo and add that to the collection.

This way you keep one, and only one, physical file and because LR does non-destructive editing with virtual copies you can have an infinite number of "versions" of that same image with no disk penalty (other than the space taken up in LR's database to store your tweaks).

Hope that helps!

[Marc Sabatella]

Yes, but if the point is to send these pictures somewhere else for printing, wouldn't that require an export? Otherwise, you'd be sending them the original unedited picture, at least as I understand Lightroom to work.

True, export means an extra JPEG compression step, but that's life in the world of JPEG - if you edit a file and want to preserve the results in JPEG format, you *have* to save it at some point. Don't worry; it's not like this ruins everything; we're taking about a very miniscule effect. Only if you took that copy and then exported another copy of that, then took that copy and exported another copy of that, and so forth - after a dozen or more generations, you might notice a slight loss in quality.

[junyo]

Create a Quick Collection, make it the target collection, anything you send to collection will end up there.

Collection=logical folder

[5teve]

Originally Posted by Venturi

Hi Steve,
With the way LR is setup there's no need to physically copy photos to multiple folders. You can simply create a Collection and either
a) Add the "original" to the collection. Or,
b) Create a virtual copy of the photo and add that to the collection.

This way you keep one, and only one, physical file and because LR does non-destructive editing with virtual copies you can have an infinite number of "versions" of that same image with no disk penalty (other than the space taken up in LR's database to store your tweaks).

Hope that helps!

Yes Venturi, i understand this workflow and the reasons why, however as the images are already in JPG that i want to 'copy' to a separate folder (or memory card for that matter) and already as i want them (due to them all being pre-lightroom)

i use lightroom as a developer and catalogue but based on my existing folder structure, i dont allow lightroom to move my files as it gives me options regarding software etc.

thanks for the info tho.. i hadnt seen the virtual copy! could be interesting...

Originally Posted by Marc Sabatella

Yes, but if the point is to send these pictures somewhere else for printing, wouldn't that require an export? Otherwise, you'd be sending them the original unedited picture, at least as I understand Lightroom to work.

True, export means an extra JPEG compression step, but that's life in the world of JPEG - if you edit a file and want to preserve the results in JPEG format, you *have* to save it at some point. Don't worry; it's not like this ruins everything; we're taking about a very miniscule effect. Only if you took that copy and then exported another copy of that, then took that copy and exported another copy of that, and so forth - after a dozen or more generations, you might notice a slight loss in quality.

Marc, thanks, as i mentioned above the pictures are already edited (legacy images) but scattered around several folders i guess i will just have to do an export and hope the losses are not visible (i doubt it!) my previous workflow would be to select the images and copy to a temporary folder, then crop the images back using jpegcrops (far quicker batch processing) then copy them to a memory card, then get them printed (im only talking 6x4 or 7x5 here, for some friends that visited us!) so in effect im trying to replicate that workflow!

Originally Posted by junyo

Create a Quick Collection, make it the target collection, anything you send to collection will end up there.

Collection=logical folder

Thanks Junyo, will investigate this but i'm worried about it moving my files.. i dont want that to happen, i wonder if it could be used in conjunction with virtual copy?

thanks for all the info guys!

Steve

[Eaglerapids]

Steve, again, any edits you make to your jpegs in LR are non-destructive just like any edits to raw files or dng files. LR just saves the edits you make in a database and does nothing to the jpegs themselves. If you make a virtual copy of a jpeg and save it in a collection, all is done non-destructively. Then, when you have a batch of files you want to export and print or whatever, somewhere else, you just export those files as jpegs, if that's what you need. So, after all that there is only one save (export) to any particular jpeg. Then, later, if you ever need another copy of any of the jpegs just go back into LR and export another copy rather than making a copy of the copy somewhere else.
When you make a virtual copy of a jpeg you're not making another jpeg, you're making another set of instructions on how to edit the same jpeg in two different ways (if that's your intention of making a VC in the first place)! When you add a file to a collection you're not copying the file to another location, you're, in essence, adding a set of instuctions about the file to a virtual space (called a collection). I hope this doesn't confuse you more. LightRoom is a database driven app and it won't make sense till you think of it as a database.