Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Adobe Lightroom Q&A => Topic started by: ron lacy on November 20, 2007, 02:55:11 pm

Title: What Happened to My Originals?
Post by: ron lacy on November 20, 2007, 02:55:11 pm
I recently upgraded Lightroom to 1.3 and have upgraded to Leopard on my iMac.  Now when I work in the develop module I seem to lose the original file.  I have the edited/developed image, but the original is gone?!  Have I done something different or is there an issue with the new upgrades?  In the past I would have the original (file name 1234.dng for example and the new file 1234.dng-1).  Now all I have is the edited file ( still 1234.dng).

I am no expert with LR so I may have inadvertenly done something, but I would appreciate your help.
Ron
Title: What Happened to My Originals?
Post by: ron lacy on November 23, 2007, 06:03:28 pm
Quote
I recently upgraded Lightroom to 1.3 and have upgraded to Leopard on my iMac.  Now when I work in the develop module I seem to lose the original file.  I have the edited/developed image, but the original is gone?!  Have I done something different or is there an issue with the new upgrades?  In the past I would have the original (file name 1234.dng for example and the new file 1234.dng-1).  Now all I have is the edited file ( still 1234.dng).

I am no expert with LR so I may have inadvertenly done something, but I would appreciate your help.
Ron
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Does anyone have an idea about what is going on with my copy of LR?  Any help much appreciated.
Thanks
Ron
Title: What Happened to My Originals?
Post by: KeithR on November 23, 2007, 09:43:41 pm
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Does anyone have an idea about what is going on with my copy of LR?  Any help much appreciated.
Thanks
Ron
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Before you updated to 1.3, did you do a back up of your libary per the instructions?
Title: What Happened to My Originals?
Post by: tomrock on November 24, 2007, 07:26:50 am
Are you sure you aren't thinking of Aperture? Aperture has a preference to always make a new copy when you edit but LR doesn't.
Title: What Happened to My Originals?
Post by: wolfnowl on November 24, 2007, 06:01:36 pm
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Are you sure you aren't thinking of Aperture? Aperture has a preference to always make a new copy when you edit but LR doesn't.

I was wondering about that when I read the OP's question.  Lightroom allows virtual copies, but the only way that I know in Lightroom to have a 1234.dng AND a 1234.dng-1 within the Lightroom library would be to export out the original file as 1234.dng-1 and then reimport it as a separate file.  Then again, I'm no Lightroom expert...  If you do an edit in Photoshop for example then it adds an '-edit' to the original.  Is this what you meant?

Mike.
Title: What Happened to My Originals?
Post by: ron lacy on November 26, 2007, 11:32:53 am
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I was wondering about that when I read the OP's question.  Lightroom allows virtual copies, but the only way that I know in Lightroom to have a 1234.dng AND a 1234.dng-1 within the Lightroom library would be to export out the original file as 1234.dng-1 and then reimport it as a separate file.  Then again, I'm no Lightroom expert...  If you do an edit in Photoshop for example then it adds an '-edit' to the original.  Is this what you meant?

Mike.
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Perhaps you guys are right.  As I said I am no expert in LR.  However, one of the advantages of LR is that it is lossless and you never lose the original.  However when I do an edit I do lose the original unless I "reset" the edits, then i have lost the edited file.  That doesn't seem to make sense to me.  Any thoughts?
Ron
Title: What Happened to My Originals?
Post by: tomrock on November 27, 2007, 08:10:49 am
"Lossless" means you're not making any permanent changes to the original file. For example, if you open a jpeg in Photoshop, change the brightness and save the file, that file is changed permanently.

In LR, if you work on a raw file and make a "change", what LR records in instructions about what to change. LR doesn't really change the file itself (this may be different for jpegs or tiffs, I don't know).

You can revert to the original by resetting the edits or by making a virtual copy and resetting the edits there. That way you can have you edits and the original.

Another way to do this is to make the edits you want and save a snapshot. then you can revert to the edited image or the original just to see what you've done.

I hope I'm clear -- it's very clear in my head. Let me know if I'm not.