LR Process 2010-2012 Conversion Questions

[Chris Kern]

I am very carefully tinkering with some old images to see if I can get better Develop Module results using Process 2012 than I was able to achieve with Process 2010.  My experience so far is encouraging, but I'm a bit confused about a couple of things—and a forum search failed to produce a usable hit on either topic:

• In the LuLa LR4 tutorial, Jeff Schewe says “[f]or raw files that have never been touched by Camera Raw or Lightroom, by default [the image] will come in as Process 2012.”  Does this mean raw files that are newly imported?  I've got some raw files that were previously imported but “have never been touched,” and they are still at Process 2010.  Is this a feature, or a bug that should be reported?
• Jeff also suggests using snapshots to preserve Process 2010 adjustments so you can go back to them.  It appears virtual copies can be upgraded from 2010 to 2012 without also upgrading the master.  Is there some reason why snapshots would be a better way to maintain your Process 2010 adjustments than virtual copies?

For reasons mentioned in the LuLa tutorial, I've decided not to upgrade promiscuously.  On the other hand, I've had some success improving older images by migrating to 2012 and working with the new sliders.

Chris

[Schewe]

With regards to older images coming in defaulted to PV 2010 that have NEVER been touched, that's no my experience...you must have touched those files somehow...otherwise they should default to PV 2012.

I like Snapshots vs VCs because Snapshots travel with the file, VCs are ONLY in Lightroom. So if I'm bouncing back and forth between LR and ACR (which I do a lot of) I can be sure the snapshots are there. VCs don't live outside of LR.

[eliedinur]

I've got some raw files that were previously imported but “have never been touched,”

Importing is touching. At a minimum they would have had a preview created with the PV 2010  default processing applied and a notation of this made in the database.

[BobD]

"I like Snapshots vs VCs because Snapshots travel with the file,..."

Jeff, I too like snapshots because they stay with the file. However, while transitioning to LR4, I made Virtual Copies of images to learn and compare PV 2012. These Virtual Copies contained “Snapshots” and produced a strange interaction between Original and Virtual Copy “Snapshots”.
 
If I added, or make a change to, a snaphot - in either the original OR Virtual Copy - the snapshot in the other changed!  It is almost as if they are the same entity or parents of each other. 

This is a disturbing result. It almost makes Virtual Copies useless if they contain snapshots – not to mention the aggravation to go back to the original and see you Snapshot has different settings!

I thought this might have been a LR4 thing but it performs the same in LR3.  Is this a flaw or intended design? Am I missing or not understanding something? Your thoughts?

[john beardsworth]

It's intentional as it does allow a VC to update the master image. But I've long argued that we don't need both VCs and Snapshots and as long as the concepts aren't merged you're going to get inconsistencies.

My preference is for virtual copies as I can find them through Library and can be output directly. I've no need for Snapshots, but if I wanted them there's a plugin called Snapshotter which converts VCs into Snapshots.

[PhotoEcosse]

I am not sure that I understand the last few contributions on this thread.

If I make a VC, then whatever Lightroom adjustments I had made to the original will be carried over to the VC.  If I don't want them, it is a single click to revert the VC back to the original import sate. From then on, neither processing the VC nor further processing the original causes one to affect the other. One of the great benefits of LR is that I can have dozens of different VCs of the same image, all processed differently and independent of each other. And, throughout, my Raw file remains totally unaltered.

Going back to the original question, as soon as you import an image into LR, it becomes "touched" by whatever default (or selected) import preset you are using. Therefore, all my images that were imported in LR1, 2 or 3 show their original state until I decide to convert them for processing in LR4.

And, of course, one of the benefits of the way that Lightroom has improved with each successive version is that images that were not thought worth bothering about in earlier versions suddenly present possibilities in the latest version.