Today’s Question: Following up on your answer about older process versions in Lightroom, is there a way to search for images based on whether their process version is out of date?
Tim’s Quick Answer: The only option Lightroom provides for searching for photos with an outdated process version is to use the Library > Find Previous Process Photos command on the menu.
More Detail: When you are in the Library module you can select Library > Find Previous Process Photos from the menu to initiate a search of all photos in the current catalog. When the search is completed, a “Previous Process Photos” collection will be added to the Catalog section near the top of the left panel in the Library module. This collection will contain all images that are currently set to anything other than the latest process version.
Note, however, that if you update an image in the “Previous Process Photos” to the process version, that photo will not be removed from the “Previous Process Photos” collection. You would need to re-initiate the search to update this collection. Therefore, if you want to keep track of photos as you update them you may want to add all of the photos in the “Previous Process Photos” collection to a new collection, and then use some form of metadata (such as a color label) to keep track of which images you have updated to the latest process version.
It is also possible to update all images to the latest process version if you prefer. While browsing the “Previous Process Photos” collection with no filters applied, for example, you could switch to the Develop module and click the lightning bolt symbol on the Histogram section of the right panel. That icon indicates that the current image is not set to the latest process version. When you click the icon, a dialog will be presented that enables you to choose whether you want to update the current photo to the latest process version. In addition, you can click the “Update All Filmstrip Photos” button to update all photos on the filmstrip to the latest process version.