Month: June 2023

Today’s Question: I followed your advice of creating a full backup of my catalog and photos with the “Export as Catalog” command in Lightroom Classic. But now I have a “Previous Export as Catalog” item in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module. I don’t need that group, so is it safe to delete and if so how can I do that?

Tim’s Quick Answer: It is indeed completely safe to delete that temporary collection found in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module. To do so simply right-click on the collection and choose “Remove this Temporary Collection” from the popup.

More Detail: When you perform certain tasks, such as exporting photos to a new catalog using the “Export as Catalog” command, a temporary collection will be created that contains those images. This collection is found in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module, rather than the Collections section where you can create your own collections. Another example would be the “Missing Photographs” created if you use the Library > Find All Missing Photos command and there are actually missing photos in your catalog.

Some of the collections in the Catalog section are permanent, meaning they can’t be removed. This includes the “All Photographs” collection and the “Quick Collection”, for example. Other collections in the Catalog section can be removed, such as the “Previous Export as Catalog” collection that contains all photos from the last time you used the “Export as Catalog” command.

If you’ve never used the “Export as Catalog” command, then you won’t see this collection in the Catalog section. But if you have used this command, you can most certainly remove the “Previous Export as Catalog” collection, or any other temporary collections.

For any collections in the Catalog section that you don’t feel you need, you can right click on them to see if a popup appears with the “Remove this Temporary Collection” command on the popup menu. If so, you can choose that command to remove the temporary collection.

Note that I demonstrated how to export a backup copy of your entire Lightroom Classic catalog along with a backup copy of all photos with that catalog during my recent GreyLearning Ultimate Event focused on “Backing Up Your Photos”. This topic was covered in the presentation on “Lightroom Classic Catalog Backup”. Recordings of all presentations from that event are available, and you can find all the details here:

https://www.greylearning.com/courses/greylearning-ultimate-event-backing-up-your-photos-may-2023

Today’s Question: When I updated Lightroom Classic the switches to the left of each heading were replaced with eye icons. I know that these are there to disable or enable sections of adjustments, but why are some of the eye icons bright and some dim?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The eye icons to the left of each heading on the right panel in the Develop module in Lightroom Classic are brighter if adjustments in that section have been applied, and dimmer if adjustments have not been applied. There are also indications for each of the tools on the toolbar below the histogram to indicate if they have been used for an image.

More Detail: With a recent update to Lightroom Classic the toggle switches that enabled you to turn off sections of adjustments have been replaced by eye icons. You can click and hold on an eye icon to turn off the adjustments in that section temporarily to enable a “before” versus “after” view.

If you want to turn off all adjustments more permanently in a section, you can hold the Alt key on Windows or the Option key on Macintosh to change the eye icons into toggle switches, which you can then click to toggle the section on or off.

These options are only available for sections that you have actually applied adjustments in, though the permanent toggle option is never available for the Basic section. If you haven’t applied any adjustments in a section, you can’t toggle the visibility of that section, which is why the eye icon will appear dimmer in that case.

In addition to this indication of whether adjustments have been applied in a given section on the right panel in the Develop module, the icons representing individual adjustment tools on the toolbar below the histogram (such as the Crop tool) will have a dot appear below the icon if that tool has been used to adjust the image. So, for example, if you’ve applied any adjustments the Edit button will have a dot below it, and if you have cropped the image the Crop button will have a dot.

These indications can be helpful in terms of enabling you to know what general adjustments have been applied to an image, as well as to know which adjustments you haven’t used yet but that you might want to apply to an image.

Today’s Question: I was looking at my Adobe Creative Cloud Apps and I saw that I have 3 versions of Bridge: Bridge V 11.1.4, Bridge V 12.0.4, and Bridge V 13.0.3. Can I safely uninstall the previous versions and keep the latest, V 13.0.3?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, as long as the most recent version of a Creative Cloud application is working properly, you can safely remove the older versions of that application.

More Detail: When you install a major update of an Adobe Creative Cloud application, such as from Adobe Bridge version 12 to 13, the application isn’t actually updated, but rather the new version is installed as a separate copy. In this way it is possible to accumulate multiple versions of a given Creative Cloud application.

Provided the latest version is working properly, and you don’t have any need to retain multiple versions, you can most certainly install the older versions. For most users there is no need to retain any versions of an application other than the latest version.

You can remove applications from the same Creative Cloud application you use to install the latest updates. Select the “All apps” option from the menu along the left side of the window and review the applications in the “Installed” section. For any duplicates you can click the “more” button (the three dots icon) at the far right of the older versions you no longer need. From the popup that appears you can then choose the “Uninstall” option.

When prompted about whether you want to keep or remove the preferences, you can click the Remove button to remove the preferences for that version along with the application itself. Once again, this assumes the latest version is working properly, including any plug-ins you may want to use with the latest version.