Today’s Question: Suddenly, in the Develop module in Lightroom Classic, at the top of the right panel is a “Create Proof Copy” button. Whenever I make an adjustment, a box pops up telling me to create a proof copy. “Undo” undoes the adjustment, which makes LrC useless with no adjustments.
Tim’s Quick Answer: The issue you describe indicates that the “Soft Proofing” checkbox on the toolbar below the image preview is turned on. Simply turn that checkbox off and you’ll be back to the normal behavior in the Develop module.
More Detail: The Develop module in Lightroom Classic includes a soft proofing feature, which enables you to simulate what the printed output for an image will look like using your monitor display. This can be helpful for choosing which paper might work best for a photo, for example, or to troubleshoot a print that didn’t look right.
When you turn on the Soft Proofing checkbox, applying any adjustments will cause you to be prompted to make a virtual copy if you are working on the original image. That is so adjustments for a specific print configuration are applied to a virtual copy, without altering the adjustments for the original image that would be the basis of most other output such as printing or online sharing.
In this case, of course, the soft proofing feature was enabled by mistake, so the solution is to simply turn off the “Soft Proofing” checkbox on the toolbar below the image preview. That will return you to the normal behavior in the Develop module, with no prompt to create a virtual copy when you apply adjustments.
