Today’s Question: I sometimes want a safe/permanent version of a virtual copy [in Lightroom Classic]. You mentioned exporting for this purpose. Is there a way to make sure that the exported copy is brought back into Lightroom Classic and shows up in the catalog next to the original parent photo?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can preserve a virtual copy beyond the Lightroom Classic catalog by exporting a copy in the original file format to the same folder as the original image and enabling the option to add the exported image to the catalog in the Export dialog.
More Detail: Virtual copies in Lightroom Classic are only saved in the catalog, so if the catalog were to be lost or become corrupted, the virtual copy would no longer be available. You can preserve a virtual copy by creating a file reflecting the settings for that virtual copy.
To get started, select the virtual copy (or copies) you want to preserve and click the Export button at the bottom of the left panel in the Library module.
In the Export Location section of the Export dialog set the Export To popup to “Same folder as original photo” and turn off the “Put in Subfolder” checkbox. To add the exported copy back to the catalog turn on the “Add to This Catalog” checkbox.
If you’d like to customize the name of the image, you can do so in the File Naming section. If you use the same filename as the source image, to avoid a duplicate filename Lightroom Classic will automatically add a number in parenthesis to the end of the filename for the new file.
In the File Settings section set the Image Format popup to “Original”. In the case of a raw capture that means a copy of the raw capture will be created with the metadata updates saved in an XMP sidecar file.
Adjust any other settings based on your preferences and click the Export button. The virtual copy will then be exported as an additional file in the same file format as the original the virtual copy was based on, in the same folder as that source image. The new image will also be added to the Lightroom Classic catalog alongside the original the virtual copy was based on.
Note that in this scenario you would probably want to remove the virtual copy and instead use the newly created image in order to avoid confusion.
