Today’s Question: I would like to have a snapshot of an image in Lightroom Classic that will not change. When I make a virtual copy the changes go on to both images. I’d like to have a reference for the original image to refer to.
Tim’s Quick Answer: If you want a reference image representing the “before” version without adjustments applied, you can either create a virtual copy before applying adjustments or reset the adjustments after creating a virtual copy.
More Detail: I should hasten to point out that adjustments in Lightroom Classic are non-destructive, meaning the original image file is not directly affected by the adjustments you apply in the Develop module. That enables you at any time to reset the image to its original appearance without any adjustments applied, for example.
When you create a virtual copy for an image, the virtual copy inherits the adjustment settings applied to the source image, causing both copies to be an exact match. There are two ways to avoid having the images match in this way.
The first approach would be to create a virtual copy for an image before you start working on the image. You could, for example, have the original image be without any adjustments, applying all adjustments to the virtual copy instead. At any time, you could then reference the original image compared to the adjusted version.
If you had already applied adjustments to the original image and then created a virtual copy based on the original, both images will have the same adjustments applied to them. However, you can simply select one of those images (either the original or the virtual copy depending on your preference) and click the Reset button at the bottom of the right panel in the Develop module to reset all adjustments to their default values. This would result in two copies of the image, one with adjustments applied and one without.
