Today’s Question: When I come across an image in Lightroom Classic that indicates the process version needs to be updated, I feel nervous about applying the update for fear the work I did on the image will be affected. Is this a legitimate concern, or should I just forge ahead with the update?
Tim’s Quick Answer: It is absolutely legitimate to be concerned about the appearance of an image being negatively impacted when you update the Process Version. I therefore recommend a thoughtful approach when it comes to updating the Process Version, which is found in the Calibration section of the right panel in the Develop module.
More Detail: The primary risk of updating the Process Version for an image is that the appearance of the image will be altered in a way you’re not happy with. This is only a real concern for images that have had adjustments applied that were changed from one process version to another, but it isn’t easy to anticipate which images that will be an issue for.
If the image in question hasn’t been edited in the Develop module at all, you can most certainly update the process version before you start editing the photo. It is only for photos that have previously been edited that you may want to be more cautious.
If you’re perfectly happy with the appearance of a photo that has an older Process Version selected, I suggest leaving the image alone and not changing the Process Version.
On the other hand, if you want to apply updated adjustments to the image, it is perfectly reasonable to update the Process Version for that image first. Just keep in mind there is a chance the initial effect of updating the Process Version will be to make the image look worse. But then you can correct for that while refining the overall adjustments for the image to make it look optimal.
Note that if instead of choosing a new Process Version using the popup in the Calibration section you click the lightning bolt error icon in the Histogram section, you’ll see a dialog that includes an option for “Review Changes via Before/After”. Turning this checkbox on before applying the update will show you a before and after view with the original process version represented by “Before” and the updated version by “After” so you can refine the After version to better match the Before version.
