How to Use Virtual Copies in Lightroom Classic – Day 20

Beyond the Original

Clients rarely want one version. They want to see the colour edit and the black and white, and they will usually pick the one you did not expect. Producing both by duplicating files would double your storage and leave you managing two copies of everything.

Virtual copies solve this. They are additional versions of a photograph that exist only inside your catalog — no new file on disk, no extra gigabytes. Day 20 builds three complete versions of a six-image shoot and delivers each as its own folder.

What a Virtual Copy Actually Is

Right-click any image and choose Create Virtual Copy, or use Photo > Create Virtual Copy.

A second thumbnail appears, and both are labelled 1 of 2 and 2 of 2 — Lightroom automatically stacks them together. Click the stack number to collapse them into a single thumbnail with a badge, and click again to expand.

Nothing has been written to your hard drive. A virtual copy is a second set of instructions pointing at the same file, so you can edit it however you like with no cost beyond a catalog entry. This is the same non-destructive principle behind everything Lightroom does, taken one step further.

Filtering Originals from Copies

Two virtual copies of six images gives eighteen thumbnails, and the grid gets confusing quickly. The filter bar is what keeps it workable.

Press backslash to show the Library Filter (or View > Show Filter Bar), click Attribute, and look to the far right for Kind. Two icons: original photos, and virtual copies. Toggle either to see only that kind, or both for everything.

The same options live under Library > Filter by Kind if you prefer menus.

Colour Labels to Separate Multiple Sets

Filtering by Kind separates originals from copies, but it cannot tell one set of copies from another. Once you have a black and white set and a colour-graded set, they are all just “virtual copies”.

Colour labels solve it, and the trick is timing:

1. Create the whole set of virtual copies at once

   Select all your originals, then Photo > Create Virtual Copies.

2. Label them immediately

   The new copies are still selected the moment they are created. Press 6 for red, 7 for yellow, 8 for green or 9 for blue before clicking anywhere else.

3. Repeat with a different colour for the next set

   Second batch of copies, second colour.

Now the grid reads at a glance: unlabelled thumbnails are originals, red are one treatment, yellow another. The Attribute filter can show you any set instantly.

Editing Each Set

Edit one copy from a set properly, then push it across the rest with Sync Settings.

For the black and white set, that means the Black and White Mix and a contrast adjustment, then Check All and synchronize.

For the colour-graded set, blue in the shadows and warmth in the highlights — and here Check None, then tick only Color Grading. Syncing everything would overwrite the tonal work already sitting on those copies. Sync only what the treatment is actually about.

Exporting Each Version to Its Own Folder

The delivery is where the whole system pays off.

Filter to one set — say the red labels — select all, and choose File > Export. In File Naming, click Edit and build a template of Filename + hyphen + Custom Text. Set the custom text to describe the treatment, so portrait-1 exports as portrait-1-BW.

Choose your export folder and create a subfolder named for the treatment. Repeat for each set.

You end up with three folders — original colour, black and white, colour graded — each holding the full shoot, each file named so the version is obvious even outside Lightroom. Export settings get their own day later in the series.

Tidying Up Afterwards

Photo > Stacking > Collapse All Stacks folds every virtual copy back under its original. The grid looks exactly as it did before you started, with a small badge showing how many versions each thumbnail hides.

All the work is still there. It is simply out of the way until you want it.

Where This Usually Goes Wrong

Not labelling copies at creation time. They are selected for exactly one moment. Miss it and you are re-selecting eighteen thumbnails by hand.

Working without the filter bar. Three versions of a shoot is genuinely confusing in a flat grid. Backslash, Attribute, Kind.

Check All when syncing a second treatment. It undoes the edits already on those copies. Check None and tick deliberately.

Exporting without custom text in the filename. Three folders of identically named files is a support request waiting to happen.

Duplicating actual files instead. Virtual copies cost nothing on disk. There is no reason to copy a RAW file to try a second look.

Keep Exploring Lightroom

More free tutorials on organisation and delivery:

• New AI Assisted Culling in Lightroom
  Choosing which frames deserve multiple versions in the first place.
• How to Create a Signature Watermark
  Applied on export, to every version at once.
• Turn Your Favorite Looks Into Lightroom Presets
  Making each treatment a one-click starting point.
• Free Lightroom Presets and Photoshop Actions
  Ready-made looks to build alternate versions from.

Take It From Here

Virtual copies turn “which version do you prefer?” from a day of work into about ten minutes. Build the alternate treatments once, label them so you can find them, sync them across the set, and deliver each in its own folder — the client sees three complete galleries and you edited two extra photographs.

Tomorrow we go deep on one tool: the Lens Blur tool in Lightroom Classic.