Saving Changes With Lightroom Classic

[Cantrell]

All,

I have a Canon R6M2 camera that I started shooting RAW in the late Summer. I have tried both DPP and Lightroom Classic for the processing on my Mac Mini.. Before processing I had used LRC for cataloging on my PC. Even though I have used LRC for cataloging for two years I still have to refer to a step by step procedure on cataloging. That is the background information.

How do I save the final results of the processing with LRC? I am not planning on emailing the final picture after processing. There is no save feature with LRC.

Thanks in advance. Still trying to learn to process. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Reese

[jrhoffman75]

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@Cantrell wrote:

All,

I have a Canon R6M2 camera that I started shooting RAW in the late Summer. I have tried both DPP and Lightroom Classic for the processing on my Mac Mini.. Before processing I had used LRC for cataloging on my PC. Even though I have used LRC for cataloging for two years I still have to refer to a step by step procedure on cataloging. That is the background information.

How do I save the final results of the processing with LRC? I am not planning on emailing the final picture after processing. There is no save feature with LRC.

Thanks in advance. Still trying to learn to process. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Reese

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LrC is a non-destructive editor. I think the term is parametric editor. 
Each time you make a change to the image LrC records the action. If you look at the history dropdown in the Develop module you can see each of the steps. Those steps are automatically saved in the catalog file. The original image is unchanged. 
Each time you open an image file LrC executes each of those steps to display the edited file. You can enter the history list and execute new steps above that point if you want. 
When you export a file to create a JPEG or TIFF a new image is created containing all the edits. 
Sort of like planning and baking a cake. In planning you lay out all the ingredients. If you decide to change from chocolate to orange to would go into the row of ingredients and replace the pertinent ingredients. 
Once you decide to bake the all the ingredients get mixed and the cake is created. 

[p4pictures]

As mentioned by John, Lightroom keeps the settings you have changed in its database. So for each image on your computer that you have imported to Lightroom it creates a database entry that includes where on the drive the original image is located, and what processing operations have been carried out, plus a low resolution thumbnail of the current appearance of the image with the processing as done. This is rather efficient since it does not need to make copies of files when you make changes. 

In addition you can save the processing steps to a file for each image by pressing CMD S on your mac to save the current settings for the selected image or images to their .XMP files in the same folder as the original images. This is not generally needed, but can be of use if you want to send someone else the original image and your edits to then do some additional processing with. You'd need to send them the .CR3 and the .XMP together. 

When you have made some edits to an image, and have it as you want, you can save a snapshot of that settings. In the develop module you can save a named snapshot by pressing CMD N or using the PLUS icon on the SNAPSHOT section of the toolbar on the left. With this I make snapshots for different crops or colouring. So I might make "4x5 colour", "2x3 colour" and "4x5 black & white" as three snapshots for the same image as it then lets me go between each variant if needed by clicking on the snapshot title. 

[Cantrell]

John,

Thank you very much for your response. Very helpful.

Reese

[Cantrell]

Brian,

Thank you for your response. The information that you and John was very informative.

Reese

[ebiggs1]

"How do I save the final results of the processing with LRC?"

Although it has evolved significantly in the past several years Lightroom is really more a data base editor than a image editor. Yes, yes, I know you can do a lot now a days but always keep that in mind. You are basically telling LR to make a map of what edits you like and do but they are only screen edits. They actually do not exist outside of LR.

When you do get to the point you want to make a print or save some other file for whatever use, LR has the Export feature.

Perhaps you are as old as me and remember the first versions of LR. You couldn't do hardly anything in it and had to have Photoshop. LR was more like what Bridge is today and maybe that's why Adobe created Bridge.

[Cantrell]

ebiggs1,

Thank you for your response. After I finish processing I usually email the final product. Typically these are pictures of my grandchildren that I email to there parents.

Reese

[p4pictures]

Sorry to be pedantic, but Adobe Bridge was launched in 2005 with Creative Suite 2, which is before Lightroom arrived in 2007. Though there had been a public Lightroom beta for Mac only available since early in 2006. 

[ebiggs1]

Order of events isn’t the point I tried perhaps poorly to make and just as a passing statement. I am certain Adobe knew the future plans for the development of Lightroom and also knew they had Bridge. I suppose all forums are scrutinized but this one has it in abundance,