How to create virtual copies with drag and drop

At Olivier, I trust that you are aware that Collections do not contain image files or copies of the file, the image files it’s data about the location of where the files are in folders on your computer and the edited you have made with the image file. In addition “virtual copies” is just data it's not an actual image file.

Are you aware of the option when creating a new Collection- "Make new virtual copies"?

I actually do use collections for this but the workflow is much simpler. I make a collection inside a collection set that contains the say 4000 imaghes from my shoot. I go through them and use the pick flags to pick keeps and rejects. Then I simply filter on picks, do a select all, hit  command-N and create a new collection inside the parent set named something like "selects". At stage if you want, you can simply select to create new virtual copies. I rarely do that but it is much easier and way quicker than dragging a bunch of images. I usually do another passthrough in the same manner to get a final set. Usually I use built-in previews to import so that this process is all super fast.

Don't use collections for this. Use pick flags, select the desired photos and press P. Then, no collection is actually needed. Once you have assigned the pick flag to all desired photos, you can filter them out (again without a collection) and just see the ones you have picked, and if desired, make virtual copies of just the ones you have picked.

If you really need a collection of virtual copies (why?): From "All Photographs", select the desired photos and press P. Then these photos are "picked" and show a white "Pick" flag, and you can do other things with the picked photos. For example: select all picked photos, then use the command Create Collection (its in the + sign next to Collections) and select that you want to create a collection from all selected photos and include just virtual copies into the collection.

Yes, I see that there is no way to do this via drag and drop.

It seems to me that you are overusing collections. If all the images are raw images, what is the sense of importing them into a collection called, "raw images"? That is a very broad classification. But if you are going to be that broad, you could just have a folder named that, and then have a collection called, "selection" that could be the target collection and you could just tap the ones that are your selected images in the little circle on the image, and they would automatically go into that target collection.

I'm not quite sure why you feel you need so many virtual copies. Lightroom doesn't modify the master images. You can make adjustments to them freely, and at any time click the reset button to restore them to the original settings. You can do whatever you want, I just think you're overthinking the process. But then that's my opinion.

...in addition to my message (no way to edit it) : it would be nice to do a drag and drop with a key combination just like to create an alias on Mac (Alt Cmd drag). Instead of creating virtual copies, then drag them over another collection, then delete them...