"Edit in" saves a version to disk on return to Lightroom

[ToddD1963]

I am building a new photo editing computer. On my old one, this does not happen but it does on the new install. 

Suppose I have a photo on the desktop. I go into lightroom and create a new catalog on the desktop. I import that one photo. I right-click on the photo from the bottom preview line and choose "Edit in" and then selct Photoshop or Portraiture for instance. I usually choose the option to edit a copy with Lightroom adjustments. I do my edits in the other app and when I return, I have the two images on the bottom ... one without the edit and one with the edit. But, when I returned to Lightroom, it also put a new version of that file to my desktop so I now have two versions of that image on the desktop. I didn't export it, but a new version just shows up on the desktop. My previous build did not exhibit this behavior. 

[JP Hess]

If you are editing a raw image in Lightroom, and send that raw images to Photoshop, then there must be a new image created because Lightroom cannot edit and save changes to the raw image. That is the standard process when working with raw images. Depending on how you have configured your preferences, a TIF or PSD  will be returned to Lightroom.

[ToddD1963]

Yes, I understand that the new image comes back into Lightroom. It come back as a tif on my old build. But not only does it come into Lightroom, but a new version is saved to disk. I see the new icon appear on my desktop when focus returns to Lightroom. Why would a new image appear on the desktop? I didn't export anything. We do wedding photography so each wedding is a new folder. If this wasn't changed I would get a new version of the photo for every time I went out of Lightroom to edit in another app. For instance I could get one if I went to Photoshop and then another new version if I then edited in Portraiture. I only want the final image that I export to appear in my finished folder. 

[ToddD1963]

Maybe I solved my own problem. I just tried this exact scenarrio on my old build and it did the same thing there. This is different thatn my usual workflow because I usually edit raw images. In this case, just as a test of my Portraiture plugin install, I put a jpg on my desktop and then opened Lightroom and created a catalog on the desktop and imported that jpg. I then did edit-in Photoshop and converted it to black and white and clicked same. My old computer also created a new version in Lightroom as well as saving a new version to the desktop. I didn't expect it to do that. Tomorrow I will do a test of putting raw images in a separate folder and creating teh catalog there and then try doing the edit-in to se what happens. That is my normal workflow. I create a new catalog for each event and store that catalog in the folder with the raw images and the edited photos all in their separate folders within that event folder. 

[JohanElzenga]

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@ToddD1963 wrote:

Yes, I understand that the new image comes back into Lightroom. It come back as a tif on my old build. But not only does it come into Lightroom, but a new version is saved to disk."

The explanation is simple. Your images are not 'in Lightroom'. Lightroom is a database application, like an address book. The database contains all the info about the images and a path to where the image can be found, but the image itself is stored on disk. And so the new image coming from Photoshop must also be stored on disk. By default it is stored in the same location as the raw file.

[ToddD1963]

ok I got it now. My normal flow would be to remove the old photo from Lightroom after the new one came back. I just never noticed before what really happens because I wasn't viewing the folder as the image came back into Lightroom. Since this was on the desktop, I saw it pop on the desktop. After I then right-clicked and removed it and chose delete from disk, the original unedited image disappeared. Thanks for the clarification!