Lightroom Retouched Images Best Practices

[JJTRFA]

Hi Community,

How do you connect/save/highlight your retouched images to the raw?  Obviously, you only want to have the retouched image as the one you have in galleries/contact sheets/etc, but what's best practice in LR CC to save that retouched PSD or Tif alongside or in the separate folder with the original .CR2/Tiff/.3FR file?

Not that it makes a difference in this question, but I'm in LR CC Classic.

Thanks so much

[JP Hess]

Everyone has their own way of approaching this. My way is probably a little different than most. If the raw image is looking the way I want copies and contact sheets and prints, etc. to look then that is the only image that I have. When I want to make a contact sheet, I create the contact sheet and print it using the raw images. No need to create TIF images or PSD images. They just take up extra space. If I want to send someone a copy via e-mail or send an image to an online photo lab, I'll export an appropriately sized JPEG image and use it for that purpose, and then delete it. I only need to keep the master image. That's the way I prefer to do it. It's probably not the best way, but I don't have a lot of extra baggage to worry about.

One caveat to this is that I will probably have a virtual copy soft proof if I'm printing the image on my own printer.

[JJTRFA]

Thanks JimHess

I think I was talking more like out of 1000 images 5 are retouched because maybe a hair on the sensor or something, not the massive outlay of exported versions, but of retouched images that belong to a certain RAW photo.  My sense is to keep them together, maybe have retouched image in a different folder, but then how do you keep from accidently pulling the unretouched version as it'll probably have the same exact metadata, (phase one's tif file for example, will be exported as tif) and potenially same labels, tags, etc.

[JP Hess]

jalleystudios  wrote

Thanks JimHess

I think I was talking more like out of 1000 images 5 are retouched because maybe a hair on the sensor or something, not the massive outlay of exported versions, but of retouched images that belong to a certain RAW photo.  My sense is to keep them together, maybe have retouched image in a different folder, but then how do you keep from accidently pulling the unretouched version as it'll probably have the same exact metadata, (phase one's tif file for example, will be exported as tif) and potenially same labels, tags, etc.

In such instances, I often stacked the two images in the same folder and choose the retouched image to be on the top of the stack. Then I usually have the stack collapsed. That's the way I do it, but it might not work for you.

[JJTRFA]

I think the stacked method would be best, although it will only work if images are in same folder.

[JP Hess]

That's right. But I see no reason to scatter the images out into different folders. Maybe my system is a little too simplistic. But it works for me.

[ManiacJoe]

The way I do it:

I give each photo shoot or event a folder named for the date and event.

Under each project folder I have two folders "originals" and "exports" that contain the respective files.

Any files that get created by Photoshop go into the "originals" folder.

Since the exported JPG files can be recreated as needed from the catalog, the files in the exports folder can be temporary, but I usually keep them and archive them with the original files. The exported files have the same file names as the originals for easy tracking.

[JJTRFA]

Thanks for the reply - I get that workflow, but still don't see how to archive the raw alongside while "highlighting" or keeping the retouched on top.  It's really like I want to link, but still have archived, you know?

[ManiacJoe]

I have the Library grid sorted by file name, which is named after the shoot date and original file number (yyyymmdd_nnnn). External editors name the files with an extra _xxx at the end. When sorted by name, the original file and externally edited file are side by side.

One of the things that I do to help with this process is to use the star ratings and view filter. My edited photos start with a 3-star minimum. If I send an image to an external editor, I will then drop the rating on the original file to a 2 with the filtered view showing only the 3+ stars.

I do not import the exported images back into the catalog.