Virtual Copies and Lightroom Mobile

[Malthouse Photography]

Hi I'm a happy Lightroom Classic user but Lightroom Mobile is very new to me.

I went to create a copy of an image in LR Mobile and did so happily. But it seemed to be an actual copy not a virtual copy. From what I could see the copy had the same file name but was not a virtual copy. It wasn't in the same collections/albums that the original copy was in but otherwise seemed to be the same.

How do copies/virtual copies work in LR Mobile. I get the impression there isn't such a thing as a virtual copy here. I wonder what happens if I were to share a virtual copy from LR Classic and then try editing that on LR Mobile - or indeed creating a copy in LR Mobile of that original virtual copy from LR Classic. Would I get another file to see in LR Classic when it synchronises or would I get another virtual copy?!

Sorry, I've not tried this yet myself - I'm *really* new to LR Mobile and have just posted another item elsewhere to ask about the data flow of non-copy files. Once I've got that understood this may be easier but I wanted to ask this whilst I remember that it caused me to ponder yesterday evening.

Thanks.

[Jim Wilde · Accepted solution]

Your impression is correct......Lightroom does not support Virtual Copies, only LrC has that feature. Some things to note, however, if you routinely sync your LrC catalog with the cloud:

1. If you duplicate an image in Lightroom, it will be a full copy of the original. But when it syncs down to LrC, the new copy is added as a Virtual Copy to the original (you can't have exact physical copies of files in the same folder in LrC, so a VC is created instead).

2. That's usually not a problem, but consider what happens if you then decide to delete the original from LrC. Because the VC can only exist as long as the original file also exists, delete the original and the VC is also automatically deleted. That then results in BOTH copies of the files being deleted from the cloud. So beware if duplicating images in the cloud if there's an LrC catalog also synced to the cloud.

3. If you duplicate an image in Lightroom, that was originally synced from LrC to the cloud (so only a smart preview exists in the cloud), the duplicate image is in fact also a smart preview. In LrC, the duplicate again will appear as a VC to the original with the same delete issue as noted above.

[Malthouse Photography]

Thanks, that's a very helpful answer, @Jim Wilde 

[OpticalSensations]

The reply by Jim is correct. It is an unfortunate and egregious incongruency between the two versions.