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Dan Rodney/4 min read

Working with Virtual Copies

Color Grading Steps

1

White Balance First

Get neutral colors right before any creative grading.

2

HSL Panel

Shift, lighten, or darken individual color ranges.

3

Color Grading

Set highlight, midtone, shadow color tints for mood.

4

Match Across the Set

Sync settings across selected images for consistency.

Master Adobe Tools at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop's Graphic Design Certificate covers Photoshop alongside the broader Adobe toolkit that complements Lightroom in any photography workflow.

Discover the power of Virtual Copies in Lightroom with this comprehensive tutorial, which guides you through creating, editing, and reviewing Virtual Copies for enhancing your photo editing capabilities.

Topics Covered in This Lightroom Tutorial:

Creating Virtual Copies, Editing Virtual Copies, Reviewing Virtual Copies

Exercise Preview

lightroom preview3I

Exercise Overview

In this exercise you will learn how to use Virtual Copies. Virtual Copies allow you to make changes to a copy of a photo without affecting the original. You may create as many Virtual Copies as you want to try out different editing options.

Creating Virtual Copies

We will work with one of the photos you imported in the first exercise.

  1. Make sure you are in the Library module.

  2. In the Catalog panel, click on All Photographs.

  3. Double–click the picture of the trees (20110831_YourName_037) to open it in Loupe View.

  4. Press the D key to go to the Develop module.

    We are going to create two virtual copies of this photo.

  5. Make sure the Filmstrip panel is showing at the bottom. If it isn’t, go to Window > Panels > Show Filmstrip.

  6. In the Filmstrip panel at bottom, CTRL–click (Mac) or Right–click (Windows) the photo of the trees (20110831_YourName_037), and select Create Virtual Copy.

  7. Repeat the previous step one more time to create a second virtual copy.

  8. In the Filmstrip panel, notice that the virtual copies are identified by an upturned page symbol virtual photo at the lower left of the photo.

    NOTE: If you don’t see this, resize the Toolbar panel as seen below, to make it larger so that you can see the icons:

    resize the toolbar

Editing Virtual Copies

  1. In the Filmstrip panel at the bottom, click on the first virtual copy of the trees to select it (2 of 3).

  2. In the HSL / Color / B & W panel on the right (you may have to scroll down to see it), click B & W to convert the photo to black & white.

  3. In the T1Curve panel on the right (you may have to scroll up to see it), make the following adjustments:

    Highlights: Increase to + 62
    Shadows: Decrease to – 66

  4. In the HSL / Color / B & W panel, decrease Green to – 47.

  5. At the top-left corner of the HSL / Color / B & W panel, click the Targeted Adjustment tool target adjustment tool.

  6. With the tool selected, hover over the tree limbs in the upper-right corner and notice that Yellow becomes highlighted in the HSL / Color / B & W panel.

  7. In the HSL / Color / B & W panel, raise Yellow to + 16 to add some pop to the trees.

  8. Click the Targeted Adjustment tool target adjustment tool again to deselect it.

  9. In the Basic panel on the right (you may have to scroll up to see it), make the following adjustments:

    Exposure: Decrease to – 0.30
    Contrast: Increase to + 14

    Now we have the original photo, a black & white virtual copy of the photo, and an unedited virtual copy. Let’s try some color corrections using the second virtual copy.

  10. In the Filmstrip panel at the bottom, select the second virtual copy of the trees (3 of 3).

  11. In the Basic panel on the right, make the following adjustments:

    Exposure: Reduce just a little bit to – 0.10
    Contrast: Increase to + 11
    Highlights: Decrease to – 27
    Clarity: Increase to + 24
    Vibrance: Increase to + 17

  12. In the HSL / Color / B & W panel, click on Luminance if it’s not already highlighted.

  13. Bring Green down to – 55 to darken the background a bit.

Reviewing Virtual Copies

Now there are three different versions of the trees photos. We want to see them side-by-side to determine which direction to take with edits.

  1. Press G to enter Grid view and notice that all three versions of the trees photo are here.

  2. Cmd–click (Mac) or CTRL–click (Windows) on each of the tree photos to select all three.

  3. Press N to switch to Survey View.

  4. Press Tab to hide all of the panels.

  5. Press L twice to turn the lights off.

    Now it’s easier to compare the treatments side-by-side to determine the direction you may want to proceed with.

  6. Press L to turn the lights back on.

  7. Press Tab to show all of the panels.

  8. Press G to switch to Grid view.

  9. For better organization, let’s stack the photos. Go into the Filmstrip or the Grid, whatever is most convenient for you.

  10. To the left of the original thumbnail, click the number (which says 3 normally and 1 of 3 when you mouse over it) to stack all three photos. To unstack them later, just click the number again.