- [Instructor] Virtual copies allow you to create
multiple versions of a photograph
without actually duplicating the file.
And this saves storage space on your hard drive,
as well as limits the number
of files that you need to manage.
Virtual copies are great when you want to explore
different looks for the same image,
and then reference them next to each other
like they are separate images.
I've gone back to the Chapter 7 07 02 folder
for this photo of a colorful wall mural.
We're going to create a virtual copy of this photo
and then use the virtual copy to explore
this image in black and white.
To create a virtual copy,
you come up to Photo in the menu,
and then down to Create Virtual Copy.
And note that the keyboard shortcut
is Command or Control + '.
And this works whether you're in the library module
or the develop module.
Lightroom displays the virtual copy as an additional
thumbnail of the photograph with this page curl.
And we can see that in the film strip down here.
But if I switch to the grid view,
maybe we could see that a little bit better.
I'll take the thumbnail size up so that we get
a good picture of this thumbnail.
So this is the master file,
and this is the virtual copy of it.
And by default, the virtual copies
are stacked with the master file.
If I click on the edge of this virtual copy,
it'll collapse it into the stack.
For a review on stacks, you can go back
and watch the "Grouping with Stacks" movie.
I'll click on this edge again, to open that stack back up.
You can create as many virtual copies of a photo as desired.
I'll do a Command + ' just to show you how quickly
we could create multiple virtual copies.
I'll take the thumbnail size down
so we could see them a little more clear here.
I can delete a virtual copy
with the Delete key on my keyboard,
and this just removes the virtual copy from the catalog.
It does not delete the master file from the catalog
or from the hard drive, so let's delete this one as well.
Remember, virtual copies really only exist
virtually inside of the Lightroom Classic catalog.
Let's switch to the develop module
and quickly make this a black-and-white.
So I switched to the develop module with the D key,
I'll click Black & White up here in the corner,
and then I'll select both of the images in the film strip
and use the End key to switch to the survey mode.
And now we can see these side by side,
like they're two different images.
Next, we will explore the options
for editing black-and-white images.