Here’s another quick and transformative Lightroom technique from Julieanne Kost—one of the foremost Adobe Experts and a self-proclaimed “digital-imaging evangelist.” Like many of her succinct lessons, this one runs barely four minutes, as she explains the concept of Virtual Copies and describes when and how to make them a part of your Lightroom workflow.

Simply put, a Virtual Copy is a replica of a file with all the adjustments you’ve made so that you can experiment with further enhancements and other modifications without affecting the original image. And because you’re not creating full duplicate versions of the same shot, a Virtual Copy doesn’t place a burden on your hard drive by taking up additional space.

Kost pulls up a seascape photo that she processed in Lightroom for a dark and moody effect. She introduces today’s topic like this: “Let’s say I want to create another version of this photo with a different look.” She clicks the Photo tab atop the Lightroom workspace, and then selects the “Create Virtual Copy” option from a dropdown menu that appears.

Lightroom will then create a secondary thumbnail that’s stored in the catalog. The magic is this: “We’re not taking up extra disk space like we would have by duplicating the original photo.” You can easily differential between the two thumbnails because the Virtual Copy has a page-curl icon on the lower left corner.

The copy can then be modified with different adjustments, the addition of Star Ratings, Keywords, other metadata, and the like. And these changes are only applied to the Virtual Copy—leaving the file with the original edits untouched. Likewise, you can select and adjust the original file further without affecting the Virtual Copy.

Kost demonstrates how this works by moving to Lightroom’s Develop module and applying a Landscape preset to change the look and feel of her image. And a quick glance at the film strip confirms that these changes were only applied to the Virtual Copy

Another space-saving consideration is that you can create as many Virtual Copies as you want—each with a unique effect. Just follow the approach outlined above and each new copy appears as a new thumbnail in the filmstrip at the button of the screen.

Then you can edit each of these versions to your heart’s content, with different cropping, aspect ratio, variations to color, exposure and contrast—and whatever other variables you want to change. When you select all the images and click on Export, Lightroom will export all of the variations as unique files.

There’s a bit more to understand and Kost explains everything you need to know for getting the job done. Be sure to visit Kost’s robust YouTube channel where you’ll find many more helpful editing tips, tricks shortcuts and tutorials for working with Photoshop and Lightroom.

We also suggest watching a tutorial we posted recently, describing another pro’s five favorite mobile apps that will greatly improve your smartphone photographs.

Adobe’s post-processing tools are in a constant state of evolution, and some features that were a bust in years past have recently become far more useful and effective. Such is the case with Exposure Blending and HDR in Photoshop and Lightroom. This tutorial from Photos on the Bay explains how the process has evolved and why you may want to take another look.

Instructor Neil Medland is an Australian pro specializing in landscape and seascape imagery. He says that “10 years ago HDR was a swear word in photography because the overprocessed and unrealistic images it produced turned a lot of people off—including myself.” He’s revisiting this approach today to see how much better the function is in 2024.

Medland explains why recent improvements to HDR makes Exposure Blending a lot better than in the old days. He illustrates this point with a few seascapes that are particularly challenging because of the broad range of tones in the scenes. And he was very surprised by the beautiful and natural looking results of his edits.

The typical approach involves three shots of the same scene, each exposed differently; one with a “correct” base exposure, another that’s overexposed for the shadows, and a third shot that’s intentionally underexposed for the highlights. The idea is to blend all three photos together and arrive at one shot with perfectly balanced tones.

Medland illustrates how to  get the job done in both Photoshop and Lightroom—explaining why the latter doesn’t have all the same tools. He selects his three images in Lightroom and then walks you through the Exposure Blending technique. The process begins by right-clicking on Photo Merge and then HDR in the sequence of dropdown menus that appear.

He then demonstrates how the method begins differently when working in Photoshop. However, once you get going everything else is pretty much the same. You’ll see the specific settings that Medland recommends for different types of images.

Medland explains when the Auto Align setting is warranted, as well as “the bit that makes the biggest difference of all;” namely, how to configure the Deghosting feature. He illustrates why setting this to “None” will often produce “the cleanest the nicest looking blend by far and away.”

The foregoing is just a taste of what you’ll learn in this comprehensive 14-minute video, and you may want to take a few notes for future reference. We bet that your opinion of HDR will be far more favorable by the time this lesson concludes. Then head over to the Photos on the Bay YouTube channel where you’ll find many more easy and helpful tips.

And be sure to watch the tutorial we featured recently in which another pro explains why too much color can ruin outdoor photographs unless you follow his straightforward advice.