An old question no doubt but...

[JohnN]

I use lightoom and find it excellent, however if I want to export to an external program to do more complex actions such text overlay etc it makes a copy I have to work with which is a bit of a faf.

Is there any way of doing this, while keeping the original unmolested?

Or...

Is there a very good working method for such as lightroom that would let me work in much the same way (ie edit multiple files at once, transferring settings, keywords etc as quickly)

 

[jobe]

In develop mode, click on a thumbnail then from the pop up menu choose -
edit in/edit in other application. then choose the Application you want to use.

Wayne

 

[St-ephen]

or <Ctrl> E to access your editing prog.

when you save the edited image you'll have 2 images (1 of 2 and 2 of 2) that you can stack in lightroom.

 

[technics100]

I use imagemagic and mogrify plugins for lightroom, it allows borders, copyright, text etc to be apply when exporting from lightroom. therefore leaving for image untouched.. Look at my blog to see the borders..