Lightroom - Do You Save Your Edits?

[Harlequin565]

So the Develop changes you make in LR are stored in the catalogue. But you can also write the data back to the original file as an xmp, or put it in the header of the dng/jpeg.

Was just reading Kelby's blog and he recommends turning this feature off - basically saying you only need the sidecar files if you lose your catalogue, or want to look at the edits on another machine.

I backup both images and catalogue (on filechange), so this is probably belt & braces, but I always live with the fear that I could get a corrupt catalogue which will then backup without my knowledge & create a situation where my catalogue is gone & so are my edits (or I need to restore from an older snapshot). I can always rebuild collections and the other stuff that is stored only in the catalogue, so I find that there is little to be lost by having those changes written back (Kelby reckons it slows LR down -but I've not noticed anything). It was part of the reason to move back from dng to raw - edits only require a backup of the xmp (tiny update) rather than a re-write of the whole dng (much larger update).

Anyway - does anyone have any thoughts on this? Do you save your develop edits, or just leave them in the catalogue?
Just curious really.

 

[PhilH04]

he recommends turning this feature off - basically saying you only need the sidecar files if you lose your catalogue,

Sounds a bit odd, if you have turned the feature off and lose your catalogue...hmmm.

Any way, I always write to a sidecar file and they are backed up along with the back-ups of my working drive. HTH

 

[ecoleman]

I don’t write to cmo files and I stopped converting to dng a long time ago.
Personally, I’d look at your backup system. A good backup system would allow you to step back any number of days should you inadvertently backup a corrupt file.

 

[Harlequin565]

So with two different replies, I'm going to guess that there's no universally agreed "best" option - because at the end of the day, it's about dealing with risk and we're all different on that one.

For me, I used to want my backups to be very simple. I didn't want to reload revisions to try and determine when the issue occurred. I tended to look at catastrophic failure as an opportunity to clean house, so a fresh catalogue with my raw edits intact worked best for me. Now though - I'm using collections more heavily (smart & curated) so I'd probably find a clean catalogue to restore from. But then, as availability is a big consideration in my day job, I can't see me turning it off right away.

 

[ABTog]

Doesn't Lightroom also create a backup file of the catalogue when exiting?
There's the main catalogue file and the backup catalogue file, which would save you from a corrupted catalogue situation and if all your files are backed up to another hard drive or the cloud, that saves you from the hardware failure situation.

Fairly sure that's how it should work, unless I've got it mixed up.

 

[Harlequin565]

Doesn't Lightroom also create a backup file of the catalogue when exiting?

It does if you have it turned on

I backup by drive/content, so the folder that houses my catalogue gets backed up on file change. Same goes for the Pictures folder. Other folders are daily backups. If LR offered to backup the pictures themselves, I might have used it, but I turned it off and just include the catalogue in the same job that backs up my pics.

 

[ecoleman]

Doesn't Lightroom also create a backup file of the catalogue when exiting?
There's the main catalogue file and the backup catalogue file, which would save you from a corrupted catalogue situation and if all your files are backed up to another hard drive or the cloud, that saves you from the hardware failure situation.

Fairly sure that's how it should work, unless I've got it mixed up.

It does but pretty sure it just creates the backups in the same place as the catalog (can’t remember if you can choose a location) which is pointless of you drive fails.

I have time machine local locally so can step back to any point in the last couple of month. I also subscribe to backblaze which syncs my drive to the cloud. From there I can also step back a certain number of days.

 

[ABTog]

It does but pretty sure it just creates the backups in the same place as the catalog (can’t remember if you can choose a location) which is pointless of you drive fails.

I have time machine local locally so can step back to any point in the last couple of month. I also subscribe to backblaze which syncs my drive to the cloud. From there I can also step back a certain number of days.

You can get it to backup to a different location according to Adobe:
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/back-catalog.html

And you can specify how often it does it.

So if you specified that the backup catalogue went to a separate drive (note to self, do this), then this would cover the situation where the catalogue gets corrupted or the drive fails.

(I have Backblaze too so that automatically updates on each file change)

 

[PhilH04]

It does but pretty sure it just creates the backups in the same place as the catalog (can’t remember if you can choose a location)

Yes you can choose a location for the backup, I just wish you could choose for it to backup to two locations, however its not too much hassle to do it manually.

 

[Anthony.Ralph]

Bear in mind that one of the useful features of Lightroom that unlike Photoshop the history list of the adjustments is persistent and can be viewed and used upon reopening Lightroom. This history is not saved in an xmp file, only the current adjusted state is.

Anthony.

 

[Bebop]

I used to save the changes in the xmp files. Then I turned off the feature, but have recently been considering using sidecar files again. If I were to move away from Lightroom CC in the future - and go back to LR5, the xmp files at least could be read by LR5 couldn't they? Or have I got that wrong?