Logic problem or lack of understanding

Software RawTherapee
1

RT 5.8 on opensuse leap.

I need to have many variations of the same image until we decide what to keep. I usually end up keeping a couple of them: usually colour and b+w.

All images are raw and are in subdirectories of /photos.

I create the exported jpeg into /temp/exports with: “save processing paramters with images”.

The problem is:

  1. I have only 1 pp3 associated/next to the raw image in /photos subdirectory and it’s whatever is the latest.
  2. Then I have to find the jpegs that I like, copy these pp3 with a name change back to the original directory
  3. Then when I come back to these images a few month later, I usually forget that I have multiple versions of that image.

My questions are:

  1. What are you doing for virtual copies (lightroom term)?
  2. What would you suggest to improve my feeble attempt at multiple copies of the same image?

Thank you

2

I suggest that you enable the auto suffix naming and save one last jpg file in the raw folder along with its pp3 file.

You can easily delete all the jpg files from your raw folder in case you need to keep only raw files. That will still leave the last pp3 file behind!

Now, looking at the suffix (n) of the pp3 file, you will know that there are n-1 copies of the same photo.

1 Like
3

In addition to version numbers I keep the raw file name from beginning to end, so final jpegs can at any time be connected back to the original raw source.

A second version of Yellowstone/Bears/Jan-21-2017/_DSC1234.NEF
becomes
_DSC1234_2_Boar-grizzly.jpg

If I stumble across an interesting historical jpeg in a remote directory a global search for _DSC1234.NEF finds the raw image it was made from. (if exists the last underscore before the descriptive part of the file name is a version number so I don’t use the 2 in the global search).

4

This is what already currently do, including renames (by hand). The problem is month later, I forgot that I did all these variations on this image (unless I go in the file manager…)

Thanks

5

Usually, I don’t keep the jpegs. It’s an old habit from the lightroom days. Usually LR’s processing was improving with almost every version…

Thanks

6

I don’t understand! If you do what I suggested, then you don’t have to remember anything! The suffix-1 are the versions you must have. Am I missing something?

7

As I tried to explain originally (obviously not clearly). I have 2 problems:

  1. It’s a lot of steps. Less is better for me.
  2. I don’t remember the images that I’ve edited and made multiple versions. I have to into the filemangler to check and often I forget (old age…)

I was looking for simpler ways.

Thank you

8

Blockquote
I suggest that you enable the auto suffix naming

Where does one enable “auto suffix naming”? I can’t find it and a search of rawpedia comes up empty.

9

If you try to save your photo, just above the save button (in the pop up window) , you will see a check box.
Once checked, it remains so. That way, you don’t have to tick it each time!

10

Thank you. I guess I’ve never encountered it before because I always use processing queue. I’ve now checked it and I’ll be interested to discover whether it also affect the queue. Unfortunately, I’m alittle pushed for time at the moment, so that experiment will have to wait.