Lightroom 3 Beta Cool New Feautre

[peter_co]

So I was trying out the Lightroom 3 beta edition and I stumbled upon a nifty new feature of the release. Since I don't want to have folders upon folders of duplicates, I normally just edit the originals. In fact, this was one of the reasons I found Lightroom so useful, I could edit a whole batch of files and then export them to the original folder, replacing the old files, which worked seamlessly in LR 2. Today I tried to do the same in LR 3 beta, and to my amazement I got the notice that "Files ... could not be found." My initial though was that I had moved the files, so I went to re-import them, when lo and behold: LR was right, the files were actually gone!

I checked the boards and apparently this is in fact a tiny bug of the beta edition: when you tell LR 3 beta to override files, it actually deletes them! Thank God this was just a practice set that I had no particular need for! At least this has been a timely reminded of the importance of backing everything up.

[tonylong]

I'm not clear on what you are describing. You can't overwrite the original Raw file. Now, if you are working with jpeg or tiff files, that could be different -- you need to make sure that when you export you are using a unique file name, which should be flagged when you do the export.

As far as using duplicate files, this should only come into play when you are exporting an image for a particular purpose, such as posting for the Web or printing. Each of these files need to be seperate from your original file -- like I said, a unique name and I put these files into a different folder.

[peter_co]

Now, if you are working with jpeg or tiff files, that could be different -- you need to make sure that when you export you are using a unique file name, which should be flagged when you do the export.
Yes, in this case I was using Jpegs. And I only wanted to keep one version (i.e. the edited version) and thus wanted to replace the old version by the edited version (by overwriting the file when exporting). However, when I tried to do this, instead of overwriting the old version, the old files were simply deleted (i.e. in the end I had neither the old nor the new version, the folder was completely empty).

This article explains the problem better than me: http://www.peachpit.com/blogs/blog.aspx?uk=Dont-try-to-overwrite-your-source-files

I should point out though that the problem had been fixed in later editions of LR2 so that you could in fact successfully override old files, but I guess in LR3 beta they must reverted to the old version of export mechanism.

[Victoria Bampton]

I'm inclined to say allowing you to overwrite originals would be a bug, as it goes completely against LR's philosophy of non-destructive editing, but I haven't checked into the behaviour recently.

That said, bugs like that are the reason that the beta is only for use for testing, and only with duplicate files. The warnings are there for good reason.

[René Damkot]

I'm inclined to say allowing you to overwrite originals would be a bug, as it goes completely against LR's philosophy of non-destructive editing,
Agree.
Never, ever overwrite your originals.
IMO, you will regret it one day if you do.

[Jadam]

I am having the same problem in the LR3 Beta. I apologize in advance for not having a better explanation on how to fix it other than fiddle around with the 'synchronize' options a bit. That is what I've had to do.

Have you also found it choppy in the Develop module? There is screen lag when you slide around, and brush lag after doing a handful of images. I would think it has something to do with the program trying to save all my brush stoke's history and bogging down the memory? I end up having to shut it off and open it back up to get it to run smoothly

[Victoria Bampton]

Yes there are memory leaks in the beta.