In Lightroom 4, can I find photos that were edited after their last export?
Asked 5/2/2012
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I use Adobe Lightroom 4 and shoot RAW+JPEG. After processing, I usually bulk-export JPEGs and overwrite the original JPEG files, but sometimes I forget to export for a day or two. Is there a way in Lightroom 4 to show photos that have been edited but not exported since those edits? I was hoping this could be done with a filter or smart collection.
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
14y ago
2 Answers
4
According to the Lightroom 4 Missing FAQ the only place that you can currently determine whether a photo has been exported is in the develop history, which is not searchable, ruling out filters/smart collections.
A hard drive publish service would keep track of unexported photos, but you would need to manually add the images to the service, and unlike the export dialog there is no option to automatically import the images back into the catalog, you would need to synchronize the folders containing the published images every time.
Until Adobe makes it possible to filter images based on being exported the best approach would seem to be either, as @Akram suggests, use a specific collection for images that need to be exported or have a 'not-exported' keyword added to your images when they are imported, which would permit you to create a smart collection of images that both have adjustments and have not been exported. Either way requires manual intervention to keep accurate however.
Originally by user9646. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user9646
14y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
In Lightroom 4, not reliably through normal filters or Smart Collections. Export status isn’t exposed as a searchable field, so Lightroom can’t directly show “edited but not exported” photos.
The only built-in place export activity appears is the Develop history, and that history isn’t searchable for this purpose.
Workarounds mentioned by users are:
- Use a regular collection for images that still need exporting.
- Add a keyword such as
not-exportedand remove it after export. - Use a hard-drive Publish Service, which can track changed photos, though it works differently from standard Export and may require extra folder syncing/catalog steps.
A technical option is querying the Lightroom catalog database (SQLite) to inspect history steps, but that’s outside normal Lightroom use and not a built-in Lightroom feature.
So the practical answer is: Lightroom 4 does not provide a native searchable “modified since export” view; use a collection, keyword, or Publish Service workflow instead.
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