Go to File / Plug-in Extras / Process with Topaz Photo AI
Select “Edit a copy”
Adjust the lighting
Export to LRc
A TIFF file gets generated, and added to the Lightroom catalog.
Right-click on the folder that contains the original photo in LRc and select “Synchronize folder”
A new DNG file is found
This is the copy made in step 4, which was not added to the Lightroom catalog. It becomes a sort of orphan. One will not normally be aware that the file is still there, but it’s consuming extra disk space. It will also show up as a duplicate if later using software that scans for duplicates, wasting extra time to deal with the issue. IMO, the copy should not be kept in this situation.
The only reason the file gets forcibly exported as TIFF instead of DNG is that I applied “adjust lighting” in step 5. I believe this also happens with “balance color”. I am not intentionally choosing to export to TIFF.
If neither of those 2 enhancements are used, then the image gets exported to the DNG copy, and that file is added to the catalog, as expected.
I do not wish to use Loom as it records video directly to the web, and that’s not something I want to do. I want to ensure that the private photos in my Lightroom collection do not end up as part of a video on Loom’s servers, and the only way to do that is not to use Loom at all.
Hopefully, I have provided enough information to reproduce the issue without the need for a video.
I can confirm this behaviour. The DNG copy is not added to the LR catalog, only the TIFF exported back by TPAI. So now you have an uncatalogued DNG file leftover in the folder.
If you use Adjust Lighting or Balance Colour alot, you could end up with many DNG file copies taking up space that you’re not aware of.
Yes. And if your DNG files are very large, as some of my Pentax K-1 II Pixel Shift files are - I’m looking at a 162MB file right now - it can be quite a bit of space.
There are other situations where copies are made that shouldn’t be kept, for example when deciding not to do any edits for whatever reason - say, the results with TPAI are not satisfactory, or not enough of an improvement . The unmodified DNG or TIFF copies in that situation also remain, but at least they are added to the catalog, so there is an opportunity to delete them. It’s still a pain especially in a stack to manually figure out which is the copy to delete and which is the original. I wish that was handled automatically. It’s not that rare of a situation for me to change my mind about doing edits.
