
You can choose which one is used for the image thumbnail, but that’s it. The Lightroom library will only display a single image regardless of how many Versions you have created within it. With Lightroom Versions you don’t get that. With Virtual Copies in Lightroom Classic you get separate images which can be in different folders, different metadata and appear in different searches. The difference is that Lightroom does not display these Versions as separate images. What Lightroom CC does is to assign these different Versions a thumbnail image, so you get a much more visual representation of your different image treatments. When you work on an image Lightroom saves your full edit history, and Versions (Snapshots) are a way to ‘freeze’ images at a particular editing state and store these different versions within the image. Lightroom Versions are effectively Snapshots, but with thumbnails.

Selecting a Lightroom Version will override any current edits – important! It is extremely easy to lose manual adjustments in a way that it never was before Lightroom Versions are not displayed as separate images in your library 2. There are two very important differences between Lightroom Versions (Lightroom CC) and Virtual Copies (Lightroom Classic)ġ.
