Abobe Camera RAW version control

Photographer and writer, Ben Long, has highlighted a nifty way of creating multiple RAW edits that only take a few extra kilobytes of disk space. Adobe Camera RAW has the facility to save the RAW conversion settings applied to an image in a small XMP text file

His tutorial of how to do this can be found here.

Although his tutorial is for Macintosh computers, conversion data can be stored as an XMP file on Windows machines as well, although there is no elegant way of saving multiple versions without Version Cue at present.

This can be especially useful for when you back up your RAW data as all your previous conversion settings will be stored in these files for you.

To save the data as an XMP Sidecar file on a Windows PC, go to edit and select 'Camera RAW preferences'.

In the drop down menu marked as 'Save image settings in', select Sidecar "XMP" files.


If you wish to create multiple versions, simply rename the XMP files. The one that matches your file will be the version you see in Adobe Bridge.