Is version control software used for photos?

Question

I am a software developer at heart and by trade, and spend a lot of time in development tools... One of the more useful development tool types is version control, and for the uninitiated, it works something like as follows:

• Create a file
• Start working on the file
• Check in the file (create a version 1 of it)
• Open the file and edit again
• Check in again (version 2)
• Realize you deleted something important from version 1, go back in time, get the thing you deleted...
• ...
• Profit...

Anyway, I am wondering if something similar is used with photos? Essentially, I was thinking something along the lines of:

• Import Photos (V1).
• Start tagging photos (V2... XMP side cars should only really change here).
• Start adding stars, more tags (V3)
• Start adjusting some settings (V4+)

With the flow above, you should be able track a lot more changes... and give you some sort of backup strategy...

Asked by TiernanO

Answer

Photographic workflow applications such as Adobe Lightroom and Apple's Aperture provide this sort of history as a built in part of their functionality.

When you edit a RAW file in these, no changes are ever made to the original image. Instead, they are saved as 'instructions' separately. Thus, you can see a history of all changes made, and with a click of a mouse go back to any previous point in time non-destructively.

If you are just using Photoshop, then this does not happen, and you would have to manually save different versions of your photo before working on it each time.

(I'm guessing there's no reason you can't use an SVN repository for photos?? ie. Binary files?)

Answered by Mike

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