Locking photos in Lightroom?

[tecboy]

Is there a setting to lock photographs in Lightroom, so I don't accidently edit again or delete a photograph?

 

[KmH]

There's boatloads of stuff you don't yet know you want to know - about Lr.

Invest in a comprehensive, keep close at hand, reference to the nooks and crannies in Lightroom:
The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC / Lightroom 6 Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers

 

[Big Mike]

LR uses a non-destructive workflow, so it doesn't alter the original file.

Any accidental editing can be undone, or you can start over etc.

As for protection from deleting....LR has a double confirmation procedure for deleting. When you hit the button to delete a photo, it then asks you if you want to remove it from LR (not actually deleting it) or if you want to actually delete it. The default choice is always the first one, so it's pretty hard to delete something accidentally.

 

[Dave442]

Usually when I don't want to edit a photo again is because I have an edit that was sent to a client and only want to change that image if they so request. I have those photos marked by a color so I know not to make a change. The metadata will have a note so I can remember why I marked the image. However, the image is usually a virtual copy, so I may go and modify one of the other versions of the image or I could make a virtual copy on that version of the image and from that point and go off trying some further editing.

If you tend to do large batch edits that my not respect the color you marked the image with then you might consider making a Snapshot of any images you don't want to change, in case you do make a change then you can just jump back to the point where the Snapshot was made.

All my versions keep the same basic file name, I usually add something in the Copy field and that is automatically added to the end of the file name on Export. Then a simple Excel table lets me cross reference any image that may have certain rights already assigned to it.

As far as deleting, I only do an initial culling at the initial import where I will actually delete images from the drive. Flag with X and then Delete Rejected photos from Disk and then Delete from Disk. All my images are on external disks and not the computer HD so space is not an issue.

I have deleted many a file that I did not want to delete over the years when trying to clear up hard disk space, so my solution today is to just not go off deleting files. In LR you don't have to look at the extra images, just give a star to the ones you want to look at and filter out the others.