Participating Frequently

Question

accidentally synchronised folder, lost the edit- undo

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
January 16, 2020
8 replies
5615 views

Hi all,

i synchronised folder in lightroom but i noticed all my edits and my rating disappears and it goes gone back to state where i just imported the images.
can anyone please help . how can i undo the sychronized folder or how can i go back to the state where i was before i applied synchronised folder.

i don't remember having this issue before as i am sure i had done this but was my changes was still there.

please help. thank you in advance

A

Anonymous

This happened to me and I hit ctrl+z to undo. Worked perfectly. Will add the files a different way.

W

willisaybar

Participant

The same thing happened to me just now.

- Finished my edits, same day turn around too, cause I have more shoots coming, I was 100% done and I shot it this afternoon

- 120 some odd photos.. smfh

- Before I export the last thing I do is arrange the photos, move black and whites together, organize in a way that flows best

- I couldn't, was unable to re-organize which happens often

- Usually I close Lightroom and reopen and it works

- The only other thing I know that works is to just move the photos with the 5 star rating into their own folder

- So I went back into Bridge and selected 5 star and moved them into their own folder

- Went back into Lightroom and those photos are not unavailable and need to be synchronized, so I did

- Lightroom found the new folder and began synchronizing.. well.. ultimately. 100% of my edits were nowhere to be found

a complete and absolute waste of my time tonight. On the positive side, I know to never do that again.

But wow.. im defeated right now. This sucks

Rob_Cullen

Community Expert

So I went back into Bridge and selected 5 star and moved them into their own folder

So that is where you first went wrong! You do NOT need Bridge- Lightroom-Classic can do it all.

To re-organize by 'Moving' folders and images is not a good way to organize. Every 'Move' on disk risks corruption of files on the Drive, AND they now show as 'Missing' in the Catalog. This is Lightroom Rule#1- Never touch your files outside of the Lightroom-Classic Catalog after they have been imported.

You would be better to use Collections to 'gather' your 5-star images together.

began synchronizing.

And where you secondly went wrong - The 'Synchronize Folder' is a function to ONLY import NEW photos to a Folder that are not already in the Catalog. As you discovered, trying to Import them (the 'Missing' files) again only results is LrC seeing them as new files.

Dangers of Synchronize Folder

You should have, instead, use the [Find Images/Folder] functions to re-link your moved files.

MISSING FILES & FOLDERS (Lightroom Queen)

Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.3, Photoshop 27.5, ACR 18.3, Lightroom 9.3, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0.3 .

L

Lumigraphics

Legend

This is why you write changes to XMP files and not just the catalog.

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

Nothing beats a catalog backup. Writing changes to files may be considered as an additional safeguard, but it slows down Lightroom and you don't get everything. You'd lose any virtual copies, stacks, collection memberships, edit history, flags and publishing services if you needed to use it as an alternative for a catalog backup. It's mostly useful to backup very recent changes (changes you made today), that may not be in the latest catalog backup because you did not yet backup your catalog today. Because Apple Time Machine makes hourly backups, I trust on that being enough (and I let Lightroom make a backup on each quit).

-- Johan W. Elzenga

L

Lumigraphics

Legend

The catalog stores catalog-level data. XMP files are for file-level data. Develop edits and labels are all stored in XMP. I'm not sure how much it slows down Lightroom, certainly not more than having to recreate changes.

And FWIW, I don't use virtual copies, stacks, or collections, don't access the edit history, rarely use star ratings, and don't use publish services. YMMV but for some of us, writing edits to XMP is FAR more important than what the catalog stores.

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

If there is nothing in the history panel, and if you do not have a catalog backup (as I understand from another forum where you posted the same question), then I'm afraid there is little you can do to fix it. You will have to manually apply the edits again.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

The 'Scan for metadata updates' could be the problem here. If Lightroom thinks that the metadata of the images on disk have been changed (and that happens sometimes), then the settings in the catalog can be overwritten by the (old) metadata on disk. That could make you lose your edits.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

S

sachraj010Author

Participating Frequently

how can this be fixed?

Just Shoot Me

Legend

Synchronizing a folder will not do what you suggest. All that does is look for images that are NOT in the LR Classic catalog then opens the import window to show them. But that only happens after you click the Synchronize button in the Sync Folder dialog box that comes up. And there is also a Cancel button to Back Out of that.

So please state the exact steps you took as syncing a folder does not overwrite images and or their adjustment.

S

sachraj010Author

Participating Frequently

yes this is exactly what i had done as i had images done in PS and those images needed to be updated into lightroom, so to get that images into lightroom i clicked synchronize the folder. after clicking the syncronize button lightroom showed the newly images that was done in PS along with other images which were already there but, the images i had worked on into the lightroom the changes were all gone. even my rating disappeared and when checked the history of images just showed the imported date

S

sachraj010Author

Participating Frequently

in the past when i synchronize folder the images will be updated/ added if missing but the edit on the lightroom images would not change.everything i did on edit will still be there but this time its all gone(disappeared)