Choosing sliders settings to copy by previous button

I strongly support this request.

I’m a professional photographer and regularly edit large sessions with hundreds of images divided into different sets, locations and lighting conditions. I also use a Behringer X-Touch Mini with MIDI2LR, so minimizing clicks and keeping a fast workflow is extremely important to me.

The Previous button is particularly powerful because the source image does not need to be physically adjacent to the destination image.

For example, I may edit a pool set, then a garden set, then a beach set. Later in the session I may encounter another pool image with similar lighting. I can click one of my previously edited pool images, return to the new image, press Previous, and instantly use those settings as my starting point — even if the two images are dozens of photos apart.

The problem is that Previous also transfers masks. With AI masks, this can trigger several seconds of unnecessary processing, and the destination image may already have its own masks that I want to keep.

Copy/Paste Settings can exclude masks, but it defeats the purpose of Previous: what is currently a single button press becomes several navigation and copy/paste steps.

My ideal solution would be simple:

Allow users to define which settings the Previous command transfers, using the same checkboxes already available in Copy Settings.

Configure it once, save those selections, and Previous continues to work with one click — just without the settings the photographer has chosen to exclude.

Even better, Lightroom could offer two separate commands:

Previous — All Settings
Previous — User Defined Settings

Both should preserve the current behavior of Previous, using the previously active image as the source regardless of its position in the filmstrip.

For high-volume photographers, especially those using MIDI controllers or editing consoles, this seemingly small feature could save a significant amount of time across hundreds or thousands of photographs.

Perhaps I am missing the point. Would not be anything new.

Have you considered, in the Develop module, to click on Settings in the menu bar, and selecting Copy, select those settings you want, then in the next photo(s) accomplish /settings/paste/

My immediate thought: If you're going to go through an extra select setting step - then you can just as well use Synchronize. Then the whole point of Previous is lost.