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vincer3159181
vincer3159181
Participant
August 21, 2018
Question

Recovering Missing Edit History

  • August 21, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 3765 views

I have read numerous web articles about missing edit history.  It is often stated that the edit history is lost when reimporting photos.  I have found that not to be true.  Here is the scenario.  This is using Win 7 OS.

Imported photos from a particular folder within My Pictures.  We'll refer to this as Folder A.  This folder also contained a sub-folder of photos, which will be called Folder B.   Attempted to import just the photos within Folder B, but also imported photos in Folder A.  Even so, edits were made to a number of photos within Folder B.  It was then decided that Folder A should be removed from LR.   Folder B was also removed at the same time.  LR was then closed.  Folder B was separated from Folder A outside of LR so that reimporting Folder B would not include Folder A.  The separation of Folder B from Folder A was done within the Win 7 OS.  LR was then reopened and the photos contained within Folder B were imported.  This change was successful.  That is, only Folder B photos were imported.

Believing that the separation of Folder B from Folder A would wipe out all the edits previously done to the photos within Folder B, it was quite a surprise to see that the edits were carried over to the photos after reimporting them.  The edit history was certainly removed with history, only showing the import information.  How can that be?  Several attempts have been made trying to recover the history of edits made to the photos, but to no avail.  More confusing, from what has been read from several websites and posts about the loss of history, and presumably the edits, it is surprising to see that the edits to the photos did not disappear form a re-import.

Looking forward to enlightenment.  

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      1 reply

      JohanElzenga
      Community Expert
      JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      August 21, 2018

      Very simple. You have ‘Automatically write changes to XMP’ checked in the preferences, so the edits were written to XMP sidecar files. When you imported the images again, Lightroom could read the edits from the XMP sidecar files.

      The list in the History panel is not written to XMP however.

      -- Johan W. Elzenga
        vincer3159181
        vincer3159181Author
        Participant
        August 21, 2018

        So the edits to a photo are written to the XMP sidecar file.  Presumably, if this choice is not selected in "Preferences", the edits are not retained in the photo.  Is this correct?  So can the edit history be retained and be recoverable under any circumstance?  It seems somewhat shortsighted on the part of Light Room to not retain edit history in some fashion, it would seem.  The more I learn about LR and how it functions, the less I like it's file management system.

          JP Hess
          JP Hess
          Inspiring
          August 21, 2018

          If you have written changes to XMP, you can read the settings from those XMP files after the files have been imported again. That means that whatever the Lightroom settings were can be reinstated, but the history that led to those settings will not be included. All you will have is the last actual settings that were recorded in the XMP file. That's because the history is a function of the Lightroom catalog. The XMP file is storing information in EXIF Fields that are standard fields that can be read by Lightroom as well as other software applications.

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