SUMMARY, AN ATTEMPT TO DESCRIBE MY PROBLEM IN ONLY A FEW SENTENCES
The “Previous” button is meant to copy all kinds of properties from one source picture to a target picture. Up to version 10.1 it did not copy the crop factor when source and target were labeled “Original”. Unfortunately, in version 11 it is the aspect ratio copied from source to target, leaving the source on “Original” and the target on “Custom”. In my humble opinion the property “Original” should be copied, not the aspect ratio.
SOME HISTORY
It was probably in February 2021 that Adobe updated Lightroom Classic (“LrC”) from version 10.1.1 to 10.2. Unfortunately, in version 10.2 a bug appeared in the crop tool. When the properties from one “source” picture were copied to one or several “target” pictures, using the buttons “Synchronization” or “Previous”, the “Crop properties” were scrambled.
In February I visited Adobe's discussion panels without finding a proper answer. Then I discussed the bug with Adobe agents directly in June 2021. They promised me to improve this problem in a future LrC update.
UPDATE TO VERSION 11.0 ALMOST SUCCESSFUL BUT NOT QUITE
A few weeks ago a new version 11.0 of LrC was published, where I found a new layout of the crop tool. I am glad to tell you that it was a great improvement. However, I regret to say that I am not fully satisfied. There is still a property which was better in version 10.1. I will try explain what, in my opinion, goes wrong.
MY PROBLEM PARTLY SOLVED
Suppose a set of pictures is newly imported into LrC and will be treated in the “Development Module”. After import, all property values are set to 0 (zero) and (most important in my particular case) all pictures have “Crop property” = “Original”.
Now I change, for instance, just the color of one “source” picture and I copy that color to several “target” pictures using the “Synchronization” button. It works perfect, only the color is changed as it should. Great, and no juggling of the Crop property as in LrC versions 10.2 to 10.4.
If only one “target” picture should be pasted with the properties from the “source” the “Previous” button is a good tool to use. And now something strange occurs.
In many cases the imported set of pictures comes from a photo camera, so automatically all pictures have the same aspect ratio (3 by 2 for instance). Using the “Previous” button works great. The target gets the Crop property “Original” if the source is “Original”. If the aspect ratio of the source has been changed manually, the target will get that same aspect ratio. Great stuff again.
BUT THE “PREVIOUS” PROBLEM STILL REMAINS FOR DIFFERENT ASPECT RATIOS
In many of my cases the set of jpegs I import into LrC are not directly from a camera, but from a previous run through Photoshop, LrC, from a stitching program or from a scanner. Anyway, the imported pictures may have different aspect ratios.
Initially, after importing, again all pictures have “Crop property” = “Original”. Changing the color only using the “Sync” button works great again: the color changes and all cropping values of the targets stay “Original” as they should. Great again.
Now I change the color for a source and I want to change the color for one target, using the “Previous” button. The aspect ratios of source and target are different, but for both pictures the “Crop property” = “Original” and I want to keep these aspect ratios as imported. However, ticking the previous button copies the color from source to target but also the aspect ratio. The “Crop property” of the source is kept as “Orginal”, the target ha a wrong aspect ratio and the “Crop property” has changed to “Custom”. I do not want that as I have to perform extra mouseclicks to put the “Crop property” back to “Original”. This effect is quite annoying and still version 10.1 is doing better.
KIND REGARDS