Accidentally synced a preset to my entire catalog; how do I fix it?

[tonya281]

Please help!  I tried undo, but I had already exited LR in a panic when I realized what was happening and now each time I open it, no matter what photos are selected the preset is still being applied.  I have no idea how to fix this or stop it from continuing. I have a MAC and I recently did one of those classes on cleaning up you mess in LR and I must have turned on auto sync.  I have now turned it off, but can someone help me undo this preset application? Please???

[JP Hess]

In the develop module, highlight all of your images and then enable auto-sync. Then go to the history and find the entry where you applied that preset. You can delete that entry from the history and you will remove it from all of the images.

[Bob Somrak]

Choosing and earlier step in History only applies to the Most-Selected photo and does not AutoSync to the other selected photos.   Ctrl-Z does Autosync but will not work in this situation.  The non-autosync of the History has caught me a few times as I used it instead of Ctrl-Z so my edits were no longer in sync, at least the Most-Selected one

[JP Hess]

I did not know that. Thanks for the heads up.

[Bob Somrak]

At least is doesn't work on a Mac, I don't know about Windows.

[jefffphoto · Accepted solution]

I don't think there is a away to undo what you did "en masse". this would be sort of thing you would have to do to each photo individually in your catalogue But if you launch LR then go to "open catalog" and navigate to where your backup catalogs are keep and select one dated before you did this, then all you'll loose are the edits you had done after that backup. you will also have to re add and photo's that you had added after that backup as well but that they would still be in your folder. You would just have to import them again and make sure you select "Add" on top of the import window.. it might be a bit of work, but its better than having to edit each photo in your entire catalog.

[Bob Somrak]

It would be a useful function in Lightroom to go back x number of steps in history using Autosync.  Rob Cole used to have a plugin called "screw Autosync" that did this.

[bob frost]

I don't know what your preset does, but can't you just make another preset that reverses the changes of the first one, and apply it to all the images?

Bob frost

[Bob Somrak]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/bob+frost  wrote

I don't know what your preset does, but can't you just make another preset that reverses the changes of the first one, and apply it to all the images?

Bob frost

That won't work because presets are absolute adjustments, not relative.   

[tonya281]

I wish someone would create another plugin that would take care of that or better yet, Adobe should update the LR program and make that a function of LR.  This has been super frustrating.  It was so easy to do this without even knowing that's what I was doing, but so not easy to fix it.  It should at least give you a warning and make you confirm that you really to make a global edit to your entire catalog.

[tonya281]

Thank you for your advise.  I think I have found that the photo by photo is the only way, and when you have thousands of photos that is not a pleasant thought, but I had not even thought of the backup catalog idea, I had already started the photo by photo fix, but when I get home I think I will try to go to my last backup catalog.  What a great time suck for a mistake that literally took less than 1 second to make and I didn't even know what was happening until it was too late.

[Tenatah5C3D]

Repost - (Source: https://www.photographyessentials.net/lightroom-resetting-photos/) 

 A question from a friend:I accidentally did a sync settings and it affected everything in a library.  Is there a way to force an undo back to “as shot” on all the JPGs and DNGs in the library?

My response: This is easy to do, and you have a couple of options for how to approach it.

Option 1: Undo the Sync by pressing Cmd-Z or Ctrl-Z, or selecting the Undo command under the Edit menu.

Option 2: if you can’t undo the sync (such as due to quitting Lightroom and coming back later, or for any other reason) you can Reset the photos.

If you want to Reset everything in the catalog, you can use the All Photographs image source for this. In the Library module, click on All Photographs in the Catalog panel.

If you only want to Reset some of the photos, you need to create a filtered source. You can use the Filter Bar or Smart Collections for this (more about this is in my Lightroom 2 book).

In either case, once you have the photos showing that you want to Reset, select them all (Cmd-A or Ctrl-A).

With the photos selected, press Shift-Cmd-R or Shift-Ctrl-R to Reset the photos’ Develop settings. (In the Library module, the Reset command is under the Photo > Develop Settings menu.)

Be careful when resetting; it will remove any adjustments you’ve made to the selected photos.