accidentally synchronised folder, lost the edit- undo

[sachraj010]

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

[Rob_Cullen]

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)

[Riccardo Bordoni]

Sam here - Many hours of work lost!!

I did not expect Lightroom to be THAT stupid.

Honestly, the system MUST avoid that to happen.

Or - AT LEAST - MUST WARN the user before destroying all the work....

I am honestly disappointed here

[dj_paige]

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@Riccardo Bordoni wrote:

Sam here - Many hours of work lost!!

I did not expect Lightroom to be THAT stupid.

Honestly, the system MUST avoid that to happen.

Or - AT LEAST - MUST WARN the user before destroying all the work....

I am honestly disappointed here

---

Surely when you synchronize folders, you get this dialog box

So the user has some responsibility here as well to make the right selections. Don't blame this all on Lightroom Classic.

[Riccardo Bordoni]

The message DOES NOT say that you're going to lose your work!!

[DdeGannes]

@Riccardo Bordoni you need to be aware of the following, LrC default function is to, first and foremost, read and write to the Catalog file and while working with LrC it reads and writes to the Catalog file.

There is an option to automatically write to xmp and also a menu option to manually perform save metadata to the file. This is a secondary function.

There is no option to automatically read metadata from the file. You may get a prompt indicating there is a mismatch with the metadata in the catalog and there is choice for the user to make.

Choose wisely, in my workflow I do not utilize automatically write metadata to xmp since I do not trust my memory in deciding which metadata to retain.

There is also the option to use Bridge / Camera Raw which only reads and writes metadata to the file.

[dj_paige]

The message DOES NOT say that you're going to lose your work!!

By @Riccardo Bordoni

It says it will remove photos from the catalog, that is the same as deleting your work.

[Lumigraphics]

Only photos that are no longer on the drive are removed with a synch operation.

[dj_paige]

Only photos that are no longer on the drive are removed with a synch operation.

By @Lumigraphics

I think that should say "Only photos that are not in the folder are removed with a synch operation."

[Lumigraphics]

Yeah, the synch just matches what is actually in the folder although you can synch a whole drive as well.

[Guest]

The message DOES NOT say that you're going to lose your work!!

By @Riccardo Bordoni

It says it will remove photos from the catalog, that is the same as deleting your work.

By @dj_paige

The idea that this is in any way OP's fault is absurd. There is zero implication that removing missing files will eliminate adjustments made to files which are exactly where they were, have not been moved or renamed etc. This is a Lightroom UE issue. 

[Lumigraphics]

I've never lost adjustments by synching a folder. But I write changes to XMP sidecars, so maybe that's the difference? But you do NOT just automatically lose data, that is false. I've synched folders many, many times and not lost anything.

[Guest]

Clearly you do if you do not do something else to ensure they are not lost.

Maybe writing changes to XMP sidecars is the extra thing, as you just said. If you do this and don't lose data, and admit to not knowing what makes the difference, then clearly you're in no position to comment on whether it is automatic since you have not controlled by not doing that. Next time don't write to XMP and then see what the outcome is. Then you'll be in a position to say.
Based on my (and OP's) experience, syncing indeed loses adjustments. 

[Guest]

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