Batch Clear History

[WDFerris]

I'm running version 12.4 of Lightroom Classic and have found a possible bug. I can no longer "Clear History" on a group of selected photos. No matter how I attempt to clear history, I'm limited to clearing history, one photo at a time.

Earlier today, I had a live chat session with Adobe Support. The person I was working with asked permission to start a Bomgar session into my laptop to look at the issue. I welcomed the offer. In fact, I had LrC running with four photos selected. I had done a simple crop of one and applied the edit to the other three.

The support person asked me to demonstrate the problem. I had all four photos selected in the Library module. I opened the Develop module. All four were still selected in the thumbnail bar but, of course, only the first of the four was displayed. All this is normal.

When I hovered over the "X" in the "History" tab, the phrase "Clear All" appeared as usual. However, when I clicked on the "X", no dialog box opened asking if I wanted to clear the history for all the photos or just the one. Only the first photo's history was cleared.

The support person never grasped the problem. They repeatedly asked if I wanted to clear the "edits" for all four photos. I responded, "No, I just want to clear the history." They insisted that clearing the history clears the edits and effectively resets the photo. I responded, "No, clearing history doesn't clear edits. Look at the four photos. They're still cropped after the history has been cleared."

This went on for several minutes. I tried explaining that the standard practice for years for LrC users to optimize performance has been to periodically clear the history of all the photos that have been processed. The support tech was never able to reconcile their misunderstanding that clearing history basically resets the photo. They certainly never got around to explaining how to clear the history of a group of selected photos with a single mouse click.

Is this a bug in LrC or did I miss something in one of the recent updates? I've looked through the catalog preferences and settings menus but have not been able to find a pathway to being able to batch-clear the edit history of photos.

Please, share the procedure on how to do this, if you know it.

[moved from bugs to discussions according to community rules - Mod.]

[Jim Wilde · Accepted solution]

I've no idea if the procedure you are trying to use is intended to operate the way you expect it to work. However, with multiple images selected, the Develop menu item "Clear History" should produce the attached message:

[Karch14]

I am not getting this pop-up.  What am i doing wrong?

[johnrellis]

Are you doing the precise steps as listed in the previous post?

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/batch-clear-history/m-p/13962932#M33008...

[WDFerris · Accepted solution]

I received an email from Adobe customer support outlining the procedure. To batch clear the history for multiple photos in LrC...

1) Enter the Develop module

2) Select all photos for which you'd like to clear the history

3) Click on "Develop" in the top menu bar

4) Click on "Clear History..."

5) This will open a dialog box in which you'll be prompted to choose "Selected Photos" or "Active Photo"

6) Click on "Selected Photos"

The history for all selected photos will be cleared. This does not reset the photo to its original status. All edits made to the photo will still be in effect and can be adjusted to the photographer's liking.