How to flip back to previous image in Lightroom Classic

If you haven't done anything other than viewing images, you can use <Ctrl>+Z (windows) to step back through keystrokes including choosing other images or changing the source of the images to other folders or collecitons.

Another trick I use when doing such things is to just hit the letter "b" on the keyboard to add "candidate" images to the quick colleciont as a navigate around.  Then by looking in the quick collection you can see all the images you've considered on one screen to decide which to move ahead with.

There is a lot more to it. Similar to a web browser, the commands Window > Go Back and Window > Go Forward step backward and forward through the Recent Sources list. There are keyboard shortcuts for those commands, shown next to them on that menu.

The two arrows near the Recent Sources list are button shortcuts for Go Back and Go Forward, stepping backward and fotward through that history list, again like a web browser.

So that’s at least four ways to navigate recent sources: The Recent Sources list, the Go Back/Go Forward commands, their buttons, and their keyboard shortcuts. You can use the way that’s most natural to you.

Sources can be folders, collections, and other sets like saved books and print layouts.

There is a problem with the way this works. Every time you return to a source, the first image is selected. What everybody wants is that when you return to a source, the image that was selected when you left that source is still selected when you come back. But it doesn’t do that, and despite the number of times it comes up, Adobe has not made it a priority yet.

If you have the Filmstrip visible you will see the selected photo folder and title.

The Context menu at the end of the title will give you a list of recent locations-