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Anonimowy28454874im1b
Participating Frequently
February 28, 2025
Answered

Incorrect Cropping When Syncing Manually Rotated Photos

  • February 28, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 1180 views

Hello, I have a problem in Lightroom Classic - I have a lot of photos that require identical cropping. My camera spontaneously rotates some photos and I have to rotate them manually in the program. But if I set the cropping options on the manually rotated photo and pass the settings to the other photos with the auto-sync function, the cropping is correct only on the manually rotated photos - those photos that were not manually rotated have the wrong cropping (like the cropping is rotated to the original orientation of the manually rotated photos).

Correct answer johnrellis

I know that the rotation will only be visible after exporting but I am encountering another problem. For example, I have 3 files (1.png etc) if I rotate the 2.png file in LR and apply cropping on the 1.png file and pass the settings to the other files via auto-sync then the cropping in the rotated image is wrong (this is shown by the two colored bars on either side of the file from my link and in the video). If I rotate the file in the Windows Image Viewer before importing, then all the files are well cropped.


My apologies, I was getting confused trying to match your words here with the video.

 

You're tripping over a longstanding bug, where LR doesn't correctly copy crops and local adjustments between photos with different orientations:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-correct-copying-of-crops-and-local-adjustments/idi-p/12428734

 

At various times, Adobe has called this behavior "as designed" (not a bug):

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-local-adjustments-and-crops-don-t-copy-or-work-in-presets-applied-to-rotated-photos/idi-p/12248672 

 

and sometimes acknowledged it as a bug, though incorrectly marking the bug as fixed:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-copy-sync-crop-and-spot-removal-wrong-results-at-portrait-photos/idi-p/12419695/

 

After many years of no change in the status, I'm very doubtful the bug will ever be fixed.

 

There are two known workarounds:

 

1. Set the option Catalog Settings > Metadata > Automatically Write Changes Into XMP before copying/syncing crops. I've attached a screen recording demonstrating that with your sample pics.

 

2. Use the Copy Settings plugin.

2 replies

Rikk Flohr_Photography
Community Manager
Rikk Flohr_PhotographyCommunity Manager
Community Manager
March 7, 2025

In Grid View do you see an " ! " in the corner of the image indicating the Metadata has changed on disk? 

Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org
A
Anonimowy28454874im1bAuthor
Participating Frequently
March 8, 2025

No, I don't see any exclamation mark.

johnrellis
johnrellis
Legend
March 1, 2025

I'm not observing that problem.  While I've filed bug reports on other issues with photo orientation, I haven't see this problem before. The most efficient way to troubleshoot this is to upload one of the camera-rotated photos and one of the manually rotated photos to Wetransfer, Dropbox, Google Drive or similar free service and post the sharing link here.

A
Anonimowy28454874im1bAuthor
Participating Frequently
March 1, 2025

If I rotate the photo, save it and import it back then this error is not there. It appears for me during one “session”, that is, when I rotate some photos from the import and then immediately crop and automatically pass the crop to other photos with the auto-sync function (if the main photo is unrotated then the correct crop will be on the unrotated ones and the vice versa on the rotated ones)

johnrellis
johnrellisCorrect answer
Legend
March 11, 2025

I know that the rotation will only be visible after exporting but I am encountering another problem. For example, I have 3 files (1.png etc) if I rotate the 2.png file in LR and apply cropping on the 1.png file and pass the settings to the other files via auto-sync then the cropping in the rotated image is wrong (this is shown by the two colored bars on either side of the file from my link and in the video). If I rotate the file in the Windows Image Viewer before importing, then all the files are well cropped.


My apologies, I was getting confused trying to match your words here with the video.

 

You're tripping over a longstanding bug, where LR doesn't correctly copy crops and local adjustments between photos with different orientations:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-correct-copying-of-crops-and-local-adjustments/idi-p/12428734

 

At various times, Adobe has called this behavior "as designed" (not a bug):

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-local-adjustments-and-crops-don-t-copy-or-work-in-presets-applied-to-rotated-photos/idi-p/12248672 

 

and sometimes acknowledged it as a bug, though incorrectly marking the bug as fixed:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-copy-sync-crop-and-spot-removal-wrong-results-at-portrait-photos/idi-p/12419695/

 

After many years of no change in the status, I'm very doubtful the bug will ever be fixed.

 

There are two known workarounds:

 

1. Set the option Catalog Settings > Metadata > Automatically Write Changes Into XMP before copying/syncing crops. I've attached a screen recording demonstrating that with your sample pics.

 

2. Use the Copy Settings plugin.

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