Lightroom automatically cropping entire Library

[_p_g_]

Hi, getting straight to it... I'm using the latest LR and mac OS as of 2017.12.23.   Lightroom seems to be cropping every image in my Library automatically.  After trying many things to resolve other issues like missing previews, extremely long loading times, hanging and force quit when trying to close LR, I thought I had it solved after deciding to start from scratch.  I deleted all preview and other files leaving behind only my main catalog.lrcat file and the directory with all my images.  I deleted the preference file, restarted my machine, opened LR with shift+option to reset all preferences. When I open the .lrcat file Lightroom immediately starts to rebuild everything... all is looking good, previews are back and everything is much faster.

Howerver, as I scroll through I notice all images in the Library are being cropped, before my eyes one by one down the line, specifically to a custom ratio I used last week to make some desktop backgrounds.  Hitting 'r' in Develop module on one image I can see it's cropped to that custom ratio. Thankfully the rest of the image is available should I choose 'As Shot' or some other.   'Show in Finder' confirms the whole image is there too.

Any ideas?  I'm not even sure how that custom crop value is still present if I wiped out all preferences let alone why Lightroom is applying it to all my photos.  Saved in the .lrcat file I imagine.  Not sure if this is a bug or my lack of understanding.  The last resort will be to reset crop on all photos... 50,000 photos waaaah  =[

Thanks team!!

ps. that makes me wonder, is there a maximum number of photos a catalog can handle before things start to chug?

Further info: Investigating the Develop > History panel I notice for each image the last two actions are 'Crop Rectangle'.  Somehow that crop is getting applied to each image twice.  Going back two steps showed what I expected the image to look like... for the first three images.  On the fourth image there were three actions 'Import' and the two crops.  When I clicked two steps back I got the error, "An internal error has occurred. history step does not belong to instance". 

[Jao vdL]

Something like this can happen if you had auto-sync selected and you had all images selected. If that was the case, you can't really fix it if you have already quit and restarted Lightroom (otherwise you could have undone a few steps). Alternatively, if these are newly imported images it is happening too, you're either applying a preset on import or you have inadvertently defined a default develop setting for this camera. In the import panel make sure you have no preset selected. In Lightroom Preferences go to the Presets tab and click on "reset all default Develop Settings". Then hit reset on the images that were inadvertently cropped after import If this happened to images that had long ago been imported, it is probably the auto synced develop setting.

[_p_g_]

The crop is happening automatically after my starting from scratch process described above.  The images are not imported, I wiped out everything but the .lrcat file and reset all preferences by deleting the preference file and holding shift+option while restarting to finish of deleting the rest of the preferences.

[Jao vdL · Accepted solution]

Wiping out preferences has no influence on already imported images. The edits for those are stored in the lrcat file. You somehow at some point applied the custom crop to all your images, possibly by using the auto sync option and by having all images selected while cropping one image. Something like that has happened to many of us.

[_p_g_]

Yes I'm pretty sure that's how this all started, had to be my fault.   I rarely use the copy settings feature, it's not that often I have many photos needing the same treatment.  Kinda crumby that a tool designed to help make life easier also opens the door for such an easy to make and costly mistake... reminds me of the touchbar on this macbook pro, grrrrr! 

Well, now that I know why the crop was applied, and why it kept coming back... I'm satisfied.  I've got all photos imported into a new catalog and all previews are rebuilt.  Unfortunately the sluggishness I thought I'd resolved is sticking around.  I'm thinking it's either the huge size of the catalog or the fact it's on a usb drive... or both.  (I also read people having issues with previews just being blank and slow loading when using an external monitor but have a corrupt colour profile installed... not me though, a new profile and slow continues). 

Thanks everyone!

[Jao vdL]

The slow is likely the USB drive indeed. At least if it is a spinning drive on old-fashioned USB and not an SSD drive on USB-c.

[_p_g_]

yea it's a 7200rpm spinner in a usb-c lacie rugged external.   Even with a 2tb ssd in my laptop I still don't have space to keep masters locally... perhaps it's time for a Gbe NAS.   Or... maybe I should take advantage of the smart previews and just keep the masters on the portable drive while the catalog and preview files stay local.  I suppose that is the point of smart previews. (although somewhere I thought I read best practice to increase performance is to keep the catalog files in the same directory as the masters... not sure now tho).  

[Michael22490198us02]

Hoping for assistance...   I am having the same issue as the OP.  I noticed it when viewing a series of images created using the camera in LR Mobile and assume the images are being cropped upon sync to LRc and then sync'd back to mobile.

The origibal post is nearly five years old.  I am searching the LRc preferences for the 'reset all default Develop Settings' and can't find it.  Likely has moved.  

Any help in locating it would be greatly appreciated.

[Jao vdL]

What you want to do is keep the catalog on your fastest drive. It doesn't really matter much where the originals are as long as it is not too slow of a drive but it is best to have the catalog on SSD. he catalog file gets accessed pretty constantly by Lightroom.