Lightroom automatically pasting unwanted develop settings in Library Mode

[markZAR]

I am experiencing a weird bug in Lightroom I've never seen before.  I have opened an existing catalog (which has been opened and closed many times previously) which has 9 sub folders. 8 of the 9 folders in this catalog are normal with no problem.  However in one particular folder I noticed all of a sudden that when I am in the grid view in the library module and I scroll down to look at photos in this folder, Lightroom suddenly started pasting develop settings as if I requested them when I did not. In this case, it is applying a B&W profile over the existing camera color profile plus other edits (cropping etc).  The files do not change until you scroll down to see more files. If I go into the develop module to look at one photo at a time, I can see in the history a "Paste Settings" command above the last edit I made. Even in develop mode, the photos in the film strip start one by one changing with the unwanted pasted settings. If I move the filmstrip to the right, then new previews in the film strip change.  It appears the automatic pasting by LRC only happens when scrolling in Library or Develop modules and the preview is being called to show. I have tried to revert the history for a single photo by clicking on the last desired edit in history and then pressing option plus mouse click and this does clear the unwanted "Paste Settings" and preserves the earlier edits. However I have over 700 photos in this folder and do not want to spend hours having to revert the history one by one for each photo. I have spent many hours editing photos in the folder and do not want to select all and revert to original. Is there anyway to stop this automatic unwanted pastings of develop settings?  and anyway to revert the history in bulk to the last edit before the unwanted "Paste Settings"  Many thanks for responses.

By the way, I tried reverting to the last backup I had made of this catalog and the problem must have started at that time. unfortunately, earlier weekly backups have already been deleted. Computer is macOS, Mac Studio with Apple M1 Max chip running macOS Monterey V 12.6.5.  Other LRC catalogs were tested and do not have the problem.

[GoldingD]

Top left, in the Identity Plate, anything going on? Not the Address Lookup, or the Face Detection, something else??

This area (example not showing an issue):

[markZAR]

I just wrote a reply to you and clicked post but it disappeared and did not post?  not sure why.  there is nothing running in the identity plate. I have address lookup and face detection disabled. I tried moving the photos from the problem folder to a new folder. the photos did not update to the "Paste Settings" because the original files could not be found. I experiemented and put one photo back in the original folder and it updated with the unwanted paste settings immediately after moving it back.  very weird bug.  could this be caused by the catalog being corrupted due to a power outage when the catalog did close normally? seems clearly to be a corrupted catalog with a "paste settings" command that will not stop.

[johnrellis · Accepted solution]

"The files do not change until you scroll down to see more files. If I go into the develop module to look at one photo at a time, I can see in the history a "Paste Settings" command above the last edit I made. Even in develop mode, the photos in the film strip start one by one changing with the unwanted pasted settings. If I move the filmstrip to the right, then new previews in the film strip change.  It appears the automatic pasting by LRC only happens when scrolling in Library or Develop modules and the preview is being called to show."

You may have some time in the past accidentally pasted/synced to all the files in the folder. With large batch paste/syncs, LR will update the thumbnails and previews incrementally as you scroll to them.

If you notice such an accident right away, you can use the Undo command. But I'm guessing this may have happened long before your current LR session, so Undo isn't available.

Unfortunately, LR doesn't provide commands to go back in history for a batch of photos. There is a very old, unsupported plugin Screw Autosync that you could try:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/lightroom-auto-synced-reset-to-all-my-i... 

But read the details there carefully.  I haven't seen any reports that it's been used successfully in several years.

The more conservative option is to back up the history on each photo individually: First, make a fresh backup of your catalog, just in case. Select all the photos in the folder, go to Develop, select the last good history step, type right arrow to move to the next photo, repeat. It's not strictly necessary to option-click the history step -- the next time you make any edits to that photo, all the steps above will get deleted.

At 3 seconds/photo, you'll be done in less than 40 minutes.  You'll most likely spend much more than that messing with an old plugin.  I'm a plugin developer who loves to automate things, but sometimes I just grit my teeth and do the manual method, knowing it will be faster.

[johnrellis]

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You can verify that those Paste Settings history steps occurred at the same time by using the Any Filter plugin's Filter command to see the date and time of the steps. I did a test copy/paste on 1500 photos, which took about 21 seconds, and here's what it looks like:

Click the settings :gear: button in the lower-right corner and use these settings:

[markZAR]

Thank you for suggested solution. I did back up the history on each photo individually. I did not know you don't have to clear the history if you back up as the incorrect step gets deleted automatically if you make any further edits. It took about 35 minutes surely the fastest way to solve this issue. As you said I must have pasted a sync settings accidentally. I vaguely remember around the last time that I edited this catalog that the power suddenly went out before I closed the catalog normally so that may have been an alternative cause of the problem.  I have backup the catalog in 4 places after the fix. thank you for your time and the solution.

[johnrellis]

Glad you were able to fix the problem.