Publish Services: how can you remove photos from "Deleted photos to remove" without deleting them from Flickr?

[lokeswari2]

I messed up.  I accidentally deleted over a thousand photos from flickr, and have 572 more photos in a group marked "Deleted photos to remove" that I *DO NOT* want to remove from Flickr.

I know there's nothing I can do from within Flickr, but after reading through all of the answers in the Adobe forum, I'm not sure if there's any hope for fixing things or escaping more damage through Lightroom.

Here's what happened:

1. I edited about 50 or so photos in LR and prepared to publish them in flickr.  I have only one publish service for flickr in Lightroom, named "Photostream". About half of over 10,000 photos in my flickr photostream were published through Lightroom, the other half through other methods.
   
2. When I dragged the 50 photos into my "photostream" publish service in LR, I noticed that there were over 1,500 photos in a group marked "Modified photos to re-publish".  Not sure why they were there, since I didn't make any modifications. I did not want to re-publish, and couldn't find any obvious way to avoid that, so I removed them from the "Modified photos to re-publish" group.

[Note: I have since learned that I was actually removing them from the "Photostream" collection/publishing service.  I should have right-clicked to "Mark as up-to-date" instead.]

          3.  When I hit "Publish", I noticed that all of the photos I had removed from the "Modified photos to re-publish" group were being deleted from flickr.  After the                    obligatory expletives, I proceeded as follows:

                Shut down LR.

                Went to flickr and removed delete permission for all third party apps

          https://www.flickr.com/services/auth/list.gne

                Cried.

Here are my questions:

• Is there any way within Lightroom to identify the 1,000+ photos that were deleted from flickr so I can re-upload them?  (There is nothing available in flickr.)
  
• How can I publish new photos to flickr without deleting the 572 that are in the "Deleted photos to remove" group?
  
• It looks like the only option within flickr to manage permissions for LR is to remove the "Delete" permission.  This also removes the ability to upload. When I attempt to authorize a new publishing service, I get the following notice:
  
  By authorizing this link, you'll allow Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to:

Access your Flickr account (including private content)

Upload, Edit, and Replace photos and videos in your account

Interact with other members' photos and videos (comment, add notes, favorite)

Delete photos and videos from your account

        Is there any way to prevent LR from deleting photos while still being able to publish?

Thanks!

[Jao vdL · Accepted solution]

You ran into one of the major design flaws of the publish plugins. There is no way to remove items from the publish plugin without marking them for deletion. I've been extremely annoyed with this exact issue. Often you don't want to delete them from flickr or another service. Just to unlink them and Adobe appears to not have thought of that possibility.

Is there any way within Lightroom to identify the 1,000+ photos that were deleted from flickr so I can re-upload them?  (There is nothing available in flickr.)

No, there is no way to do this that I am aware of. It is possible that Lightroom writes a log file somewhere that might contain this info but it would be very hard to tease this info out of that in a form that allows you to easily find those images and re upload them.

How can I publish new photos to flickr without deleting the 572 that are in the "Deleted photos to remove" group?

The only way that I am aware of is to delete the publish service from Lightroom's sidebar and to recreate it from scratch. This loses the links to all already published images but at least it shouldn't delete them from flickr. This is the option also shown here: Lightroom: How to make publish forget about photos published to Flickr? | Photoshop Family Customer ...​ There it is also suggested to use Jeffrey Friedl's Flickr plugin instead of the built-in one. Friedl's plugin has much more flexibility built in. 

[lokeswari2]

Thanks Jao.

I had set up a new service to do just what you describe, but was hesitant to pull the trigger (i.e., gun-shy after the last fiasco.)

[jmahto67]

I fell through exactly the same situation (partially though). I mistakenly marked few picsture to be deleted from Flickr in LR and then realized that I can't remove them from the deleted list. I froze at this point and didn't hit publish. I started looking for the solution. I stumbled on this thread as well. Finally I found a solution. This is step by step instruction if you have not yet published (once you publish, the damage is done).
- Go to the folder for you picture in the deleted list.
- Drag it again in the Flickr Photostream. This action will remove the picture from your deleted list.
- Grab a drink and stop crying.