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I clicked Read Metadata from files on a batch of photos and all the editing is gone. Is there any way to undo this and get them back?
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You should be able to command-Z or control-Z right after to undo the last action. If that's not available try going into develop on one of the images and see if you can stepo back in history to before the metadata read.
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I can't undo the Read Metadata action. I can only undo to the previous edit of my last photo I edited. I've been editing several photos over the course of a few days.
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I can't undo the Read Metadata action. I can only undo to the previous edit of my last photo I edited. I've been editing several photos over the course of a few days.
By @Will Aron
You will likely need a recent backup of your catalog file, before you did this Read Metadata action.
By the way, if you turn on the option to automatically write metadata to xmp, then this problem with Read Metdata doesn't happen, because all of your edits are in the xmp.
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I don't think I have a back up. I only imported the photos a few days ago.
And the automatic write wasn't ticked. 😞
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I don't think I have a back up. 😞
By @Will Aron
A very unwise decision.
Especially if you have long editing sessions that last days, then you might want to have backups made once a day or even more often.
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I know. I feel very foolish.
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Although the images now have the appearance of the read metadata applied, each image’s entire edit History should still be preserved, with the last step being “From Metadata”. So what might be possible is that when you come across an image that was accidentally changed, switch to the Develop module, look in its History panel, and click the History state just before the “From Metadata” state. That should restore the way the picture looked before Read Metadata from File was applied.
Unfortunately, there is no quick way to roll back one History state for all affected images as a batch. That is why you’ll need to remember to click back one History state manually, image by image, as you come across them. It will be tedious, but the important thing is that the state of the edits before reading metadata has probably not been permanently lost.
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Thank you so much for your history tip, this just saved me a few hours of work.
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Just as a matter of interest why did you consider it necessary to apply the “Read metadata from the file option “.
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@DdeGannes I can't speak for the original poster, but for me, I use GeoSetter to Geotag my photos, as it has a nicer interface than the Map Module in Lightroom Classic. So, when I use Read Metadata from Files, it reads the GPS coordinates, and since I have automatically write metadat to xmp turned on, I don't lose my edits or user-provided metadata (like keywords)
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Understood.