P: Implement "Clear Snapshots..." option.

[C.Cella]

• I suggest to implement a way to quickly delete/clear all existing Snapshots in one go.

The "Clear Snapshots..." option could/should be available in the Settings Develop menu.

There should be a "Clear All" icon for Snapshot just like we have for history.

Tis a small thing but given how slow and inefficient it is to delete even a single snapshot this feature would help and speed up the workflow.

EDITED for clairty + mockup screenshots added.

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[alun21]

Hi - I'm currently using Lightroom Classic 13.0.1

I have recently joined a load of microstock sites, and am wanting to use Snapshots more. A "Has Snapshot" smart collection tells me that of my roughly 42,000 photos, about 11,000 have snapshots. The weird thing is that all (I think) of these snapshots are called "Import". Another weird thing is that they are all on photos that I imported into Lightroom in the first half of 2006 ... which I've discovered means that it was the beta version of Lightroom I was running at the time.

Anyway ... I don't want 11,000 photos with "import" snapshots, so I was wondering if there's a way to remove the snapshots? 

What works sometimes is deleting photo(s) and then reimporting them again. Sometimes this removes the snapshot, and sometimes it doesn't. If I then delete the photo(s) again a second time and reimport, the result is the same ... sometimes the snapshot is removed, sometimes not.

Thanks, Alun

[C.Cella]

Unlike for history there is no way to delete all existing snapshots for either one or all the currently selected photos.

You must delete each snapshot in each photo manually

This si yet another reason why I feature requested it here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-implement-quot-clear-snapshots-quot-option/...

If you have programming skills you could use the SDK to do it.

I think it can be doable by using photo:getDevelopSnapshots to get all the existing snaps ID and then use photo:deleteDevelopSnapshot (id)

@johnrellisdefinitely knows if this is the correct methods.

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[alun21]

Unlike for history there is no way to delete all existing snapshots for either one or all the currently selected photos.

You must delete each snapshot in each photo manually

Yes, I don't relish the idea of doing this for 11,000 photos 😞

[C.Cella]

@alun21 For the time being there is no solution besides painful manual deletion.

@Rikk Flohr: PhotographyPerhaps you can move this conversation to my Implement "Clear Snapshots..." feature request.

This is relevant use case that proves the need of such option.

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[johnrellis]

"@johnrellisdefinitely knows if this is the correct methods."

I think that's correct. Though I've never worked much with snapshots in the SDK, so I can't say if there are any gotchas.

[C.Cella]

@johnrellis I think photo:deleteDevelopSnapshot is only doable via Develop module.

Snapshots make the XMP significantly heavier and the catalog as well.

Clearing them all for a single image, or for a batch of images, is something we should have had since they had been implemented...even purely as a basic catalog management tool.

With your own Any Filter  @alun21  could find the photos with the undesired "Import" Snapshot and get rid of them in batch.

Seconds of work VS days.

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[C.Cella]

I have found myself in need to clear snapshots for thousands of images and I have given up since there is no efficient and fast way to do it.

"Clear all Snapshots" should be doable as it is a necessary task for catalog/assets management.

We can batch delete photos, virtual copies, folders, collections, history BUT inexplicably not Snapshots that though can weight several MB in the catalog and in the sidecar.

I am bringing this issue back up in hope that this very basic catalog management option will be implemented.

There used to be a Plug-in that allowed to delete snapshots in batch but it has been, so to speak, discontinued.

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[johnrellis]

I added the Delete All Snapshots command to the Copy Settings plugin. I naively thought it would be a short script I'd publish here, but it was a bit more involved -- I dug up 10-year-old posts from the late Rob Cole where he reverse-engineered the behavior of the relevant API methods.

[C.Cella]

@johnrellis

Thanks a million John.

And I thought the the Christmas gifts season was over.

@alun21 

Deleting snapshots in batch was very fast for me (I ran it on"only"1200 images) no complaints on my side.

It will surely help you tremendously to clear your 11k images of the undesired "Import" snapshots.

[C.Cella]

@johnrellis

You speak of a bug that doesn't allow to clear Snapshots from VC.

Did you file a bug report alredy ?

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[johnrellis]

"You speak of a bug that doesn't allow to clear Snapshots from VC. Did you file a bug report already?"

No. The underlying issue is that in LR, snapshots are shared among the master and all its virtual copies. If you create a snapshot on a master or a virtual copy, it will appear on both the master and all virtual copies, and if you delete a snapshot, it disappears from the master and all virtual copies.  What Delete All Snapshots tripped over is that photo:getDevelopSnapshots() doesn't work if the photo is a virtual copy.

Given this behavior of snapshots and that there's a straightforward workaround for plugins, I'm guess that Adobe wouldn't prioritize a change in behavior, and thus they'd just designate the current SDK behavior "as designed" to keep the formal bug counts lower.