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Bman007
Inspiring
September 5, 2021
Answered

Lightroom Undo History or Optional Save?

  • September 5, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 4718 views

I know I'm a relative beginner, but to have to lose all my work just because I can't find an Undo history seems like a pretty severe learning curve Lol wts. 

 

I opened a photo I had spent a long time editing. Then I found I had some duplicated presets, so I manually clicked and deleted about a dozen. Meanwhile it applied all the presets to my photo and apparently saved my photo, event though the edits were unintentional. I tried pressing Ctrl+Z to undo, but this didn't work. Once you close a photo and return to the album, is every change really unrecoverable? 

 

Are all my edits really lost just because I opened the photo and messed with some presets? Shouldn't it ASK me if I want to save what happened during a session? I don't always want to save every ________ thing I do, but Lightroom doing this makes me very tentative about exploring presets. 

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Jim Wilde
quote

Thanks for the tips. OK so repeated Ctrl+Z is the only way, even if you did some 50 adjustments? Pretty odd coming from Photoshop, or any program that confirms saving changes. It certainly isn't helpful for practice or learning, since I may open a photo, mess with it for 30 minutes just to see if I can improve it, but decide in the end I liked it better before.

 

In the Lightroom Desktop app you can use the "Reset to Open" command, which does what is says on the tin....i.e. reverts the image to the state it was in before you started playing with it. You'll also find that in Versions there should be a time-stamped version which was auto-saved the last time you changed it (before opening it this time and making those 50 changes).

1 reply

Rob_Cullen
Rob_Cullen
Community Expert
September 5, 2021

Which Lightroom Version? 4.4?

What Device?  Mac I presume?

Do you mean that you wanted to 'Delete Presets from Lightroom? (Not delete the Preset edits from an image?)

To just Delete Presets from Lr- DO NOT [Left-Click] on the Preset- that applies it.

Do a [Right-Click] on the Preset and select [Delete...] from the context menu.

 

[Ctrl+Z] will step backwards through History deleting the accidently applied Presets (in reverse to being applied), but it has to be done immediately after applying those presets to the image. There is no history preserved if you come back to editing a photo at a later time.

Edit: I may be wrong here- I just opened another image to edit then returned to the first and [Ctrl+Z] still stepped back through a history of Preset 'applications'.

ie. Presets applied-  A,B,C,D,E,F.   [Ctrl+Z] undos in this order- F,E,D,C,B,A

 

Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.0, Photoshop 27.0, ACR 18.0, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0 .
B
Bman007Author
Inspiring
September 5, 2021

Thanks for the tips. OK so repeated Ctrl+Z is the only way, even if you did some 50 adjustments? Pretty odd coming from Photoshop, or any program that confirms saving changes. It certainly isn't helpful for practice or learning, since I may open a photo, mess with it for 30 minutes just to see if I can improve it, but decide in the end I liked it better before.

 

It's hard to believe pumping the Ctrl+Z keys 50 times is the only solution to undo a session. Even duplicating a photo before trying some edits is fairly primitive and cumbersome. 

 

Yes I'm on Mac Catalina with the latest Photoshop / Lightroom (just signed up last week). 

Jim Wilde
Jim WildeCorrect answer
Community Expert
September 5, 2021
quote

Thanks for the tips. OK so repeated Ctrl+Z is the only way, even if you did some 50 adjustments? Pretty odd coming from Photoshop, or any program that confirms saving changes. It certainly isn't helpful for practice or learning, since I may open a photo, mess with it for 30 minutes just to see if I can improve it, but decide in the end I liked it better before.

 

In the Lightroom Desktop app you can use the "Reset to Open" command, which does what is says on the tin....i.e. reverts the image to the state it was in before you started playing with it. You'll also find that in Versions there should be a time-stamped version which was auto-saved the last time you changed it (before opening it this time and making those 50 changes).

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