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Help me understand View>Go Back

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rob211

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Mar 17, 2014
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I haven't used this command a whole lot, but recently I had a scenario where I had to jump around out of one module and into another, viewing a different image, and coming back. I thought this would just cycle between each "window" I had been viewing, but it didn't seem to keep track of the selected image.

Anyone know the rules it follows? I could find much about it online.
 
As far as I am aware, it allows you to step back and (and forward) to recently visited images in different folders.

See the arrows above the bottom film strip, which are easier to use.

upload_2017-3-1_17-49-49.png


I have known of this feature for quite a while and was very frustrated that it never seemed to work reliably. I have just done a quick test and it moves backwards and forwards (correctly) between images in different folders, but also brought me to an image I was viewing in the Develop panel.

If this continues to work as I hope I will be ecstatic. I have scenarios where I need to check an image in say a previous project from a previous year. There may be several hundred images in the project folder. Having found the image, I now want to go back to the current project in hand .... and always so annoyed I have to work my way through the hundreds of images in my current project to find the one I was previously working on. These back and forward arrows may now be working to allow you step easily through a chain of recently used images. Hurrah !!
 
The Back/Forward buttons don't go back and forward between modules and images. It's strictly folders and collections.

They go back and forward among the last several folders and collections you visited. For example, if I viewed folder A, smart collection B, collection set X, and folder Y in that order, and then click the Back button four times, Lightroom would show me folder Y, collection set X, smart collection B, and then folder A. Like going back through your web browser history list, but with folders and collections.

The easy way to remember or understand this is to click the path/filename popup text to the right of the Back/Forward buttons in the Filmstrip. When you click that popup, it shows you a Recent Sources list. That's the sequence of the folders and collections you have visited. When you click Back or Forward, you are moving through that Recent Sources list. Recent Sources is the Lightroom version of web browser history.

Back and Forward have the same flaw as navigating folders and collections normally: They will not remember the specific image that was selected last time you were in there, unless the same image was also in the last source you visited. They always go to the first image.

The way Back and Forward work is definitely not obvious; it took me a while to understand what was going on. But once you get it, then it's obvious...
 
Back and Forward have the same flaw as navigating folders and collections normally: They will not remember the specific image that was selected last time you were in there, unless the same image was also in the last source you visited. They always go to the first image.

Yes ....agreed. I have just tested this. It does remember the last sequence of folders visited, but not the last image in each folder. [I did not test for collections]

Such a pity.
 
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