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HWLP I just deleted my edited photos.

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grdnangl313

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Aug 23, 2015
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I had created a smart collection and was editing some pics in there after I had highlighted all of the photos to export to my folder on my mac. Well I think I hit 'reset' and now all photos are gone from that smart collection I created. SO I thought I would just create another one, and deleted that folder. Oh No!! ALL of my edits in the regular folder are all gone too, so I am not abel to put the photos with adjustments back into a smart collection. Now what do I do??
 
A smart collection is like a 'saved search'. So for example you say 'Show me all the photos with five stars'. If your images disappeared from the smart collection, then that means that you changed the criteria and so they don't fit the search anymore. In this example, if you selected all the images and then pressed the '4' key, you would change the rating of these images from five stars to four stars and so they would not fit the five star criterium of the smart collection anymore. And so they disappear from the smart collection. To get them back, you have to undo that rating change change.

Deleting a folder removes the images from the catalog and thus also removes their edits. The only way to restore that is if you have a catalog backup...
 
So if it's just a saved search of my pictures with adjustments and the date, then why when I go back into the folder with ALL 1300 photos are all my edits gone too? Shouldn't they still show up as being edited??
 
So if it's just a saved search of my pictures with adjustments and the date, then why when I go back into the folder with ALL 1300 photos are all my edits gone too? Shouldn't they still show up as being edited??
I can't tell you what you did, but if the smart collection searches for edited images of a certain date, and suddenly all the images disappeared from the smart collection, then it sounds like perhaps you had them all selected and then hit 'Reset All' in the Quick Develop pane. That would be consistent with what you see in the folder: unedited pictures.
 
I did a backup at 1:15 today so how would I reset to that?
Quit Lightroom. Find the catalog file (catalog.lrcat) in that backup and replace your current catalog file with it (you may have to unzip that file first if Lightroom made the backup). Start Lightroom again.
 
Quit Lightroom. Find the catalog file (catalog.lrcat) in that backup and replace your current catalog file with it (you may have to unzip that file first if Lightroom made the backup). Start Lightroom again.
Thanks so much! It worked I replaced the catalog I had backed up earlier and my smart folder is back, only lost about 30 edits, so I'm happy about that. (At least 'i save my 200 edited photos I had been working on!!) You guys are the best!! Thanks for all the help!
 
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