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Importing Help

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Colin Grant

Active Member
Joined
Apr 18, 2016
Messages
510
Location
Norfolk
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version
10.4
Operating System
  1. macOS 11 Big Sur
I have just killed a catalogue on purpose. The idea is to get rid of all the adjustments and reimport the images in their unedited state. I deleted the Lightroom folder and did a new import of the images, creating a new catalogue. However on opening the images the existing adjustments are still recorded, although they are not showing in the history panel! Also if I hit the backslash I do get a before and after - the before is the clean image but I cannot get back to it. What am I missing? I moved the images in to a new folder at import. Running an M1 iMac with 16 gig.

Thanks!
 
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It sounds as though you had "Auto write to XMP" enabled in the catalog settings of the old catalog....thus all images had their adjustments embedded either into XMP sidecar files (for RAW images) or directly into the XMP section of the file header of all other image types. When importing, Lightroom reads the XMP and so presents the adjusted images to you. You should be able to revert to the unedited state by using the Reset option in the Develop module.
 
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Thanks, Jim. That is it exactly. I never appreciated that Lr read the xmp file on import. I can indeed revert by using reset but when after editing I do a before and after switch the before is the imported state rather than the original.
 
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In that situation you can make the "Reset Settings" history step to be the "Before" state for the Before/After comparison.....in the History Panel, right-click on the "Reset Settings" step and choose the option to "Copy History Step Settings to Before".
 
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