Lightroom "Revert?"

[crazyfly1]

This is actually 2 questions. First, ya know how in Photoshop you can revert an image back to it's initial stage? Well I have 40000 images in a lightroom cat (I know, I know) and there are a lot of edits. I want to take all of the images back to the beginning. The reset function will take the pictures themselves back to the beginning but it leaves behind all of the previous adjustments in the history and does not undo transforms. Any ideas?

Second, part of the reason I have 40000 images is because half of them are duplicates. I have the "don't import suspected duplicates" checked but what happens is... I guess I don't organize well. I put photos here and there and then I clean and put them in a single folder and then Import them. I think lightroom must go buy xmp and doesn't see photos that Ive altered in lightroom as the same as the originals in files so it imports them and renames them with a XXX (2) for example. Is this correct? This is part of the reason I want to clear all the history out of lightroom is so after what I assume will be 2 or 3 cycles of import-clear history-delete dupes-repeat, I'll finally be down to only masters and then I promise never to leave random dupes lying around my computer ever again .

Anyway, I hope my questions make sense. Thanx for your help.

[crazyfly1]

Re: Lightroom "Revert?"

Man, I thought I had it for a sec. There is a clear history option but I don't like that it clears the import date and it DOESN'T WORK WITH THE SYNC FUNCTION. ARGGG

[soia1138]

Re: Lightroom "Revert?"

Possibly just delete all your xmp files, then using a smart collection find all the filenames with the (2) at the end then select all and remove

[crazyfly1]

Re: Lightroom "Revert?"

Would work on raw but not on jpeg right?

[soia1138]

Re: Lightroom "Revert?"

Yes I'm pretty sure you're right about that. Though the first place I would start is the smart collection, you can ask it to look for File names containing (2). You should be able to weed out all the dupes using that method then reorganize your folders right in Lightroom

Another option possibly is create a new catalog and import fresh with he "don't import suspected dupes" checked still. Might even be the easiest route but will not preserve anything you have done.

[crazyfly1]

Re: Lightroom "Revert?"

I never use smart colections, I had no idea you could send them looking for certain files. Cool to know.

Ive done the start over thing and I still get all the dups. I'd really really really like to know what lr looks for to determine duplicates.

[crazyfly1]

Re: Lightroom "Revert?"

I wonder if part of it is the naming convention? I wonder if an identical file with the (2) would be seen as a different file?

[soia1138]

Re: Lightroom "Revert?"

I do know there is a plugin that you can purchase that finds dupes by looking at all the metadata. Lightroom does not look that deep for finding dupes so yes the (2) would make Lightroom see it as a different file. LR knows that you can't put a file with the same name in the same folder so it appends the name with the (2). That's the smart collection should work. If you go to collections and create a new smart collection you won't believe all the things you can tell it to look for when finding files to put inside. They are super powerful really

[ratpat13]

Re: Lightroom "Revert?"

Its safe to say it all comes down to your workflow or lack there of. It's a little confusing from your post exactly what your steps are but it sounds like you could definitely do with establishing repeated steps. I see it all the time with clients who do things differently each time and files end up everywhere in duplicate and it becomes a mess.

You are right about the naming issue. It's easy to import duplicates if you rename the images and re-import. If you take one image duplicate it (so the name is truncated with copy or 2) then lightroom will happily import both.

There is nothing wrong with organizing and placing the images manually before importing (it can make the import process really easy), you just have to remember the basic rule of thumb is once it's in lightroom everything else needs to be done in lightroom (such as moving or renaming).

As for your fresh start i would probably recommend starting with a new catalog. Not sure what the issue is with reseting the images, is there a reason you don't want the previous history steps? Not sure what you mean when you say "does not undo transforms."

If you haven't been saving your develop steps out to the files (Save metadata to file) then it should be easy just to move all the images to a new catalog as all the old develop settings will stay with the old catalog. If you have or are uncertain then its only a few steps more but still fairly easy. you were on the right track with the "Reset" option. In the current catalog the history steps will remain the same but if you reset all the images and then save the metadata to the files (particularly for jpegs, tiffs and DNG) and import those images into a new catalog, all the history steps will be gone. For Raw files (other then DNG as they represent the same problem as jpegs) all you would need to do is delete all the sidecar files (through finder or explorer just do a search in the folder and delate all of them) before importing into the new catalog.

So your steps could be as fallows.

1A. Backup the current catalog (just encase).
1. Make sure all your lightroom images are inside one main folder (ex. Lightroom image)
2. Create your new catalog and put it to the side
3. Go into your current catalog and reset all the images.
4. Save Metadata to File (select all Command/Control + S)
5. Go into your main image folder and search for sidecar files and delete them all.
6. Open your new catalog and when in the library module, drag and drop the image folder containing all your images into the new catalog and proceed with importing.

[ratpat13]

Re: Lightroom "Revert?"

As for the finding duplicates thats a bit harder. If there is a naming convention or file type convention to your duplicates problem then those are easy to use to filter out the copies. For example if all the files that are duplicate have something in the name that you can easily search for then LR filter can grab them. The same if all your duplicates are in a separate format and can be easily found (such as raws being the originals and jpegs/tiffs being the duplicate), you could do it folder by folder to avoid being to general and accidentally deleting jpegs/tiffs that are the duplicates.

If it's all jumbled up then there are third party software that will do fuzy match for duplicates. dupGurur PE is a good one.

[andrewrodney]

Re: Lightroom "Revert?"

Select the images you wish to reset in Grid. Go to Develop (D key). Click on Reset button in lower right corner.

In terms of organizing images, I seem to recall a video around these parts...