# Fixing a mistake - accidentally applied same develop setting to whole catalog



## lemayz (Mar 29, 2012)

Hi everybody,

I am a beginner in Lightroom and new to this forum.  I am hoping to get some help with a very silly mistake that I made:
[h=6]I  have been editing some 200 pictures in Lightroom over several days.  Today I went in  to edit, and thought perhaps the pictures I edited before looked  different, but didn't think anything of it.  So I edited about 30 pics  that I hadn't yet gotten to.  Now, looking at the pictures I edited in  previous days, I realize something  happened and the SAME develop  setting got applied to ALL of my pictures in the entire catalog.  I am assuming when copying and pasting setting to a specific picture, perhaps I clicked "select all" and applied it to all of them.  Any  idea how to fix this?  I could click "undo," but that would take a LONG  time and I would lose all of the edits I did today.  Any advice would be  greatly appreciated!  Thanks...!
[/h]


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## clee01l (Mar 29, 2012)

Welcome to the forum.  If you have not quit LR and ended your session clicking undo {Cntl}{Z} is the easiest and quickest way.  If you have closed LR and lost your 'undo' history,  you need to look for the {Oops} key on your keyboard.

You are probably not going to find the {Oops} key. (I know I did not. )  What you will need to do is tedious if you don't have a catalog backup that occurred before "Oops".   Of you do have a recent backup, you have to determine the edits made after the backup involve more work than going into each affected image's develop history to the history step before the mistake and removing the history steps that follow.  You can remove the latest history step by adding a new (minor) adjustment to the develop history .


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## lemayz (Mar 29, 2012)

I have, unfortunately, closed the session.  I can't seem to find this "Oops" key that you are referring to...can you please elaborate a bit more?

I also thought that perhaps in the "history" bar (sorry, I can't remember what it's called but it's the bar that's on the left hand side in the Develop module) in each picture, I might be able to undo all of the changes?  Or is that history only saved for the session and not afterwards?

Thanks


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 29, 2012)

To be honest, if you are only talking about some 200 pictures, it might be easier to scroll through them in the Develop module and simply step back in the history panel to the entry just before the 'oops'. Yes it'll take a little while, but once you get up to speed you'll probably be able to clear the task in 20-30 minutes.

 The history is a permanent record of changes to an image (unless you otherwise clear or reset it), and you can step back to any point in the history by just clicking on the relevant entry.....be warned though that if you select an earlier entry, and then make another adjustment, *that adjustment becomes the latest entry in the history and replaces ALL the history steps after the selected point.* It'd be worth just having a play with that on a test image, just so you understand how it works.


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## Brad Snyder (Mar 30, 2012)

....and I believe Cletus was being sympathetically facetious when he referred to the {oops} key. As he remarked, he also couldn't find it.


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## lemayz (Mar 30, 2012)

Hahaha, boy do I feel silly about my "Oops Key" response......oops!  I really thought that maybe there was some kind of better undo button that didn't get erased once I logged out of Lightroom.

Anyways, thanks for all of the responses!  I ended up doing what I proposed in my second post, and what TNG confirmed.  It did take awhile, but at least I was able to recover my pictures.

Thanks, everyone, for your help!!!


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## Hal P Anderson (Mar 30, 2012)

Actually, the "oops" key is right next to the "any" key, but only on better keyboards. 

Hal


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## lemayz (Mar 30, 2012)

Touche


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## b_gossweiler (Mar 30, 2012)

"Press any key to continue or any other key to cancel" :nod:


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## Mark Sirota (Mar 30, 2012)

I liked the old IBM PC error -- "No keyboard. Press F1 to continue."


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## Brad Snyder (Mar 31, 2012)

Old, but never out of style, I had it just last week, when I replaced a USB hub and didn't get everything plugged in just right on the first try ....


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## mhilbush (Mar 31, 2012)

b_gossweiler said:


> "Press any key to continue or any other key to cancel" :nod:


 


Mark Sirota said:


> I liked the old IBM PC error -- "No keyboard. Press F1 to continue."



So, if you like those, you will certainly appreciate this site.

http://thedailywtf.com/Series/Error_0x27_d.aspx

Sorry for the off-topic post.

Mark


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## Hal P Anderson (Mar 31, 2012)

mhilbush said:


> Sorry for the off-topic post.



Not to worry. The thread had veered totally off-topic long before.

Great site, by the way!

Hal


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