Can Lightroom 4 remove one older History step without undoing later edits?
Asked 4/29/2012
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2 answers
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In Lightroom 4, suppose my History looks like this from newest to oldest: Contrast, Punch, Auto Tone, Crop. I want to remove the earlier Auto Tone adjustment but keep the later edits like Punch and Contrast. Can Lightroom selectively delete a single older History step, or do I have to step back and then recreate the later edits manually?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
14y ago
2 Answers
2
The only real way to do this is by selecting the history step that you want to fall back to, in this case the Clarity step:
Then creating a virtual copy of where you were on that Clarity step:
And finally switching the original master image back to the most recent step in the history:
It might not be the most elegant solution, in particular if you are really interested in keeping the exact history noted in the new virtual copy, you would actually have to step back to the Import step, create the virtual copy, then just recreate the exact same history steps 1 by 1. The workaround that I have above with screenshots usually works just fine for what I need though, as I can recreate the image if necessary using sync.
Originally by user4892. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user4892
14y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
No. In Lightroom 4, the History panel is linear: you can move back to an earlier state, but you can’t selectively delete one older History step while keeping later ones intact.
If you undo back to the Auto Tone step, Lightroom will also remove everything that came after it. The practical workaround is to go back to the point before the unwanted step, create a virtual copy, and then recreate or sync the later edits onto that copy if needed. Another option is simply to return to the earlier state and manually redo the later adjustments.
So the direct answer is: selective removal of a non-most-recent History entry is not supported in Lightroom 4.
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