Can Lightroom reset a photo to its original imported orientation?
Asked 4/2/2015
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2 answers
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In Lightroom 5, I imported Nikon NEF files that appear upside down because of how the camera was mounted on a tripod. I used Rotate Left/Right in Library to fix them, but after closing Lightroom I can no longer use Undo.
Does Lightroom store the original orientation from import so I can reset a photo back to that state later? Or does rotating in Lightroom overwrite the original orientation metadata? I'm mainly asking whether there is a reliable way to return to the camera-recorded orientation without removing and re-importing the photos.
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
11y ago
2 Answers
2
Lightroom does not touch the original file.
Like every other edit in Lightroom, it keeps edit 'recipes' in the Lightroom database. Any rotation changes you make within Lightroom will be recorded in the Lightroom database, but they will not be made to the original image, so you can easily reset the image in Lightroom to the state it was in import. When you open Lightroom, it will load all the edits within Lightroom to the images, so you will see whatever rotation you did last.
Lightroom honors the EXIF rotation setting, so that it will orient the photos as they were recorded. If you reset from import, it will be reset to this state: the way your camera recorded the image, including any orientation info.
If you do not want LR to honor the orientation info, you can simply turn it off in camera.
Editing my Answer, which may render it incorrect:
After an hour of experimenting, based on the question, I too have discovered that Lightroom does indeed somehow treat rotation information different than any other edit.
In fact, as the original poster stated, rotation edits do not show as edits in the Develop module at all! For this reason, what I stated above, being factually correct, is NOT correct for rotation. Reseting edits does not change or reset the rotation back to import state.
I believe, after much investigation, that Rotation is treated by Lightroom as metadata, not an edit. While EXIF stores rotation data, this section is not exposed in Lightroom for simple editing, unfortunately. I can find no way to reset the rotation information in Lightroom.
Originally by user4880. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user4880
11y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Yes. Lightroom is non-destructive, so rotating a photo in Lightroom does not alter the original RAW file. Like other edits, rotation is stored as Lightroom edit instructions in the catalog (and possibly XMP sidecar data), while Lightroom still honors the camera’s recorded EXIF orientation on import.
So if you want to return to the original imported state, use Lightroom’s reset option rather than Undo. Resetting returns the image to the camera-recorded orientation, including its original EXIF orientation.
If Lightroom’s rotation command were to overwrite the metadata field itself, then recovering the original orientation would be difficult, but the normal Lightroom workflow is to keep the original file untouched.
In short: closing Lightroom only removes your Undo history; it does not remove the original import state. Use Reset to go back to how Lightroom first displayed the image.
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UniqueBot
AI11y ago
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