Develop Settings Lost - Restoring XMP From Time Machine

[Gaijin_rr]

Let's see if I can explain this properly

1- On July 16th, I imported hundreds of images into LR. I use the setting "save changed to XMP".
2- On July 17th in the afternoon I exported these images to JPG which included all the development changes I had made in between import and this export.

3- Today, July 26th, I look back at the folder of images and all development changes have been reset to "as shot" essentially.

4- Opening Time Machine and looking at the XMP files, comparing their modified dates, I find that each file was changed, then stayed unchanged on 7/17, 7/18/ 7/19. Then on 7/20 all XMP files were modified at the exact same time, 1:10pm, suggesting all files were selected and perhaps an accidental shortcut was hit, resetting everything at once.

5- Opening a LR Catalog backup (from a couple hours before the supposed XMP disaster) also shows no development changes.

My confusion is this: The XMP files in Time Machine from the 18th and the 19th SHOULD contain the development settings that I made, since altered JPGS were exported on the 17th and the mess up seems to have happened on the 20th. Restoring an XMP from the 18th or 19th back to the catalog SHOULD show the development changes I made to my CR2. But so far, restoring those files causes no change to the image in the catalog, and it only appears "as shot".

Am I not understanding how this process works? If it were you, would you tackle the issue the same way? Once restoring the XMP, what would you do in LR to try to test the effects of that XMP to see if it worked?

I'm sure these changes are lost, but I'd love to understand this better. And on that note, does anyone know how to disable the "reset settings" shortcut?

Thank you!

[JohanElzenga]

If you replace the XMP files by backup copies, you then have to select these images and choose ’Metadata - Read Metadata from Files‘ in order to update the Lightroom catalog with these XMP files.

[Gaijin_rr]

I gave that a shot, restoring the XMP from all dates in question, then reading the metadata from file. The star rating and color rating return to what they were, so I know it is drawing from the newly restored XMP, but no development changes.

[JohanElzenga]

Gaijin_rr  wrote

I gave that a shot, restoring the XMP from all dates in question, then reading the metadata from file. The star rating and color rating return to what they were, so I know it is drawing from the newly restored XMP, but no development changes.

Sounds like you need the XMP files from an earlier date.

[Gaijin_rr]

Anything earlier is before the image was ever backed up.

[dj_paige]

Restoring an XMP from the 18th or 19th back to the catalog SHOULD show the development changes I made to my CR2. But so far, restoring those files causes no change to the image in the catalog, and it only appears "as shot".

Open one of these backup .xmp files from the 18th or 19th using a text editor and look at it and see if your edits are there.

How are you "restoring" the .xmp file back to the catalog? Please be very specific and explain step-by-step.

[Gaijin_rr]

Instead of going through Time Machine, I now went directly into the TM files and looked at the backed-up XMP from the 18th and 19th. There are no "crs:" lines at all. I made some quick changes to the current XMP and opened it and saw the difference. On the current one, I see every development category listed and showing any changes. The 18th and 19th don't even show those lines at all. However, if I open the XMP from the 20th, they are listed but they are all zeroed out. So the changes I made are not there, but the categories are at least represented. All changed most definitely were made before the 18th and 19th, so they should be there and represented (even if they had been zeroed out) correct? I guess I'm confused as to why they are not ever represented in the XMP from the 18th and 19th.

[dj_paige]

I use the setting "save changed to XMP".

Is this the menu command which is worded (I think) "Save metadata to files" or is this the option in preferences "Automatically write changes to XMP"?

[Gaijin_rr]

Lightroom > Catalog Settings > Metadata > Automatically write changes into XMP