Accidentally "removed" a foto (only from LR); accidentally reimported all fotos

[benjamins66910732]

I accidentally removed a photo from LR, as I attempted to re-import this one foto I clicked on import and ALL of the photos I had removed were re-imported and I am pretty sure that all the work I had done on the previous photos is lost.  Can I "undo" these last two steps in anyway at all? I am absolutely sick about it! HELP please!  A phone call would be fantastic, if there are steps to go through to get back to where I was.  I really appreciate help as soon as possible.

[dj_paige]

The only way to undo removing a photo from Lightroom is if you have a backup of your Lightroom catalog file. Do you?

You can undo an unwanted import by deleting the imported photos from Lightroom.

[benjamins66910732]

My Lightroom does get backed up, I doubt it backed up during the two minutes it took me to re-import everything. But the main thing is really getting my work back and I am afraid to do too much at the risk of eliminating what I consider might be the smallest of chances.

So if I re-clicked on the original folder that was first imported and clicked import again - would it import the files in a new Lightroom catalog file or would it just put them in the already existing one? (The one that I had done all my work in?) Would it then just overwrite all the changes without even asking to do this? Or are the other photos still in a folder somewhere?  Am I making sense?

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

Your backup has all of your work before this accident happened. So you can't lose anything. And in the backup, the accidental new import doesn't exist. So perhaps the best choice is to copy the most recent backup catalog file to some new folder and work from that by double-clicking on it.

Import always imports photos to the  currently opened catalog. Import never overwrites your previous edits, in fact by default you shouldn't even be able to import photos a second time; but if you have over-ridden that default, your work is still there, you will have two copies of each photo now, one with edits and the newly imported photos with no edits.

@trshaner has a useful suggestion, please give it a try.

[benjamins66910732]

OK, super!! I have the photos that I worked on again and the photos I removed - removed again. I couldn't imagine that I would be able to do that without it giving me a heads up, but I was too nervous to click around too much. Generally I don't get freaked out that easy. Most things don't just get lost that easily. THANK You sooo much to both of you for taking the time to answer right away. And for the helpful answers.

[Todd Shaner]

In the Library module's left-hand panel under 'Catalog you can show the reimported image file's by clicking on 'Previous Import.' Are these the image files you say, "ALL of the photos I had removed were re-imported." If so you can simply "Remove" them again, keeping just the one (1) file you were trying to recover. Image files that were not removed should still have their edits.