Changes made with Healing tool in Lightroom CC not being saved

[jsopoci]

In October, 2016, I traveled to Egypt and unfortunately ended up with dirty sensors causing lots of spots on my photos. I spent days in Lightroom CC with the healing tool removing them all (and checking "Done" at completion of work on each photo). I reviewed all photos and all was well. However, I came back to those photos some weeks later only to discover the spots were back. I can't say that all affected photos reverted, but certainly most of them. I corrected them again. Recently I uploaded a number of these photos to an online photo book site to create a book of this trip and I discovered that on several photos the spots are back again. I am extremely frustrated! Has anyone else had this problem? What am I missing in my workflow that is causing this? I always stay up to date with updates to Lightroom. Is there any chance that updates to the program may be causing this? Thank you for any tips you can send my way!

[dj_paige]

One possibility is that you have (accidentally) opened the wrong catalog, one that was last used before you did all the spot corrections. You can check this by opening catalogs under File->Open Recent, and also by searching for files on your hard disk whose names end with .LRCAT (use your operating system's search feature).

[jsopoci]

Thank you for your suggestion. That's not it, though. Those pictures are all only in my "Master" catalog. I actually thought that was my only catalog, but I discovered I have another when I checked per your suggestion. I will now have to figure out if the pics in that other catalog are all also in my Master!

[Joe Foe Toe]

This might be too simple/obvious ("is it plugged in?") - but just to make sure - you're not exporting or examing the original images outside of Lightroom. I assume you know they remain untouched.

[jsopoci]

The images within my Lightroom catalog have the problem. I just didn't realize the problem was back until I exported the photo book selections out of Lightroom. When I saw the spots on the photos in my book layout, I went back to Lightroom and saw that the spots were back on the photos in Lightroom also. Not all of the photos that were fixed reverted to the "spotty" version this time, thankfully. But that might make it even more puzzling?

[Joe Foe Toe]

Realize I'm straw-grasping... times I've lost things like that have been in mistakenly applying copied settings that overwrite, or leaving the spot healing switch turned off?

[jsopoci]

Well, I really haven't dug that far into Lightroom yet, so my Develop mode fixes are so far rather limited: cropping/straightening, red eye fixing, a little exposure and contrast adjusting, and, of course, this Healing fiasco! I've watched a lot of video tutorials and have Scott Kelby's book, but I have a long way to go. Maybe I just need to fix these pics again and quickly get my photo book done before any of them decide to revert again (just to make me crazy, I'm sure!). It doesn't appear that this is a common problem, so must be something I'm inadvertently doing with this batch of photos.