How do I go back to the pictures original settings?

[Guest]

I made a mistake in processing and want to go back to the pictures original settings and start over.  I searched help, but didn't find anything.  How do I get the original raw image back?

[Hal P Anderson]

Laura,

Reset button--lower right quadrant of the develop module.

Hal

[Guest]

Perfect Hal!  Thanks so much!

[John Blaustein]

You can also look at the History palette and select the bottom entry.  That takes you back to before you made any edits.

John

[ssprengel]

The Reset button at the bottom of Develop resets the settings of a photo to the Lightroom import defaults.

Also, you can use the History section in the lefthand panel in Develop to step back until prior to the error. If the History section is not visible at the left of Develop then right-click and enable that section.

If you need to reset many photos back, then go to Library, and select the ones you want to reset, and then click the Reset All button at the end of the Quick Develop section at the right.

[Guest]

I saw the History pallet, but I wasn't sure what to do with it.  How do I take away part of the history?

[John Blaustein · Accepted solution]

Laura,

Just click on any history state below the top one, and your image will revert to where it was before.  For example, let's say you first cropped your image, then adjusted exposure, then adjusted saturation, then adjusted clarity.   Your history list would look like:

Clarity adj

Saturation adj

Exposure adj

Crop

Import

Click Import and your image will revert to the original state -- no edits.  Click Exposure adj and the image will be cropped with exposure change,  but no change to saturation or clarity.  You can experiment and click any state and see where you are.  However, if you click a state and then do an edit, all previous states above will be lost.  In other words,  if you click Exposure (in my example) and then make a Fill adjustment, the Saturation and Clarity adjustments will be lost.  Of course you can do those again if you like.

John

[Guest]

Thanks for the detailed example and explanation John!  What a great help for a newbie to Lightroom!

[Guest]

I'm the "newbie" that I referred to... in case that wasn't clear.  Ha!

[John Blaustein]

Laura,

You are most welcome.  And yes, I knew who the newbie was.

You might benefit from Lynda.com:

http://www.lynda.com/home/ViewCourses.aspx?lpk0=234

Also:

http://www.adobe.com/support/photoshoplightroom/

See "Getting Started?"  Click those links and watch the videos.

And here's the best:

http://tv.adobe.com/

http://tv.adobe.com/product/lightroom/

Take the time to watch as many of these videos as you can and you will no longer be a newbie.

John

[Chumpchange27]

Hello,

i know this is an old thread but am wondering if you can help with a similar issue. I am also looking to reset some of my photos back to the original RAW file and start over with no adjustments. My issue is when I go all the way back to the import stage in the history to reset it, it is still different from the original file. I am pretty sure I did not apply any filters upon import so I'm not sure how this happened and I am not able to use the original. I think I could probably delete and import the photos again but I spent a lot of time manually geotagging and adding other metadata that I don't want to lose. i changed the calibration from adobe to camera calibration which seemed to help, but it's still not the same as the original. Please let me know If you know how I can get back to the original photo without losing the metadata. Any help would be appreciated!

[Rob_Cullen]

I am not sure what you are expecting to see "the same as the original."

Setting Profile to Adobe Standard and hitting [Reset] will restore the image to the appearance that is Lightroom's (Adobe's) interpretation of the raw image data, without any Develop presets applied at time of import. (This is different to the History state > Import Date and Time!)

I tested this and Imported an image with a 'very weird' tone curve preset applied during import, then did the Profile & Reset, the photo was restored to my idea of 'Original'.

The Left image is "As imported from history". The Right image is (a VC) with Profile & Reset applied.

[Chumpchange27]

I was basically just hoping to see the same color tones as in the original RAW file, and I think I figured it out thanks to help from these forums. Looking through my travel photos, I was noticing that the color tones, especially in outdoor photos with bright blue sky looked off. I tried to reset some photos with blue sky to their original import settings and compared them to the RAW file thinking they should look exactly the same but they did not and I couldn't figure out why. Prior to my original question, I was not even aware there that Lightroom automatically applied its own settings upon import. I checked and all my photos had the 'Adobe Standard' setting applied, so I tested out the other settings and the 'Camera Standard' setting seemed to set the colors pretty close to the original. So prior to finding this menu, when I reset the photos, they were going back to their original import setting, but with the 'Adobe Standard' interpretation. I also noticed even slight adjustments of the black clipping and clarity will have a big effect on color tones of blue sky photos, so I reset those as well. Changing to the 'Camera Standard' setting and resetting black/clarity isn't perfect, gets me pretty close to the original, so I am happy with the results. It is probably not a big issue for most people, but for my travel photos I realized that I want them to look like 'as shot'. Thanks very much for your reply.

[D Fosse]

You say "original", but there is no such thing as an "original" when it comes to raw files. It has to be processed in some way to yield a recognizable image. The camera maker's take on this isn't any more correct than Adobe's default settings - or your own. It's your shot.

An original raw file, if you could take a look at it, would be a very dark, very dull and very flat grayscale image. You wouldn't like it! But that's how the camera sensor records it.

The Camera Standard profile is intentionally made to mimic the manufacturer's interpretation. Adobe Standard usually gives you better data to work with, but it makes no attempt to match the camera.

Hold the Alt key, and the "Reset" button turns into "Set Default". You might want to change the Lightroom defaults into your own preferred settings.

[Chumpchange27]

I don't have that deep of an understanding of how images are processed, so thanks for the explanation. All I know is that I had the RAW (NEF) file on both my IPad and PC (Win 10 photos app) and they look to have the same color tones. However their software renders the image from the RAW file looked to me what the actual shot looked like, so I was just referring to that as the original.

I was planning on changing default settings for my next set of photos, so thanks for the tip with the Alt key.

[Guest]

Thanks for the links!  I'll check them out. 

Ha!!!  I didn't want you (or anyone else) to misunderstand the "newbie" comment.   Although, I'm sure that it was pretty obvious that it was me!  LOL.

Thanks again!

[Guest]

Oops... posted a comment in the wrong thread.  Sorry!