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Manage before and after previews in Photoshop Lightroom


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    Manage previews

    Let’s say at this point you carry on making more tweaks to the Develop panel settings, but decide that these corrections have not actually improved the image and the interim “Before” version was actually better. You can reverse the process by clicking on the Copy settings from the Before photo to the After photo button. Basically, the Before and After compare mode controls will let you make a snapshot of an image during mid-correction. The following steps illustrate one such workflow, plus how to go about restoring the original Before version as a “Before” preview.

    1. Here is a screen shot that shows a “Before” version of the image which was “as shot” and on the right an “After” version that has been modified using the Develop module adjustments.

    before and after

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    1. I clicked on the Copy settings from the After photo to the Before photo button so that we now had two identical versions of the image displayed in the Before/After previews.

    Before/After previews

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    1. This gave me a new “Before” image starting point to compare with, and I was now able to make further Develop adjustments. In this example the “After” preview shows a grayscale conversion.

    grayscale conversion

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    1. This gave me a new “Before” image starting point to compare with, and I was now able to make further Develop adjustments. In this example the “After” preview shows a grayscale conversion.

    further Develop adjustments

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    1. But what if you want to make the “Before” preview revert back to the original “Before” state? To do this I clicked on the Reset button at the bottom right corner of the Develop module. The “After” preview now showed the original “Before” version.

    click on the Reset button

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    1. But I wanted the Reset version to be the new “Before” preview. To do this, I clicked on the “Copy settings from the After photo to the Before photo” button again. Both halves now displayed the “Reset” version.

    new Before preview

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    1. And finally, in order to return to displaying the grayscale converted state as the “After” version, I went to the History panel and clicked on the one before last, “Convert to Grayscale” history state.

    History panel

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    Where to go from here

    For more information about Photoshop Lightroom, check out the following resources: