Today’s Question: If I neglect to disable lens corrections when I import my photos [into Lightroom Classic], can this be undone after importing? When I import photos taken with a fisheye lens, I don’t want Lightroom to correct the distortions.
Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can disable the Lens Corrections adjustment in Lightroom Classic by turning off the “Enable Profile Corrections” checkbox after the photos had been imported. You can even apply this change in batch by enabling the Auto Sync feature.
More Detail: I prefer to apply a variety of adjustments using a preset when importing new photos into my Lightroom Classic catalog, as a way to change the default settings for certain adjustments. For example, I apply profile-based lens corrections and a bit of a boost for both Vibrance and Clarity. However, in some cases I may not want to apply those adjustments at import.
If a preset was applied by mistake on import, you can simply turn off the adjustment (as in the case of turning off the “Enable Profile Corrections” checkbox for Lens Corrections), reset an adjustment, or even reset all adjustments.
When changing an adjustment that was applied using a preset during import, there’s a good chance that if you didn’t want those adjustments applied that you need to disable the adjustment for all the photos that had been imported. You can do this using the Auto Sync feature.
To get started, select the photos you want to update. For example, this might be as easy as selecting all photos in the “Previous Import” collection in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module. Then go to the Sync button at the bottom of the right panel in the Develop module and turn on the toggle switch on the left side of the button so the button updates to read “Auto Sync”. This indicates that Auto Sync is enabled.
With Auto Sync enabled, all adjustments you modify will update automatically for all selected photos. So, you can turn off the “Enable Profile Corrections” checkbox, turn off the Lens Corrections section altogether, or otherwise update the adjustments for the selected photos.
When you’re finished, I recommend turning off the Auto Sync feature, just to make sure you don’t inadvertently apply updates to multiple photos unexpectedly if you have selected more than one image while working in the Develop module.
