copy and paste

Copying and pasting edits between images is available in multiple views. In the lighttable, the history stack module provides buttons for these operations; the keyboard shortcuts listed below can also be used. In other views, such as the darkroom, copying and pasting is done through keyboard shortcuts.

copy (Ctrl+c)

Copy the complete history stack from the selected image. If more than one image is selected, the history stack is taken from the image that was selected first.

Information relating to internal display encoding and mask management is considered unsafe to automatically copy to other images and is therefore not included in this operation.

The following modules are excluded by default from the copy operation:

orientation

lens correction

raw black/white point

rotate pixels

scale pixels

white balance

deprecated modules

If you wish to include these modules use selective copy and selective paste.

selective copy (Ctrl+shift+c)

Copy parts of the history stack from the selected image. A dialog appears, from which you can select which history stack items you want to copy.

For any module, you may also choose to “reset” that module’s parameters – this will cause the module to be copied but with all controls set to their initial (default) state (as if you had clicked the module reset button). Double-click a history item to copy only that item and immediately close the dialog.

If more than one image is selected, the history stack is taken from the image that was selected first.

paste (Ctrl+v)

Paste all items of a copied history stack onto all selected images, preserving the existing history stack by appending the edits. If selective copy was used to copy selected modules, only those modules are pasted.

Pasting is always performed from the current state of the source image. If you change modules in the source image after copying and then paste, the changed (most recent) settings will be pasted.

selective paste (Ctrl+shift+v)

Paste parts of a copied history stack onto all selected images. As with selective copy, a dialog appears from which you may choose items to paste (or reset) from the copied history stack. Choose to append or to overwrite the history stack of the target image(s).

A copied history stack can have multiple instances of the same module (with identical or different instance names) and pasting behaves differently for these entries depending on whether you use overwrite or append:

overwrite deletes the history of the destination image before adding every module instance from the copied history stack. Choosing select all in both the selective copy… and selective paste… dialogs will precisely duplicate the copied history stack to the destination image(s) (including any duplicate occurrences).

append takes each module from the copied history stack and if there is a module in the destination image with the same name, it is replaced and added to the top of the history stack. If there is no such module, a new instance will be created and added to the top of the history stack. If a module has multiple instances in either history stack, only the last occurrence of that module will be added.

copy the last change to all selected images (Ctrl+x)

Only available in the darkroom through its keyboard shortcut.

Copy the module that was changed last from the active (open) image to all selected images: Select multiple images and apply an edit to the opened image. Hit Ctrl+x: The last changed module is synced from the currently open image to all selected images.

Note:

Using selective paste with overwrite is a destructive process. Use it with care. When using append, the existing history stack items are preserved and can be used to restore the image’s state from before the paste. With overwrite all the image’s previous edits are irrevocably lost.
Automatic module presets are added only to an image when it is first opened in the darkroom or its history stack is discarded. If you use overwrite to paste history stack entries to images that haven’t previously been opened in the darkroom, then the next time that image is opened in the darkroom, automatic presets will be applied to the image. It may therefore seem as if the overwrite behavior did not accurately duplicate the existing history stack, but in this case, those automatic modules were applied after the paste action.