Known issues in Lightroom

Ventura

Lightroom and Ventura | macOS 13

Big Sur

Lightroom and Big Sur | macOS 11

Issue

Workaround

When you start Lightroom, it displays a dialog prompting you to sign in. After signing in with your Adobe ID, the cloud icon (at the upper-right corner) shows a moving blue spinner over it, but the grid remains blank and doesn't load or display any photos.

(Operating system: Windows, macOS)

You can resolve this issue by signing out and then signing in again. 

1. From the menu bar, choose Help > Sign Out.
2. Lightroom will now restart. 
3. Sign in with your Adobe ID again when prompted.  

Migration fails if you point to a drive location (Local Storage preferences > Originals Are Currently Stored In A Custom Location) that has read-only access.

(Operating system: Windows, macOS)

• Before you start migrating your photos, you should either fix access permissions on the drive that you are currently pointing to, or point Local Storage > Originals Are Currently Stored In A Custom Location preference in Lightroom to another drive that has read/write permissions.
• If you've already migrated your photos to a drive and then discovered that it has read-only access, do the following:
  1. From Lightroom Classic, export your catalog.
  2. Once exported, go back to Lightroom and migrate the catalog again.

Migration can fail if there is not enough disk space.

(Operating system: Windows, macOS)

• Lightroom shows an error message if there is not enough disk space to migrate. In the Local Storage preferences, ensure that the Originals Are Currently Stored In A Custom Location preference points to a location that has enough disk space to accommodate the original, full-sized images in the Lightroom Classic catalog. Also see Recommended steps: Prepare for migration.
• If you see an out of disk space error message even when the drive in the Local Storage preference has plenty of disk space, try clearing some space on your primary drive. Lightroom also requires some space on the primary drive to accommodate previews and data files. The amount of space required varies depending on the number of images you need to migrate.

Location, City, State, and Country metadata is not migrated when you migrate an Apple Photos Library.

This is a known limitation. There is no workaround available.

When you migrate an Apple Photos Library to Lightroom right after importing assets to Apple Photos, some or all of the assets might not get migrated successfully.

(Operating system: macOS)

Before you begin the migration, wait for some time to make sure that Apple Photos has finished processing the imported assets.  

When you migrate an Apple Photos Library that has two persons with the same name, Lightroom creates two People clusters in the People View - one cluster has the person’s name, while the other has the name with '_1' appended.

(Operating system: macOS)

Migrated Slo-mo videos play back at normal speed rather than slow motion in Lightroom.  

(Operating system: macOS)

When migrating from Apple Photos, HEIC image files do not migrate if you do not have an active subscription.

(Operating system: macOS)

Before you begin the migration, subscribe or renew your subscription.

When migrating from Apple Photos Library, the displayed number of assets that are being synced is more than that exist in the catalog.

(Operating system: macOS)

When you begin the migration from Apple Photos library, Lightroom groups some assets like Live Photos into stacks. For syncing purposes, Lightroom counts these stacks as assets. The processing assets number displayed is the temporary image count that includes the stacks. After the sync is complete, the correct count is displayed.

You're unable to move a custom preset to a new or existing User Preset and the custom preset seems to disappear.

We are aware of this issue and are working on a fix in future releases.

Chromebook and Pixelbook are showing video editing and export related issues.

We are aware of this issue and are working on a fix in future releases.

Export dialog ignores rotation for DNG output.

We are aware of this issue and are working on a fix in the future releases. 

Crash on using AI masking tools on Windows.

Lightroom crashes on using the Subject/Sky/Background/People masking tools.

You can do the following:

1. In Lightroom 6.0 and above, close the People section of the Masking panel to avoid running people masking each time the panel is opened. (You may need to first open the masking panel on a photo that does not have people in it.)
2. Update your GPU driver from the official website. To learn more, see Update graphics driver for your apps.

Lightroom crashes with a disk error after showing splash screen.

Install the Media Feature Pack list for Windows N edition.

When you try to import an AVI video file, Lightroom displays an import error.

(Operating system: macOS only)

Beginning with the October 2018 release of Lightroom CC (version 2.0), you can no longer import new AVI files on macOS. The existing AVI files in your catalog play as expected in Lightroom. On Windows, the support for AVI files is still available. For related helpful information, see Supported video formats and extensions.

Slow import performance when adding photos from an internal Hard Disk Drive (HDD spinning drive).

(Operating system: Windows, macOS)

If your workflow involves frequently importing photos from a hard drive, consider using a Solid State Drive (SSD) for faster import performance.  

Lightroom detects the plugged in Apple iPhone mobile device but the Add Photos screen shows zero images to import.

(Operating system: Windows, macOS)

Configure your Apple iPhone mobile device to trust the computer where Lightroom is installed. To do so:

1. Unplug your iPhone, if connected to the computer. Then go to Settings > General > Reset > Reset Location & Privacy.
2. Insert your passcode, then click Reset Settings. This resets the location and privacy settings back to factory default.
3. Plug your iPhone to the computer where Lightroom is installed:
   1. (Windows) Make sure you unlock your iPhone and tap Allow if you see the alert - 'Allow this device to access photos and videos'.
   2. (macOS) Make sure you unlock your iPhone and tap Trust if you see the alert - 'Trust this Computer'.
      

When you choose Add to Album as New while adding photos, a new album isn't created if you specify an album name that already exists even when the letter casing in the names is different; Lightroom doesn't display any error or warning. For example, if there is an existing album named "Alaska", you won't be able to create a new album named "alaska" in the Add Photos screen.

(Operating system: Windows, macOS)

• Specify a different album name when you choose Add to Album as New. 
• If you didn't realize that a new album wasn't created and clicked the Add Photos button, do the following:
  1. Open the My Photos panel on the left.
  2. Create the album you want to use for your photos. 
  3. Expand the Recently Added panel and select the date/time representing your recent import.
  4. Select all the recently added photos now displaying in the grid and drag them into the desired album.

While adding photos, the selection grid sometimes shows a wrong orientation for some images. 

Proceed with adding photos. In most cases, the correct orientation is displayed after you complete adding photos. Otherwise, you can manually rotate your photos using the Crop & Rotate menu.

When you try to import photos from a camera for the second time, you get No images that can be imported were found in the selected source message. 

Do one of the following:

• Unplug the camera and plug it back.
  
• Restart Lightroom.
• Use browser to import photos from the camera. 

Recent photo edits or metadata changes done in Lightroom don't sync to Lightroom Classic, if the image file is deleted from Lightroom before these changes get synced to the cloud.

Wait until syncing has finished across Lightroom clients before deleting the images in Lightroom. Click the  icon at the upper-right corner in Lightroom to see the sync status.

Lightroom indicates that you are signed in but no images appear in the grid.

Restart Lightroom.

Cloud icon shows red circle with ! in it; and the synced and backed up window show the error "Some Photos Invalid."

(Operating system: Windows, macOS)

To resolve this issue, do the following:

1. In the My Photos area in the left pane, select the All Photos album.
   
2. Switch to the Square Grid view , which displays photos as equal-sized thumbnails along with their flag status, sync status, and rating.
3. Click the filter  icon next to the Search bar to bring up the filter options.
4. From the filter bar options, choose Sync Status > Error. Lightroom now displays only those photos that it is trying to sync.
   
5. Press Ctrl+A (Win) or Command+A (Mac) to select all the photos displaying in the grid and then do any of the following:
   • Delete the selected photos by choosing the Edit > Delete option and then add the photos in Lightroom again.
   • Apply a flag or a star rating to selected photos.

The syncing issue should now be resolved. To check the sync status, click the cloud icon  at the upper-right corner. 

Syncing appears to be stuck. Sync status shows no changes, even though you've waited for a sufficiently long time for the sync progress to update.

(Operating system: Windows, macOS)

1. In the My Photos area in the left pane, select the All Photos album.
   
2. Switch to the Square Grid view , which displays photos as equal-sized thumbnails along with their flag status, sync status, and rating.
3. Click the filter  icon next to the Search bar to bring up the filter options.
4. From the filter bar options, choose Sync Status > Syncing. Lightroom now displays only those photos that it is trying to sync.
   
5. Press Ctrl+A (Win) or Command+A (Mac) to select all the photos displaying in the grid and then do any of the following:
   • Apply a flag or a star rating to selected photos.

The syncing issue should now be resolved. To check the sync status, click the cloud icon  at the upper-right corner. 

Cannot create two albums with the same name but under different folders in Lightroom.

This is an expected behavior. All the album names should be unique, even when they're in different folders.

Lightroom displays two albums with the same name synced via different Lightroom mobile clients. 

If you add albums with the same name via different Lightroom clients (Lightroom for mobile or web), Lightroom on your desktop displays both of the synced albums in this case.

Thumbnails for AVI videos are not generated

(Operating system: macOS only)

It might take some time to render the thumbnails. Hence, you may experience some delay in seeing thumbnails for AVI video format.

GPS information is not displayed for videos taken from iPhones.

(Operating system: Windows only)

iPhone videos GPS info is not available on Windows. There is no workaround available yet.

Slo-mo videos taken from iPhone playback at normal speed,

This is a known limitation. There is no workaround available yet.

No camera information is available and time zone in the capture date is incorrect for videos.

(Operating system: Windows only)

This is a known limitation. There is no workaround available yet.

Lightroom menu bar is lost after pressing G or ESC while playing video in full screen mode.

(Operating system: macOS only)

Restart Lightroom.

Lightroom does not support R3D files.

This is a known limitation. There is no workaround available.

Lightroom does not support Avid DNxHR/DNxHD video files.

This is a known limitation. There is no workaround available.

Lightroom loses track of the photo locations on your hard disk when you move data from one computer to another. For example, when you upgrade your computer.

(Operating system: Windows, macOS)

• The easiest option to move Lightroom photos to a new computer is to install Lightroom on the new computer, sign in with your Adobe ID, and let the files sync from the cloud. 
• If you use some other method to move your photos such as using a disk imaging app, Lightroom presents an error that it can't find the files. Select the option to Forget the drive when you see the error. Note that, Lightroom won't display the error now, however, you'll have to clear the files out on the drive manually to reclaim the space.

In the Local Storage preferences, Lightroom allows you to choose an NTFS-formatted drive, then informs you that the drive is invalid.

(Operating system: macOS only)

Choose a drive that is formatted as FAT-32.

Unable to share and post photos to a new Facebook account from within Lightroom.

You can no longer upload photos to Facebook from Lightroom. See this article for more information.

Unable to import Lightroom desktop photos into Photoshop (October 2022 release)

Importing photos from the Lightroom desktop to the Photoshop home screen — JPEG, HEIC, TIFF, PNG, and PSD files, may require masks to be recomputed in Adobe Camera Raw for the edits to show properly. Sometimes, the masks may not be recovered in their original form.

If Adobe Camera Raw is unable to recover masks in your Lightroom desktop photos, you can:

• Export photos from Lightroom to your local machine.
• Use the export menu in Lightroom and select Edit in Photoshop. 

When you launch Lightroom for mobile, the app gets stuck on Loading Photos.

Force quit and restart the app.

Show Highlight Clipping does not work while capturing photos using Lightroom for mobile.

We are aware of this issue and are working on a fix in the future release. 

Scrolling gestures using Apple's new Magic Keyboard or Trackpad do not work with most of the views in Adobe Lightroom for iPad. 

Click and drag with the trackpad to scroll in Lightroom for iPad where scroll gestures do not work. Alternatively, you can tap and drag on the screen to scroll.

Exporting is slower when lens blur settings are applied.

We are aware of this issue and are working on a fix in the future release. 

Lightroom (Mac App Store Version) does not automatically detect catalogs located on an external drive for migration.

Browse to the catalog on the external drive location and select it for migration.

If you enter your credit card information during the in-app purchase from Mac App Store, Lightroom remains in trial mode even though the payment is successful.

Restore your in-app purchase. For more information, see If you don't see your in-app purchases.

Lightroom (Microsoft Version) is unable to use the GPU.

See GPU troubleshooting for Lightroom (Microsoft Store version).

Unable to import AVI files.

(Operating system: macOS only)

Beginning with Lightroom CC 2.0 (October 2018 releases), you can no longer import new AVI files on macOS. The existing AVI files in your catalog play as expected in Lightroom. On Windows, the support for AVI files is still available

Unable to use Boundary Warp and Fill Edges together. Using one of them disables other.

If you want to use Fill Edges and Boundary Warp together, use the latest release of Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom Classic.

Save as Preset in Discover tab does not work.

Go to the last step of the tutorial before choosing Save as Preset.

• When you launch Lightroom, it displays a message 'Updating: Lightroom needs to do some housekeeping.'. The progress bar below the message shows no progress even after several hours. 
  
   
• Lightroom displays an error message mentioning '<SQLite database corrupt>'. 

(Operating system: macOS only)

Follow the workaround steps below:

Caution: Before you proceed with these steps, note that any edits or changes that have not finished syncing to the cloud may be lost.  

1. Quit Lightroom.
   
2. In the Finder window, choose Go > Go To Folder and type ~/pictures. Locate a bundle named Lightroom Library.lrlibrary.
3. Right-click or control-click this bundle and choose Show Package Contents. You'll find a folder inside it with a long cryptic string of numbers and letters (for example: d1a4f88d2b534c7d91022136fd182532). Open that folder.
4. In the folder, delete all the files named Managed Catalog.[anything]. Also delete the Previews.db file.
5. Launch Lightroom.

Windows Firewall may present a warning about the Lightroom Sync Utility.

(Operating system: Windows only)

Go to Firewall settings in Windows and unblock the Lightroom Sync Utility.

When using keyboard shortcuts in Lightroom, the AltGr key on the European keyboards doesn't work. 

Use the Alt key (next to the Spacebar key) instead, or access the command via the menus instead of using the keyboard shortcut.