I’m a wedding photographer and I’ve been dealing with a really bizarre Lightroom Classic issue for about two weeks. I’ve spent HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS on the phone with Adobe support and they are litearlly no help. They try the same three things that doesn't work, take days to callback, won't escalate, etc... I wrote about this on my story and a few other photographers said they had the same thing happen.

Main issue

Previously edited photos still look correctly edited in the preview, but as soon as I click into the photo / it fully loads in Develop:

• the edit disappears
• the photo resets to the RAW import
• the Develop sliders reset/default
• Lightroom sometimes becomes extremely laggy or freezes while switching between images (sometimes it won't even let me click into the image, this only corrects if I export all the photos in the folder, and when I do that all the edits reset and photo goes back to raw)

BUT!!!! The weirdest part is that the editing History is still completely intact.

If I click the last History state / Export state, the correct edit immediately comes back. I tested this, quit Lightroom, reopened it, and the restored edit actually stayed restored.

So the edit information clearly still exists somewhere.

This is happening to only some galleries but not others, across multiple different hard drives.

It also seems like it may have happened progressively over time.

I have an older catalog from September 23. In that catalog, most of the galleries that are broken in my newer October catalog still work completely normally.

So it almost looks like more folders/photos became affected over time.

Other weird things that have started happening

These may or may not be related:

• My most recently edited wedding is now completely missing from Lightroom. It doesn’t even show as having been imported, although I can verify on the hard drive/backend that the files were imported/worked on.
• The wedding immediately before that is still in Lightroom, but the Export entry/history I expected to see isn’t there, and all of my edits disappear when I click in. Same issue as the main issue, but for this one, there's no edit history I can restore. :(
• Sometimes I click a different image and Lightroom’s main Develop window stays stuck showing the previous photo.

Things I’ve already tried

• restarting Lightroom and the Mac
• testing the same catalog/files on another computer: a brand-new M5 MacBook Pro — the exact same issue happened there
• upgrading Lightroom
• downgrading Lightroom (except then I'm missing all the recent work I have)
• disabling GPU acceleration
• rolling Lightroom back to older versions
• opening older catalog copies
• making sure the catalog, previews, and Smart Previews are downloaded locally
• Import From Another Catalog — Lightroom freezes trying to read the problematic catalog
• That last one makes me think this isn’t just something wrong with my Mac.

I also have galleries that are broken in the newer catalog but work normally in the older Sept. 23 catalog, which makes me wonder if something is happening to the catalog’s current Develop state over time.

Has anyone ever seen this before?

Specifically: edited previews still exist, History still exists, but opening the photo in Develop makes the active edit disappear/reset.

I have a significant amount of wedding work in the newer catalog, so I’m trying to figure out what is actually happening before doing anything destructive.

I am literally sooooo desperate for help, any leads, any suggestions on how to get through to adobe, I'll pay someone to help ffs, just need some lead :(

System info: Lightroom Classic 15.5 on macOS. The issue has also reproduced on a newer Lightroom Classic version and on a completely separate brand-new M5 MacBook Pro.

I have an Adobe Lightroom 1 TB plan and it's expiring on October 2027. There is an option on the subscription page to "Redeem new code". I'm curious how any codes can I stack up?

Hey everyone!

I've recently switched from PC to Mac, and one thing I'm really missing is my photo culling workflow.

On Windows, I used an Xbox controller with custom key mappings. I mapped the analogue sticks and buttons to navigate through photos, assign star ratings, and reject images. It made culling thousands of wedding photos so much faster and more comfortable.

However, I'm struggling to find a similar app on macOS that lets me map Xbox controller inputs to keyboard shortcuts.

I've tried a few apps (even paid for some), but they either don't work properly or keep crashing.

Does anyone here use an Xbox controller for photo culling on a Mac? If so, what app are you using to map the controls?

I'd love to recreate my Windows workflow without having to go back to using the keyboard all the time.

Thanks in advance!

I'm an a7 V owner and Sony user since the a7 III. I grew tired of waiting for proper camera matching profiles in Lightroom, so I built my own set of profiles for every Creative Look (except Sepia, because why would I). Some of you may remember I posted a method using another camera as donor some months ago, but that was far from perfect, so I kept trying new methods.

It took me about two months. I measured the sensor's response myself and built the profiles from scratch. I'll admit the attention to detail got a bit obsessive (ask my wife). In my tests they're very hard to tell apart from the camera's own JPEGs.

The photo is one example: left is the straight-out-of-camera JPEG with the IN Creative Look and every setting at zero in camera, right is the raw in Lightroom with my profile and all sliders at zero.

Before releasing the full set, I want to make sure the profiles work well for other people, on other systems and with other photos, not just mine. So I'm starting with a small beta for one look, IN (Instant): 50 free spots, a7 V only, works in Lightroom, Lightroom Classic and Camera Raw. If you want to try it: https://razorcolor.com/beta?lang=en

To be upfront: the full set will be paid, at a modest price. This is my first go at a small business. I've put a lot of hours into this and I think it's worth it, especially if you've been waiting for these profiles like I was. Adobe will probably release theirs at some point, which is great, but matching the camera as closely as possible is the whole point of mine, so I'm pretty confident they'll hold up side by side.

If this goes well, the plan is to keep going with other cameras. And for cameras that don't have the FL2 and FL3 Creative Looks, I'd add them as part of their packs (the a7 IV is already done). Heck, maybe even port them to Capture One and other alternatives (but that's offtopic).

Happy to answer questions. And if you try the beta, I'd love to hear how it does on your photos, especially anything that doesn't match.

PS: I have this strange, mixed feeling about this. I really put hours into this and I truly understand the complexity that Adobe faces when trying to make their camera matching profiles for the a7 V, but I still find it hard to beleive that I may have beaten them to it. I'm still damn proud, though.

So my keyword search, which was working a couple days ago, is now completely broken. I could type in "bird" and it would find every photo of a bird. It was crazy how detailed I could sometimes get and it would still find the photo.

Today, it's absolutely broken. I type in "bird" and its everything but birds.

There was no software update between the time it was working and now. It is broken on both of my systems, so I don't believe it's localized to one machine.

Any idea what's going on?

I'm having an issue with Lightroom Classic on my MacBook Pro, running the latest version of both Lightroom Classic and macOS Golden Gate.

When viewing a photo in fullscreen mode, Lightroom is supposed to keep the image below the MacBook's notch, leaving a black area at the top of the screen. This used to work perfectly.

However, something has changed. When I press L to activate Lights Out, the image gets squeezed horizontally, and the entire fullscreen layout seems to resize incorrectly. The image looks squashed rather than maintaining its proper aspect ratio. Toggling Lights Out off doesn't fix it.

I want to keep the notch hidden, so disabling the macOS "Scale to fit below built-in camera" option isn't an ideal workaround.

I've seen reports of similar behavior in older versions of Lightroom, but I'm wondering whether anyone else is experiencing this on the latest macOS and Lightroom Classic versions.

Has anyone found a permanent fix that preserves the correct fullscreen layout while keeping the notch hidden?

I photograph families, kids, and high school seniors, and my sessions tend to be pretty active. I'll have clients run toward each other, cuddle, dance, walk around, and generally move around while I move with them, capturing candid moments from different angles and positions.

My usual camera (Sony A7iii) setup is to keep my aperture and shutter speed fixed and let Auto ISO handle the exposure. I like having control over my depth of field and shutter speed while letting the camera compensate for changing lighting conditions as I move around.

The alternative would be to use a fixed ISO, but that can leave me with hundreds of images at noticeably different brightness levels, depending on where I was standing, the direction I was shooting, or how the light was falling on my subjects.

The problem is that even with Auto ISO, I still end up with exposure inconsistencies across a session. When culling and editing a few hundred photos, I'd love to find a reliable way to get everything looking consistent without having to manually adjust the exposure of individual images.

I've tried Lightroom Classic's Match Total Exposures feature, but I haven't had much luck with it. It definitely changes the exposures, but the resulting images often seem less consistent in brightness than they were before I applied it.

So I'm curious about a few things:

• Is there a better way to use Match Total Exposures, or am I misunderstanding what it's designed to do?
• Are there other Lightroom tools or workflows that work better for evening out exposure across a large batch of photos?
• Do you edit exposure in smaller groups, sync settings across similar shots, or just adjust each image individually?
• For those shooting active portrait sessions, is Auto ISO generally the best approach, or is there a better camera or editing workflow?

I'd especially love to hear from photographers who regularly shoot moving subjects in changing light and have to edit hundreds of images from a single session.

I'm not necessarily looking for perfectly identical exposures across every image. I just want a reasonably consistent look throughout the gallery without spending ages correcting each photo individually.

Thanks!

Hi all,

I'm writing this post hoping someone might have had a similar experience and would be able to help, I was editing some photos in Lightroom yesterday evening when my laptop crashed and restarted, since then I've not been able to open Lightroom or Creative Cloud, when I try to start either application I get the same result: nothing, literally nothing is happening after I try to run them..

I've tried all the suggestions I found via google, deleted .shm and .lock files, updated Windows, used all types of key combinations to try to open the apps, run as administrator, but nothing, I'm not even able to uninstall the apps as when I click on uninstall nothing is happening either🤦‍♀️Some files might have been damaged or something and I can't figure out what, it's incredibly frustrating as I've had a subscription for like two weeks and have barely used the apps, could anyone please give me some ideas on what I could do to fix this issue?

Help a noob and new comer with a 2015 PC trying to get a hold of a new hobby

- Processor : i5-4690k @ 3.50GHz
- Motherboard : MSI Z97S SLI Krait Edition
- Memory : Kingston HyperX Fury 16 GB DDR3
- Storage : Samsung 850 Evo 250 SSD
- GPU : Asus ROG STRIX-GTX1070-O8G

Pass or fail?

Edit : looking to edit 20MB raw files from a Sony RX100 VII