r/Lightroom

I'm a Lightroom Classic user and have all my photos (10,000 or so) nicely sorted in a subject-based folder structure on an external SSD attached to my Mac. Additionally, I have all the photos organized in subject-based collections within collection sets in my Lightroom Classic catalog.

While I don't want to move from Lightroom Classic to Lightroom (been there, done that, and came back), I appreciate the utility of having access to (Smart Previews of) my photos on my iPad, iPhone, or browser. At the moment I sync a few collections of favorites and recent shoots. It's nice to be able to show people your favorites and edit/cull photos from a recent shoot.

I could sync each of these collections to Lightroom, but it would take a bit of time and be quite tedious. I saw a suggestion in another (now closed) Reddit discussion about creating a collection of all photos and syncing that. Has anyone done this and found it useful? I understand there'd be no subject-based organization in Lightroom, but this seems like a relatively painless way to be able to access and edit any photo remotely (via Smart Preview), and leave the bulk of my organization efforts to Lightroom Classic on my Mac.

Soo I've been using lr for free for the last year, only thing i couldn't do was save with the blur tool, but I could always just ss it. The last few days it's been incredibly laggy so I deleted it and now everything is locked behind a paywall and the app is still laggy.

Not a pro or even dedicated amateur photographer, but I got into shooting with an SLR years ago and used LRC as my library and editor with files stored on my NAS. Flash forward and now I almost exclusively use my phone for photos and Google Photos to review, share and edit. I barely touch LRC anymore and when I do I find it challenging to remember how to use correctly. I want all my photos in Google photos. My goals were:

• Move my 100k+ assets out of LRC into a new flat folder structure on my NAS
• Preserve edits made to raw files but not jpgs (I want original quality for jpgs)
• Ensure I don't lose any assets along the way

After noodling on this and testing with Claude I came up with this workflow which has worked for me. I'm not including the scripts here but of course you too can have AI come up with them (just make sure to double check everything before deleting). I should note that I do nightly cloud backups of both old and new folders from my NAS.

1. Setup new folder structure for target:
   1. \photo2\year\
   2. \photo2\year\temp
   3. \photo2\year\raw
   4. \photo2\year\video
2. Use Lightroom prune unwanted image files:
   1. Filter for metadata to exclude videos
   2. Mark photos for deletion by pressing 'x'
   3. To permanently delete go to Photo-Delete Rejected photos
   4. Confirm delete from disk + catalog
3. Write metadata for RAW photos to file
   1. In LRC: filter File Type = RAW
   2. Select all RAW
   3. Metadata → Save Metadata to File
4. Export all raw photos from matching year to \photo2\year\
   1. Settings: JPG, Quality 100, resize off, SRGB, same filename
   2. Destination is new year folder (e.g. \beanie\photo2\2018)
   3. Note: don't do this for non-raw files since we want unedited version
5. Run scripts changing year as required (using \year\temp)
   1. Script1: copy all files from \photo\year (recursive search) to \photo2\year\temp
   2. Script2: Delete camera-original JPGs that have a matching CR2 (I've already exported edited versions)
   3. Script3: Move CR2 and XMP files to \year\raw
   4. Script3a: Move video files to \year\video
   5. Script4: Move remaining files to main \year folder (temp should now be empty and can be deleted)
6. Final check:
   1. In LRC count all non-video files for year
   2. Should match count of files in \photo2\year
7. Lastly (next day)
   1. Confirm remote backup of \photo2\year
   2. Remove year folder from LRC
   3. Delete old folder structure \photo\year

I'm about halfway through this process but it's going well, and I'm looking forward to getting out of LRC and having all my photos available in Google Photos. Also saving $120 per year with Adobe for a product I barely use anymore.

Hi All!

I'm editing my pictures from a beach shoot with tropical fruit. The main subject of the picturenis a half cut papaya. I love the colours on my lightroom/macbook screen, but when soft proofing to sRGB it looks absolutely washed out. I'm so sad.

Any workarounds to retain colours in sRGB?

Thanks!

For instance, when I assign 3 stars to a photo, the next photos also show 3 stars even though I haven't actually assigned any to them yet.

This is only happening with stars, not color labels or checkmark/X flags.

Anyone else seeing this bug?

I made the grave mistake by canceling the import while its adding photos to my collection in lightroom classic and apparently it deleted my 700 raw footage, i saw that this happened to many people in the original forum and i tried everything and it didn't work.

anyone who faced this before and what did they do in order to recover the lost footage ?

So I tried uploading this .xmp file as both a preset & profile, and it didn't work either time, giving me an error that it's already in the system. The issue is that it's genuinely not under a single folder in the "Yours" preset tab. I've tried clearing it from the %AppData%, aswell as change some small parts of the .xmp code so it would recognize the file as a new preset, and it let me upload it, but it never showed up in my presets still. I also tried doing this via Lightroom online, and it let me upload the file, but wouldn't show up in my presets still.

Thanks in advance!

I recently upgraded from an M1 MacBook Air (8GB) to an M5 MacBook Pro with the Pro chip and 48GB of RAM. On my Air, Lightroom and the AI features were painfully slow. I figured upgrading would make a big difference, and while it’s definitely faster, it’s still much slower than I expected. Has anyone else run into this? Is there anything that actually makes Lightroom’s AI features run faster?

edit:
thanks for the feedback. im shooting with a Canon R6 Mark II. The Raw files im working with are around 25 MB

Unfortunately, I’m completely out of ideas at this point. I’ve tried all sorts of things, but Lightroom keeps having issues. It has now gotten so bad that I can barely use it anymore. Since I currently need to deliver wedding photos, the situation is critical.
Here are the problems I’m experiencing: overall, Lightroom is extremely slow. After a few minutes, the image preview stops working properly: I can no longer select images correctly, or the images displayed don’t match the ones I have actually selected. On top of that, the program crashes very frequently.

My System should handle it without Problems:

i7 14700
RTX 4080 Super (up to date driver [Game Ready])
32 Gb DDR4
Installed on m2.ssd
Windows 11 (up to date)
4K 144 Hz Monitor GSync compatible / HDR off

hi everyone, I am new to professional photography and I would really love to use Lightroom for my own personal projects. I have it installed on my iphone and the features available for free are quite enough for me, as amateur/ aspiring photographer. But I can't edit my pictures on my phone, it's too small.
Investing on a paid subscription doesn't fit my budget now since I am unemployed and getting no money at all from photography, I would consider it if I had a stable income. So, is there a way or something to have a (limited) version of Lightroom for free on my Windows 10? Or, is there a reasonably better/ equal alternative to Lightroom to have all the basics + a minimum of color grading? (it would be perfect if it had the same free features of lightroom for mobile)

thank you

Hi everyone,

I'm running into a strange issue with Lightroom Classic. Whenever Lightroom tries to back up my catalog, I get the following error:

"Lightroom was unable to back up the catalog. Please check your folder permissions and make sure you have sufficient free space on both the backup drive and the drive containing the main catalog."

Here's what I've already tried:

• Verified that I have full read/write permissions on the backup folder.
• Verified that the destination drive has over 500 GB of free space.
• Tried backing up to a completely different folder.
• Tried backing up to a different physical drive.
• Lightroom Classic and Creative Cloud are fully up to date.
• Windows 11 is fully up to date.

The error is exactly the same every time. Has anyone run into this before? If so, what was the cause and how did you fix it? I'm using Lightroom Classic on Windows 11. The catalog itself opens and works normally. The issue only occurs when Lightroom tries to create the backup.

Thanks in advance!

Recently tried some of Nikon’s imaging recipes, but when RAW files are opened in Lightroom (rather than NX Studio) it seems like some settings are missing, such as the tone curve. Is there a way to copy the tone curve and other settings from NX Studio to Lightroom?

I could get more pinkish skin tone by moving Green Primary Hue to the right, or Blue Primary Hue to the left. Curious about what's the difference?

Hey all, so I have been using Lightroom cloud for a while but am getting more into my photography and am finding that, in addition to using classic as a back-up, it has some functions that the cloud version doesn't have.

Im just very lost in the optimal workflow, please bare with me:

My current setup:

• I shoot on a Pentax K70 and a Fujifilm X-T5. For the Pentax I take three images at different ISOs, then stack and HDR merge them.
• I've been importing straight from the SD card into Lightroom cloud, and editing in cloud across my devices.
• I also have Lightroom Classic installed, currently acting as a local back-up — it syncs everything down from the cloud so I have originals on my Mac, which then get caught by Time Machine.
• In Classic I have around 8,800 photos, some going back years (including old scans), all currently sitting in one flat folder because they were moved off an old external drive at some point. So no date structure or anything.
• I also take photos on my iPhone when I'm out and about and sync those to Lightroom cloud via the app.

What I'm trying to figure out:

1. Now that I want to use Classic more (for the modules/features cloud doesn't have — the HDR merge for the Pentax brackets being a big one), should I flip my workflow to import SD card → Classic first, and let it push smart previews up to the cloud? Or keep importing to cloud and let Classic pull down?
2. I understand Classic only syncs smart previews up to the cloud, not full originals — so if I go Classic-first, do I lose full-res originals in the cloud for those shots? Does that matter in practice?
3. Subfolders — I've turned on "use subfolders formatted by capture date" in Classic's sync prefs so new stuff sorts into dated folders. Is that the right call? And is it worth going back and reorganising the existing flat library into dated folders, or just leave the old stuff and get it right going forward?
4. How do people avoid the duplication nightmare when running both? Every thread I read seems to end with someone having four copies of everything.

Any tips, thoughts or things I haven't considered but should are very welcome :) Thanks all

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I've recently started using the Map module in Lightroom Classic after years of ignoring it, and I love the idea of geotagging my archive. Being able to drag an entire trip onto a map is actually pretty satisfying.

However, after using it for a day it feels surprisingly clunky compared to the rest of Lightroom.

Some things I've noticed:

• Marker refresh seems buggy (I even had duplicate markers until restarting Lightroom).
• Clicking markers doesn't make it easy to browse only the photos at that location.
• The workflow around source selection (Folders, Collections, All Photographs) is confusing.
• Overall it feels like a module that hasn't been touched in years.

Has Adobe ever said anything about redesigning or modernizing the Map module, or is it basically considered "finished" at this point?

I'm curious whether long-time Lightroom users still rely on it, or if most people just use it once to geotag photos and then never come back.

I'm getting some paid editing software as a hobbyist. I'm using sony alpha a6000, and usually shoots b&w photography in raw. I have some experience with RawTherapee, however I wouldn't say I'm much experienced with it, rather just, know the basis.

Probably would like to try Lightroom Classic or Capture one pro. Which one do you think is better?

Been Having issues with (I do use the cloud version, have used classic previously):

- tool bars being stuck / not updating

- images freezing / not updating settings / being completely null - have to click out and back in to reattempt editing

- Lightroom continuously crashing

- cannot clear my cache at all for some reason

- cloud space changing after the update (?)

- edits reapplying to the wrong images??

- pink screen crashes also occurred twice - I did an entire system reboot and checked my graphics to make sure this wasn’t a system issue on my own Mac. (It’s not.)

One thing that I feel is maybe on my end is that it keeps claiming Macintosh HD is full - I have attempted to the cache multiple times, have skimmed the Mac HD drive to clear any old files, have deleted mass amounts of old catalog items, as well as docs and other things that I’ve moved; I’ve also shifted my entire catalog to my Ext HHD which has immense amounts of space.

I use an oldish Mac so recognize this could be on my end but idk, seems like a lot of other users are having challenges as well.

Any advice on how to solve the space issue would be lovely, other than that, I fear this update sucksssssses a$$ , we should have the option to go BACK after crappy updates like this imo

I'm looking to expand my portfolio and lightroom skills by editing other people's photos until they're happy with them.

There's multiple photoshop request groups on Facebook and subreddits, but none that I know of that focus on a lightroom specific kind of work flow. Most requests are to add or remove something from the image rather than enhancing it. Anyone know of any communities like this?

I was one of the many searching for all of the "What macbook should I buy" posts that hit here every day. Coming from an M1 macbook air w/ 16gb of ram that still worked ok I was undecided on if I needed to splurge on the upgrade from 24gb to 48gb of ram at the time. I did have a browser open with a handful of tabs at the same time, but was honestly surprised to see it hit yellow memory pressure and a few gigs of swap used while doing my normal workflow of back and forth between LR & PS.

I did NOT notice a performance dip but have just been keeping an eye on activity monitor since the upgrade and did not expect to hit yellow memory pressure with the 48gb upgrade so soon.

I was super fortunate before the price increase to land this 14" model for 2299.00 at BH Photo a month or so ago. Photographers, when in doubt... get the extra ram.

Anyone else having a variety of bugs with their software?

For example, every time I star rate something the entire album gets the rating vs the single photo when nothing else is selected?

Also, uploading and downloading speeds are throttled randomly.

I've been using this program for YEARS without any complaints. Is it my Mac having issues or are y'all also having problems as well?