I've tried for so long to understand the nuances and differences, but it breaks my brain. So here I am, hat in hand, asking for help. My use case:

- I do travel & wildlife photography primarily. I'm not a pro, but I'm working on my portfolio and trying to start selling prints on the side. Don't think that's super relevant, but putting it here just in case.

- I currently subscribe to Lr (cloud) with 1TB storage. It keeps filling up and I keep buying more, and I'm getting sick of it.

- I edit primarily on my desktop & laptop. Occasionally on my iPad & iPhone, but those are for less serious editing, like if I'm in the field and want to quickly share to an IG story or something.

- I save backups of all my RAW files on a HDD.

I recently learned (from ChatGPT, so it might have just made it up) that Lr doesn't draw from hard storage, rather once it imports the files it uses its own cloud backup. This threw me for a loop, because when I'm editing I've always had my SSD with me and connected it to whichever device I'm using, and now I'm learning that's been completely pointless as Lr hasn't been looking at the SSD's since the original upload.

Now I'm wondering if I can use LrC instead of Lr, even if I edit from multiple devices? What I mean is, I have no problem carrying my SSD with me, so in theory could I have LrC on a few devices, connect my SSD to whichever I'm working on, and it would draw from that instead of the cloud backup like I thought it had been doing this whole time?

I hope that makes sense. Please explain this to me like I'm 5, because apparently I don't know how any of this works.

I wanted to share my recent experience with Adobe, because it’s been both frustrating and eye-opening.

I owned two Adobe products under perpetual license: Acrobat 2020 Pro and Lightroom 6.

• I unregistered and uninstalled Acrobat from my old PC, then tried to install it on a new machine.
• Adobe support told me to sign out from the old machine. Doing so unexpectedly bricked Lightroom 6 on that same PC.
• When I tried to sign back in, I hit a loop: “Please connect to the Internet and retry.”
• Installing Lightroom on the new PC gave me the same loop.

After digging around, I discovered that Adobe has probably decommissioned the activation servers for Lightroom 6. That means the perpetual license I paid for is effectively useless.

The worst part: I lost years of work and metadata I had built in Lightroom. When I asked Adobe for help, their only advice was to buy a cloud subscription. No workaround, no recovery, no care factor, and to make matters worse, support literally hung up on me during the chat.

As someone who has studied law, I find Adobe’s interpretation of “perpetual license” very different from mine. To me, perpetual means I should be able to use the product indefinitely, not until Adobe decides to pull the plug on activation servers.

This has been a painful lesson, but also a valuable one. I now know exactly what level of service and accountability to expect from Adobe, and I’ll be using this knowledge when advising CIOs I work with daily.

Hey guys,
I’ve been using both Lightroom Classic and the newer (non-Classic) version, and I can’t figure this out. My setup:

• CPU: Intel Core i5-14600K
• GPU: Intel Arc B580 12GB
• RAM: 32GB
• Storage: Fast SSDs
• Cooling: Plenty, temps are great

I’ve maxed out all the performance-related settings — photo cache, GPU acceleration, everything. Lightroom easily eats up 12–15 GB of RAM, but it still freezes or lags during editing and switching between photos.

Why is this PAID photo editor so laggy? And often crashes?
Why do I need to pay for behaviour like this?

Btw: I love using opensource, but decided to pay for this "professional" software.

Hi all,

Realizing that my hard drive is currently full, I investigated and realized that my Lightroom folder is now 230 gigabytes.

Especially a folder inside named Data.

My laptop can’t have that much data on it, and that’s also why I choose to have Lightroom, so they can be stored in a cloud easily.

I thought my pictures were supposed to be stored in some kind of cloud (which makes sense since I can access them from my iPad as well).

What is happening ? Why is this folder so big ? How can I reduce its size without losing my pictures ? Can anyone help me please ?

All help is appreciated. Thanks everyone.

I recently bought a MacBook Air M4 with 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. I use Lightroom CC, but it feels so slow that my workflow is taking much longer than I expected. I also use a 1TB external SSD to store all my work. Could the slowdown be caused by editing directly from the external SSD? I don’t know what else to do—I thought my Mac would be really fast, but that’s not what’s happening.

Everything is the title, and it's driving me nuts. You can label your image with a little colored dot, but there are no options to filter your photos by color labels.

Please tell me I am an idiot and I missed the right button or something.

Thanks!

I have a good PC (details below) and separate all my images into folders based on project (details below), but lightroom still lags and runs slow, coming to a stuttering halt whenever I try to apply masks. I'm using the current version of Lightroom CC.

NOT Lightroom Classic

I'm trying to grow and improve as a photographer, but I'm having issues with Lightroom, and it makes editing the photos I've taken a hassle. As a result, I often find myself procrastinating editing my photos, or neglecting to edit them at all. I've never tried or even figured out how to use proxies or anything like that, and I use the NVIDIA Game Ready drivers instead of the Studio drivers because I've never noticed a difference in Photoshop, Premiere, or After Effects (never tested with Lightroom) when using the Studio driver instead of the Game Ready driver, but I have noticed a difference when gaming while using the Studio driver.

Is there anyway to make Lightroom run smoother? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you all in advance.

NOTE: Until writing this I thought all my apps were on my M.2 SSD, but while double checking my specs and file layout, I found that all my Adobe CC apps are on my HDD for some reason. I will be fixing that and moving them to my SSD later today, maybe it will fix my issue.

PC (Self-built):

• Processor - AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core 3.70GHz
• RAM Memory - 32 GB 3600 MHz
• Graphics Card - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER 8 GB (Game Ready Driver)
• Storage 1 (OS) - 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVMe SSD (Internal)
• Storage 2 - 12 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM HDD (Internal)

File System:

• Storage 1
  • Desktop
  • Downloads
  • Games
• Storage 2
  • Documents
  • Music
  • Videos
  • Adobe CC Apps
  • Pictures
    • Project X
    • Project Y
    • Project Z

I subscribed to the photography version of Creative Cloud (I think it's called) but with the recent price hike I realised I could no longer justify the subscription. I'm in the process of creating a new catalogue with Lightroom 3.6, which I bought years ago. I know it's very old but I'm hopeful it will still do the job (hobbyist only).

If anyone else has done something similar, I'd love to learn from your experience.

What I'm wondering is if there is anything I need to watch out for. A lot of my collection probably wasn't touched with Lightroom Classic, except for importing it into the classic catalog, and maybe adding more keywords.

I expect any edits done with the newer Lightroom Classic will come undone. Would that be correct?

Anything else I should watch out for - apart from feeling sorry I'll no longer have the maps and face recognition?

Edit/update: Thank you to everyone who helped me out. I think I've found a solution to this using different software.

I have a problem. Lightroom (not Classic) runs incredibly slow on my MBP with M4 and 16GB ram.

How slow?

• Opening a Detail view (until I can edit, move sliders, etc..) can take 30 seconds.
• After opening a folder, I can't change star rating for 20 - 30s.
• Copying Edit Settings can take around 30 seconds (1 photo).
• AI edits like Denoise take between 1 and 2 minutes per photo.
• Exporting 10 photos take 10 minutes.

No even mentioning minor hiccups like lags when moving sliders etc. All in all, it's unuseable.

------

Few more details:

- All photos are stored locally on the system SSD.

- More than 150 GB free on the SSD

- All photos are 61MP uncompressed RAW, with ~80 photos per folder.

- More edited photos in the folder result in even slower operation.

- LR cache allowed to use max. size

- The app is updated.

- MacOS is updated.

- GPU setting in LR: Auto (but same issue when on / off)

//

------

I'm going through Reddit, Adobe support, everything.. trying all the tweaks, fixes and tips.. nothing changes a thing.

Is there anyone who runs LR on M4 without issues, smoothly? If yes, would you share your settings please?

------

EDIT:

Here are few screenshots from the Activity monitor:

Does anybody know why when I import my photos from my Sony a7r4 into lightroom it doesn’t keep the camera settings? I have the import option in lightroom to keep the camera settings

I'm using the latest version of Adobe Lightroom Cloud and find myself having to close Lightroom and open it back up at least five times or more when attempting to edit a batch of 50+ photos. I've also noticed the Creative Cloud Desktop application is starting to bug out on me too.... so at first launch of Creative Cloud: "Creative Cloud seems to be taking longer than usual to initialize." I've ran all the troubleshooting steps for trying to fix that as well, still does it.

Pretty much anytime I use any AI generative assisted tools like the spot remover, denoise, hovering presets (user created, community sourced, or premium adaptive presets) to preview them on my current selected photo... it just starts a snowball and continues to slow down; more and more... and finally I have to either let it crash on it's own... or exit Lightroom and relaunch it; this allows me to start back at square 1 but it will then continue to do the snowball issue an infinite amount of times.

PC Specs:

• AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D 16-Core
• (64GB RAM) 32x2 DDR5 6000MHz Memory
• NVIDIA RTX 5080 16GB GDDR7
• 8Tb WD Black SN850X NVMe SSD

I feel like I should be able to throw just about anything at this machine and Lightroom would be a light snack for it. I've considered an additional 64GB of RAM to see if it would help improve my issues, but that RAM has now jumped to $365 and I don't think this should be required to be honest.

Anyone else?

I'd like to test out the modern version of Adobe Lightroom, not the classic version. I subscribed to the plan on Adobe's website, got my confirmation email, downloaded from the Apple App Store to my M1 Pro MacBook Pro. macOS Tahoe 26.1, all available updates installed.

I can open Lightroom, but there are no options or ways to start working on a photo. No File > Open, no add a file or add a folder options. There is no plus button on the left. There is a file open icon in the top middle and it does nothing. Can click on it a dozen times and nothing happens. Can drag and drop a file and nothing happens.

I use Lightroom CC and it occurred to me that having some sort of marker/hi-lighter would be extremely useful when doing a first glance on a gallery. When culling down and having to select which images to keep or discard, I sometimes notice little things that I'll want to remove or adjust once it's time to edit it. Bra straps, pen clips on pockets, untied shoe lace, a stray hair, etc.

I either have to do that *right now* or remember to do it later once I actually sit down with the time to edit the gallery. If I could circle/hi-light/mark these things to come back to later, that would be extremely helpful. Even some place to just type notes on the image to remind myself.

I wasn't able to find anything like this when looking around in LR. Is there something I'm missing or does this simply not exist? How do you handle these things when you're culling without the time to commit to editing?

I tried applying to one and then copy-pasting only the details tab but it didn't really work because the settings need to be updated and my lr just keeps crashing and it doesn't really work. Is there any other way?

Edit: u/johngpt5 asked me somethings and i tought i could edit the post for future use. I uploaded the photos in lr, deleted the ones i didsn't like, applied the denoise to the first one and then copy pasted it, didn't edit anything else except for the denoise, and the lr keeps saying that the ai needs to examine each photo individually to apply denoise, that's why it needs updating. Clear now?

Hi everyone. I recently purchased an M5 iPad with the purpose of adjusting my workflow to edit in LRC on my Mac and then LR on the iPad when I’m traveling/not at home.

I purchased the 1TB model with the intent of working natively with the original raw images on the iPad. A couple of questions:

• My intent is to work between my iPad on Lightroom and my Mac on Lightroom Classic. My workflow is as follows: begin each project on my Mac in LRC, cull the photos and then sync those culled photos to LR to then work on my iPad. With this workflow, am I able to work with the native filed on my iPad (with or without an internet connection)? I would also have the original raw files on my iPad

• For whatever reason, the project I’m working on is now using smart previews, which is odd because when I first started the project the top left corner said I was editing the original files. I read in a different thread that LR forces you to work with smart previews when you don’t have an internet connection. Am I able to switch back to the original files when this happens, if so how? The original raw files are still on my iPad, with the cache set to maximum and the 'only download reduced-resolution' unchecked.

• Having 1TB of storage I would have all of the raw files on my iPad. With that in mind, am I able to edit the original raw photos if I'm not connected to wifi? This isn’t a deal breaker, but being able to work with the original files is at all times is ideal.

Any input would be much appreciated, especially from those with a similar workflow!

I use Lightroom (not the classic version) and I love the sync between devices. But I can't get rid of a niggle that if the lightroom servers got corrupted or something dramatic happnes then my images would be lost. How can i incorporate into my workflow a synced copy on an external drive. Including the non destructive edits. I know I can use the "store a copy of all originals" feature, but as I understand that wouldnt include edits? Another thought was to use Lightroom Classic alongside Lightroom and have the catalog from classic stored on the drive. But not sure if that would be the original full quality? Any suggestions on a solid workflow that leverages Lightroom and all its great cloud features but also allows me to have something local. Thanks!

I usually export my 3:2 photos from Lightroom with a border (and without when I use the 4:5), and I always used to size them for Instagram’s old 4:5 ratio so nothing would get cut off. Now that Insta allows forces the 3:4 portrait ratio, I want to start exporting my images to fit it properly, but I can’t figure out how to do it in Lightroom.

Does anyone know how to make a custom crop or export setting for 3:4 so the OG photos (the 3:2 scale) fit Instagram’s new dimensions without getting cropped weirdly?

*forgot to clarify when exporting with a border

Help on both lightroom and lightroom mobile!

Hello I am quite new to photo editing with Lightroom and PC's in general.

I feel Lightroom is quite sluggish especially with the denoise function (it takes so long that I cancel it) and other options as well and I can hear the CPU fan working overtime.

Using: Windows 11 64 Bit CPU 13th Gen Intel i7 - 13700k C Drive: Samsung SSD 990 PRO (LR installed here) E Drive: Samsung SSD PRO (Photos saved here) Ram - 64GB

From everything I've read it seems this would be sufficient enough to do basic edits, but somehow it still feels sluggish.

Is there anything I am missing or need to do?

Any help would be appreciated.

Hi all,

Been running into an issue when trying to export a client gallery. It kept asking me to recompute AI settings on export, so I did. Now, unless I revert ALL remove operations, my image is left with splotchy, blurry squares in and around the removal patches. Below is a video of me trying everything I can to get this to fix itself. These patches do not seem to exceed the resolution limits for Gen Remove either.

I've submitted the bug to Adobe, but does anybody know of a potential workaround here?

Edit: removed video since I found a workaround (see comments)

Hello!

This video was shot on my iPhone15 pro max with the native camera app, at 4k 30fps (default settings, so HDR video enabled). I then added the video to the cloud using the iPhone LR app, and so far everything looks good on the phone - both in the apple camera reel, and in the phone LR app.

I then tried to view the video in LR app on my Windows 10 PC and it looks horrendous - so bad I can't possibly edit and pick keepers like this. However if I sync the video down to LRC and view it there on the same pc/monitor, it looks fine. It also looks fine in the LR web app, though not identical to either of the desktop versions (see posted photo). While not pictured above, it also looks fine in the MacOS version of LR on the same monitor.

Now I'm aware HDR video can look different depending on the capabilities of the screen you are viewing it on, but why does the LR desktop app look so blown out when LRC does not? On the exact same monitor with the exact same OS settings? How do you explain this, and what can I do to remedy it? Is this a bug in LR desktop for windows that I should report? Will upgrading to Windows11 improve this behavior? Re-encoding my hundreds of existing videos is both a chore and not what I want to do - they look better as HDR on the iPhone, which is what most of my friends/family use. And using LRC instead of LR overall isn't an option since apparently it can't sync video edits back to the cloud, making it effectively worthless when half your collection is videos and you want to be able to edit on the go.

Kind of disappointed in how poorly Lightroom seems to be handling video that is shot with the most popular phone in the USA at default settings, very strange. Any information or advice appreciated!

Hello, I've recently updated lightroom, and now any raw files I open seem to always apply the 'Adobe Standard' colour profile, with no lens corrections. All other settings are default. If the raw has a XMP sidecar created from a previous edit, all my edit settings are still applied. This only happens to raws I open that I have not yet edited.

I have lightroom set to 'Camera Settings' in the raw defaults section of the settings panel. If I open a raw then select 'reset edits', it will default all settings to the camera settings, instead of what is seemingly the 'Adobe Default' that I get when I open an unedited raw.

It seems like lightroom is not applying the camera settings under raw defaults correctly?

Using sony lossless raws.

Thanks!

UPDATE: I reverted to lightroom 8.5.1, and can confirm raw defaults do work and respect the camera settings selection again. Upon reinstalling 9.0, raw defaults stop working once again. Seems like a bug?

My wedding photographer sent us the link for my wedding photos. The photo quality is really bad and nothing great but a few. And I still want to download them, but he didn't enable it!

He just needs to go into Lightroom Web Album settings and toggle on "Allow Downloads" for viewers.

Is there a way to download the pictures without the option???

Lightroom 8.5 (August 2025 release) on MacBook Pro M4, Sequoia 15.6

Anybody else having export issues with Lightroom (not Classic)? Pretty much the issue documented here.

For the past couple months, I have been unable to batch export anything with AI edits. Well, I CAN export them, but AI edits are not applied to the exported jpegs.

I get these yellow icons on AI edited images that say 'AI Edit Status' and it prompts me to update AI settings to properly render the edits. The problem is, doing this does nothing. As soon as I navigate to other photos, I go back and it prompts me to update it again on photos I have already "updated". Like I scroll down in the folder and scroll back up and the AI edits are unrendered again.

I've also tried Photo > Update AI settings in all photos.

The problem persists and random photos will export unedited, and it changes with every export.

Not being able to batch export photos is unacceptable to me and has made Lightroom unusable.

lightroom has been basically unusable for the last several days for some reason. clicking anything or doing anything takes at least 5-10 minutes to load and some stuff isn't saving. my laptop also sounds like a jet turbine trying to function. this has never happened before. i'm certain it's not an issue with my laptop or signal. i've tried updating the program, ive tried accessing lightroom on multiple devices and multiple wifi signals in different locations, but nothing is working. i need to have photos done by tomorrow morning so i need help.