This morning, several readers signed up to warn us of a major Adobe gaff. It seems the latest update of the Lightroom app for iPhone and iPad accidentally deletes photos and users of users who were not already synced with the cloud. Adobe has confirmed that there is no way to get them back.
The problem first appeared on Photoshop feedback forums two days ago, when the Lightroom app on iOS was updated to version 5.4. A user named Mohamad Alif posted Eqnur and asked why all his photos, presets and watermark data were deleted after updating to the latest version via the iOS app store.
This was followed by responses from other users who said the same thing happened to them, whether or not subscription based or free. One user posted to Reddit’s r / Lightroom subreddit and said they lost “2+ year edits” after the update.
“I have spent the past 2 days with 4 services over 4 hours talking to and customer and they told me that the issue has no solution and that these lost photos are not recoverable,” the user wrote. “Adobe is sometimes unbelievable. All I got was a ‘we sincerely sorry’ and nothing else. 2+ years of photo editing are just gone by Adobe and all they give is a sorry, lmao. ”
Yesterday afternoon, at 4.30pm Eastern Time, Adobe officially confirmed the issue, stating that customers who have updated to Lightroom 5.4 on iPhone and iPad “may be missing photos and presets”, that those photos and presets “cannot be repaired”, and that they “sincerely apologize” to users affected by the problem. Version 5.4.1 has already been released, fixing the issue but it can do nothing about the lost data.
You can read the full response and resolution on the forum thread below. This was posted on forums by Adobe ‘Quality Engineer Customer Advocate’ Rikk Flohr:
We are aware that some customers who have updated to Lightroom 5.4.0 on iPhone and iPad may be missing photos and presets that were not synced with the Lightroom cloud.
A new version of Lightroom mobile (5.4.1) for iOS and iPadOS has now been released which prevents this issue from affecting additional customers.
Installing version 5.4.1 will affect missing photos as preset reset for customers affected by the issue introduced in 5.4.0.
We know some customers have photos and presets that they cannot recover. We sincerely apologize to all customers affected by this issue.
If you are affected by this issue, please refer to the information provided by this forum forum.
We reached out to Adobe for further comment and clarification, and to see if they were willing to say how widespread this data loss was. But even if the glitch only affected a small number of users, it is obviously a very bad appearance like you edit photo app accidentally deletes folks photos … and edits.
This is also a great reminder for photographers that you should have always make a backup copy of your images, in multiple places, so that you are never subjected to a single point of failure. Errors like this happen, even at some of the largest companies in the world (see: canon.image).
To learn more about the issue, if you think you’ve been affected by the 5.4 update, read the official Adobe forum thread here. If not, just make sure the version you are updating to is 5.4.1 and net somehow still 5.4.
Image credits: Header photo of Jye Beckett, CC0
