It seems that Canon is not the only company that has problems with the images of its customers at the moment. A recent Adobe Lightroom update also seems to erase images and presets for many of its users. Users on their own forums of Facebook, Reddit and Adobe had noticed that their work had disappeared with one remark that they had lost value to edits for more than 2 years.
The latter said they spent more than four hours talking to Adobe Customer Service over a two-day period and were eventually told there was no fix and the lost images could not be recovered. Adobe has since publicly acknowledged the issue, stating that the issue is limited to iPhone and iPad version 5.4.0 and that the files are completely unrecoverable.
Some customers who have updated to Lightroom 5.4.0 on iPhone and iPad may be missing photos and / or presets. This affected customers using Lightroom mobile without a subscription to the Adobe cloud. It also affected Lightroom cloud clients with photos and presets that were not yet synced with the Adobe 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 know how frustrating and upsetting this will be for people who are affected and we sincerely apologize to them.
Some customers affected by this issue may be able to use iPhone and iPad backups to restore photos and presets. If you are affected by this issue, please refer to the information in our forum.
That, in essence, is the problem that everything that was only stored locally on your iPhone or iPad and was not uploaded to the Adobe cloud is gone. They have since launched a 5.4.1 update that will prevent the issue from hitting more customers, but it will not bring back any of the previously lost images and presets. Adobe seems to suggest that the files may still be available in your iCloud backup, but I would not bank it.
Adobe also emphasizes in its announcement that no Lightroom assets stored in the cloud were lost. Lightroom mobile on Android, Lightroom desktop on macOS and Windows, and Lightroom Classic were not affected by this issue.
The website Wedding Photo Hangover had a slightly different focus on the issue, which is a rather amusing red with amassing the stress of the Pandemic and Adobe’s heroic efforts to remove the ‘mental burden of unfinished projects’. I expect some may not take it so lightly.
[via PetaPixel]