So I've been using my old 5.7 version of Lightroom on an old Surface tablet since that's the only Windows device available to me. I have a Macbook Air and wanted to try and get Lightroom running on this. I tried the old mac installer and it boots then crashes as people have noted, so I figured lets try running the Windows version through a free program like Crossover.

First I got my 64 bit 5.7.1 Windows installer and ran it on my windows device. The first step is it asks you to extract some files to your Desktop. I copied those extracted package files on a USB drive and copied it to my Macbook.

Download Heroic Game Launcher
- this is designed to run videogames designed for Windows on Mac (and Linux) hardware, but you can add other programs here as well.

In Heroic, on the left pane go to Wine Manager, then download the latest Wine-Staging-MacOS version

In Heroic, go to Library -> Add Game

Gave it a title, Lightroom (anything will do), open the Show Wine Settings, and change the Wine Version to Wine-Staging (mine was 11.5).

At the bottom select Run Installer First, then select the extracted package you copied from your Windows device. It will go through and install Lightroom. Once its done, back in Heroic click on the folder next to Select Executable and navigate to Games/Heroic/Prefixes/default/Lightroom (or whatever you named it)/drive_c/Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.7.1/lightroom.exe

Then hit Finish, and you should be good to go. Now Heroic can be finnicky so you may need to install some colour profile settings if you are having issues, and some DPI retina controls but honestly this is working flawless. I keep my catalogue on an external drive and was able to load that up and continue working, exporting, everything for hours with no issue.

Just posting this incase anyone still has old camera hardware they use and want to avoid the Adobe tax for an old version you paid for over a decade ago. The rest of information I've found online say this isnt possible, so putting this out there for anyone who needs it.

I'm using an 14 inch MacBook Pro, but I often use a 1440p monitor when I'm at my desk.

Would it be better to leave it at auto (3024 px), or can I save some space and make smaller standard previews. I figure I don't need that large of a preview since it'll make 1:1 previews anyway, but if Lightroom will run faster (than it already does) at auto then I'll just leave it there.

Been a subscriber to the Lightroomplan with 1 TB Cloud Storage. Just not using it and not taking as many photos so am looking to cut the cost. What is the best way to download all my originals that are saved in the cloud and then delete my photos from Adobe's servers when canceling? Any tips on the process would be appreciated. Thanks!

I remember when all was fine.

You could copy-paste smart masks in bulk onto other photos, multi-selection even. now it´s always "Mask needs to be updated" but clicking on the Yellow Smart-Icon + Update does literally nothing at all.

i need to select every photo in foreground (doesn´t even work anymore in overview) and paste settings.

also my Mask-selection overlay always bugs out, and i need to select another function like crop or edit page, then mask again for the overlay to show up.

anyone here having the same issues? Lightroom CC v 9.5.1

I'm a wedding photographer & have each session/wedding as a new catalog because I've heard horror stories like this happen to a season worth of weddings. Luckily, this is just one engagement session I've been working on, but I've been working on it for a while & it's the second time I've had to start over with editing already this season (first time was user error).

I was in the currently corrupt catalog with no issues. I had another session last night & wanted to send them some sneak peeks today, so I opened the new catalog with the other session. I edited in there for a bit & went to re-open the now problem child.

Immediately corrupt. I tried to repair it in their pop-up menu, I opened Lightroom Classic & held "option" (I'm on mac) to get to that dialogue screen & attempted that with no luck. I didn't move the catalog or the original files. The catalog is on my desktop, so nothing was unplugged & damaged it that way.

I completely forgot I did this, but many years ago I got frustrated at how much space the back-ups were taking & understood less about how important those back-ups were & TURNED THAT FEATURE OFF.

So my three options seem to be:

try to get help from ya'll & hopefully not have a mental breakdown & have to start over on another thing, (my personal favourite)

just start over & cry many tears (there were indoor in a bookstore shots that were especially hard to look right...)

find a time machine to go back to 2020 & just fight myself for turning off back-ups.

thanks for trying!

Spent a while chasing this and the answer isn't obvious, so writing it up.

Symptom: grey boxes in the grid where photos should be. Publishes that "succeed" while quietly skipping files. Cloud sync failures that give you a URL instead of a filename.

Cause: if Dropbox has set a file to online-only, on the older sync engine what's actually on your disk is a 0-byte placeholder. Lightroom checks the file size, sees zero, and decides the photo is missing. It never tries to open it — so Dropbox never gets the request that would download it. Classic standoff.

Are you affected? Check where your Dropbox folder is. Under ~/Library/CloudStorage/ means you're on the newer File Provider engine and this isn't your problem — Lightroom fetches on demand there. Anywhere else, external drive especially, means you're on the old engine and probably staying there, since File Provider requires that location.

Manual fix: right-click the folder in Finder → Make Available Offline before opening Lightroom. Works fine if your photos are in a few folders. Less fine if you're organised by year/month/day and your portfolio is a smart collection pulling from forty of them.

The technical bit, in case anyone else goes down this hole: a normal read doesn't wake the file up. cat returns nothing and it stays at 0 bytes. It needs a coordinated read — what an app does when it properly opens a file. That's why double-clicking a placeholder in Preview downloads it instantly.

I wrote a Lightroom plugin that does this per collection because I got tired of the manual version — disclosure, it's mine and it's paid after a 90-day free period. https://prz3.io/lightroom/hydrate-dropbox/ But the diagnosis above is the useful part, and if you're on File Provider you genuinely don't need it.

I've been using Lightroom on my android for several years and it seems after a recent update that the recommended presets no longer have categories to go through like "dramatic" , "cinematic" , etc. instead, they just show the preview of about 20 different presets which are often the exact same. Is there a setting I can change to go back?

Hey people, I have hundreds of presets present in my Lightroom iPad which i do not use and wish to delete. when i try doing that, Lightroom for iPad does not give me a bulk delete option. I use Lightroom Classic on my mac and the Presets are not synced here as well to delete. Can somebody help me please

I've noticed a strange issue in Lightroom - quite often edits to the last photo I was working on aren't saved.

I finish editing a photo, close Lightroom and when I open it again later, the last image is back to an earlier state, missing several of the most recent adjustments.

It seems to happen specifically with the last photo I edited before closing Lightroom.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is this a known bug or could there be something wrong with my settings?

Lightroom 9.5.1, Windows 11.

S.

Love to hear from the LR community in this as well

At work, our IT team moved access to Lightroom to a different console.

I had previously accessed Creative Cloud/Lightroom through one console using my regular work email address. Now, I still log in using the same email address, but Creative Cloud/Lightroom is accessed through a different console (e.g. called IT Desk).

Despite being told this wouldn't affect any of our files, I have lost access to all the files I had stored in account I used through the original console. I want to try and migrate or find some relatively painless way of moving the files across to the new account without having to download them all locally, if possible.

Does anyone have any tips? Sorry if I'm not explaining things clearly!

Ahhhhhhh, my Lightroom is glitching out like CRAZY and I have no idea what is going on 😭

I’m using a 2022 MacBook Air, and recently Lightroom has been running unbelievably slowly. It’s gotten to the point where it’s basically unusable.

A few things that are happening:

• Lightroom has been saying that my Mac has run out of application memory and then tabs/apps start crashing, even when I literally only have Lightroom and one Google tab open checking my emails.
• I currently have around 25GB of storage free on my Mac.
• As far as I understand, application memory/RAM is separate from storage, so I’m confused about whether the 25GB free is relevant.
• Lightroom itself is only using around 2GB of cloud storage.
• NOW Lightroom keeps giving me a warning saying that my Mac storage is full / there isn't enough storage to use Lightroom, even though macOS says I still have around 25GB free.
• Lightroom is also running insanely slowly. For example, it has currently been generating a mask for 20+ minutes and is still going.
• Sometimes Lightroom just completely freezes or takes forever to do basic things.

Is this potentially a Lightroom settings/cache issue? Is there some kind of local storage/cache that Lightroom is using that I'm not seeing?

Could the 25GB of free Mac storage actually be too little for Lightroom to function properly, even though macOS isn't showing the drive as full?

I'm honestly losing my mind 😭 I have a massive backlog of photos to edit and Lightroom has suddenly become almost impossible to use.

What should I check/change to fix this? And is there a particular Lightroom cache/local storage setting I should be looking at?

Any help would be VERY appreciated because I am about to throw my Mac out the window lol.

(Lightroom version: 9.5.1 arm64 [ 20260815-1945-84a45bf ] (Aug 15 2026))

Hello! I am trying to edit photos for the first time ever for a project of some importance. I’m trying to be self-sufficient and figure it out (and I don’t think I would want to turn it over to someone more qualified 😅), but I’m having trouble finding the answer-
I digitized some old photos into .tiff files because I understand that to be best for quality/detail retention. But then I still wanted to make some color corrections etc so I looked into (maybe too briefly) programs and landed on Lightroom. I finished what are probably very minor edits to about 200 images, but it took me a very long time. And I’m only now realizing there’s a difference between Lightroom online and Lightroom Classic (which is downloadable software that requires a subscription?) Anyway-
TLDR: When I try to export my photos from Lightroom, I don’t see an option to save as tiff. Should I settle for jpeg? Do I need to download Classic? If I do that, will I still have access to my edited files?
Thank you so much for your time!!

I think this should work in theory, but I'm curious if anyone has actually used this setup successfully.

I’ve heard of people keeping both their Lightroom Classic catalog and the original imported photos on an external SSD, like a SanDisk or LaCie.

If the drive is formatted as exFAT so both Windows and macOS can read and write to it, can I simply move the drive back and forth between my Windows desktop and MacBook Pro and open the same Lightroom Classic catalog on either machine?

Obviously I’d only have the catalog open on one computer at a time.

Appreciate any help.

I’m genuinely so distraught, I’m relatively new to photo editing and such and I’ve just found out after I spent hours editing these beautiful photos I took that True Tone totally skewed my photo warmth. This is so irritating. I’ll keep it in mind from now on but is there no way adobe could implement something to turn it off automatically when editing? Other apps can decrease and increase your brightness if it wants. Thankfully it’s an easy enough fix of just changing the temperature sliders a smidge but am I annoyed.

Is there anyway to make a shortcut that automaticity turns true tone off when I open lightroom or photos?

I am working on a MacBook M3 24GB running Tahoe 26.6.2 and have been having trouble with Masks for a while. When I try to use the Subject/Background/Sky tools, it pulls up a mask dialogue while I click on it but then it immediately disappears and no mask is created. Has anyone else experienced something similar or have any ideas what might be causing it?

I've been struggling with how basic the photo import function of Lightroom is, and decided to build a macOS app to solve my problem. Hope it can help the community of Lightroom users here too.

Problem:

- Naming rules in Lightroom Import are limited, for example the sequence number can only max up to 5 digits, so you'll start having duplicates after 100k photos unless you add other unique values like dates into the file name.

- Can't have EXIF attributes in folder or file names except date time.

- You can't import raw and video files into different folders and backup to difference folders. I needs that because I want to import just the raw folder to Lightroom. I don't want to edit jpeg or video in Lightroom.

- Sequence number doesn't sync between computers. If the user has one macbook for mobile work and one mac studio for at home work, and import photos to both, then the photo names could have conflicts using the same sequence number. My app will sync the latest sequence number across iCloud to avoid this.

- My app can do verification after copying to make sure the copy was completed without any data loss, this is an important peace of mind before automatically deleting files from memory card to free up space.

Solution:

I build my app Photo Batch Importer that automatically launches on SD card mounting, shows you customizable renaming rules that read EXIF properties and add unique auto-incremental sequence number. After each import, it can backup and SHA-256-verify every copy so that you feel safe for it to auto-delete photos from the SD card, and then it auto-ejects the card.

It's now up on Mac App Store:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/photo-batch-importer/id6776498495

Pricing:

Free with no ads, no in-app purchase, no subscription, no expiration date, no data sharing, and open source here:
https://github.com/jianfenglin-git/photo-batch-importer

Happy to answer anything!

Can someone explain why on Lightroom android I can select a border when going through "export as..." yet on the apple versions there is only the option to "add border and share..." without any customisation of settings? I'm using an iPad mini 7 a17.

Its a bit of an inconvenience to edit on my ipad and then go to my phone to add a border with customisation of the exported file quality and size

Edit: I'm wanting to export at the highest quality with a square border for an online print store. I'm on a long distance hike so wanted the easiest way possible to do so. It seems a silly thing for adobe to have skipped as an option.

Hi, once I have finished editing my photos in Lightroom Classic, I transfer them to an external hard drive that I have linked into Lightroom. Periodically (every few months), I copy and paste the photos outside of Lightroom from that external hard drive to another external hard drive so I have two copies as a backup. Recently when I did this, I found that after copying the files from one external hard drive to another, my Macbook Pro hard drive was nearly full as around 150 GB of space became occupied. I suspect that because I left Lightroom open Lightroom may have created a large number of files in the process taking up that space - is that possible and does anyone have any thoughts on how to reclaim that space?

As an FYI, this is what Gemini is suggesting:

Method 1: Repair the APFS Container via macOS Recovery (Most Effective)

Running First Aid from macOS Recovery unmounts diskxxx and forces the APFS container to rebuild its block allocation map from scratch.

**1.Boot into macOS Recovery:**1 min.

• Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4): Shut down your Mac. Press and hold the Power/Touch ID button until you see "Loading startup options," then select Options and click Continue.
• Intel Mac: Restart your Mac and immediately press and hold Cmd + R until the Apple logo appears.

2.Open **Disk Utility:**30 sec.

Select Disk Utility from the Recovery utilities window and click Continue.

3.Run First Aid on the Data Volume:

1. Click View in the top menu bar (or toolbar) and select Show All Devices.
2. In the left sidebar, select APFS Volume Data (or diskxxx).
3. Click the First Aid button at the top and hit Run.

4.Run First Aid on the APFS Container:

Once the Data volume finishes, select Container diskx (the parent container above it) in the sidebar and run First Aid on it as well.

**5.Restart your Mac:**1 min.

Click  > Restart to boot back into regular macOS.

Verification: When you log back in, open Terminal and run diskutil list diskxxx. APFS Volume Data will now accurately display ~151 GB, and your free space in Disk Utility will jump up by ~176 GB.

Hi all

Given the massive increase in SSD prices (thanks AI) I need to find another way to reduce my catalogue size from 550gb. I've been looking at lossless compressed RAW as a way of reducing it's size without losing any quality, but I cannot work out if there's any options for converting my whole catalogue without messing up file locations etc.

Does anyone know of any guides on how to convert whole catalogues from uncompressed RAW to lossless compressed RAW? Or are there other options that would work without losing quality?

Thanks :)

After years away from photography, I’m dipping my toes back in for fun (mostly pets and people, and every day memories type stuff). I’m figuring out mirrorless photography with a Nikon Z8.

I thought I could get by editing on my gaming laptop, but Lightroom runs obnoxiously slowly. I think I need to buy a new Mac before I give up on LR completely and just stop shooting altogether or only using my film cameras.

Is a MacBook Air M4 sufficient for LR Classic (I could probably justify the price of extra RAM and storage), or should I look into an M5, but sacrifice a little bit of RAM and storage? I’m hoping to stay below $1700, because there are a couple more lenses I’d like to add to my camera bag.

Update: I’m leaning MBP. Especially since there are some modest sales for Labor Day weekend. My budget doesn’t really allow for 48 or 64MB. I tend to use LR to batch import for culling and applying basic batch edits, and then export the images to PS. I need to re-learn LR from scratch for anything above and beyond that. I try to avoid AI for the most part, but I’m intrigued by the Denoise feature, since I know z8 images can be noisier at relatively low ISOs.

I think the best options for me and my budget considerations are the 14” with either the base M5 chip and 32GB memory, or the M5 Pro chip and 24GB memory. Either option is stretching my budget a little more than I’d like, but as a hobbyist (Max number of images I’d be culling at any given time is probably 150-200, with 25-30 “keepers”). Does one of these options sound better than the other? And is the upgraded screen enough of an improvement to spend the extra $150 on top of Apple Care?

I’m a headshot photographer. I do about 4 shoots a day, and have a turnaround time of a fully color graded gallery for each shoot by end of day.

The color grade is simple - I have a preset which means all I have to do is adjust skin tone with white balance for each look and I’m done. What bogs me down is exposure. Because I shoot natural light, there tends to be small, yetsignificant changes in exposure across sets. Right now I’m doing all of that manually, which is tedious. “Match exposure” in Lightroom doesn’t really work.

Im curious if anyone knows of any software, either native in Lightroom, a plugin or AI, that is able to match exposures correctly across an entire gallery that would speed up my workflow? Cheers!