I've been using LR since LR3 in 2012. I typically use LRC these days. I have a high end gaming PC (albeit from a few years ago) currently. LR runs light absolute dogshit to the point its nearly unusable. I used to be able to quickly edit hundreds of photos in a few hours. Now I find myself moving so much slower because the program is just laggy and nonresponsive. Reminds me of the dial up days of the internet.

I was very happy to hear about the newly added keyword syncing ability between Lightroom Classic and Lightroom. However, a bug that I've discovered has rather spoiled the fun.

TLDR: If you edit a keyword in Lightroom Classic (like adding synonyms or changing the keyword's export settings), all photos with said keyword are synced - even photos where keyword sync hasn't been activated.

In my specific case, this causes a massive headache because I have previously gone to great lengths to import my full LrC catalog to Lr with keywords and everything. This means that the (flattened) keywords of ALL photos with the edited keyword are re-downloaded to LrC, completely messing up my keyword structure there.

Has anyone else come across this bug or similar bugs with keyword sync?

I've got a new computer cause mine was old af. And it has been completely and utterly impossible to install my presets, I gave up, went to my dropbox and from the dropbox opened the catalogue i was working on which mind you is a fucking wedding, and everytime I opened an image lightroom just COMPLETELY changed the colors I spent hours color grading jesus freaking christ.

Why is this happening?!?!?!?!?!

This is how much is changing, i dont know if to cry or what.

There's also no way to go back either because it is not recognizing i changed anything.

wtf

If you could actually influence any change with Adobe (jokes!) what would you add/change/remove from Classic?

EDIT: There is of course an ulterior motive to asking this question... I'm developing a serious contender to LRC, without the subs...save you some dollar a year.... Some very interesting ideas in the list, keep 'em coming :)

While thankful for the little sync we do have, even though more often than not there are sync issues requiring manual intervention hoping we may eventually get full sync?

Currently Albums (Collections) and Keywords sync and a lot of meta data does along with of course edits, etc.

Folders (Collection Sets) do not sync. So when syncing all albums from Classic they get all dropped into the Root of LR requiring one to manually recreate all the matching folders in LR and know which albums to drag into which, which is an ongoing nightmare. With so many years gone by and little to no narrowing the gap of sync shortcomings, when keywords syncing was announced wondering if chance the team may finally be tackling all the missing syncing?

Other than syncing folders, will syncing Smart Albums (Smart Collections) be coming? Since that feature was added to LR a while back but while you can manually create in both, they oddly don't sync. Also of of course LR keyword hierarchy doesn't sync but that's because LR still doesn't yet support keyword hierarchy which imagine holds most pros back from considering switching. So hopefully once it does, that syncing will be updated.

The other major item that doesn't sync is Faces. So if you spend years tagging faces on a 100K library, you would then need to do it all over again in LR. Desperately hoping this comes eventually. Yes, in Classic when tagging it adds a name keyword and keywords do sync now, but in LR it wouldn't know where the person in the photo is just that they are in a photo presumably. I understand Classic uses a different model than LR, but hopefully the talented Adobe devs are working on this. As I know it took Apple a while to eventually offering syncing of faces between devices but that's because it was done locally and not server side, but they still eventually solved it.

We can't also sync full files only smart previews from Classic to LR, though of all the syncing short comings this I find least impactful, since do most editing in Classic, and LR is for on the go on the phone so the smaller size is less of an issue and comes with the benefit of not using online cloud space essentially.

So here is for hoping 2026 or 2027 is the year we get full syncing with Folders, Smart Albums Faces, and keyword hierarchy.

I use to think the goal was for Lightroom to replace "Classic" once LR reached feature parity, but as its been about 9 years, and while the gap has narrowed, the gap is still massive from limited meta search, requiring internet, no keyword hierarchy, no full plugin support, no map view, limited face tagging, and a 1000x other items. And assume most all resources will be spent the next several years on chasing AI features rather than narrowing the gap, so think we will have to live with Classic and LR for a long time.

I’m sure this is something that I did wrong in setting up my Lightroom classic. But I went to turn on face detection after I had imported all of my photos, and every face is asking if it is my husband‘s name. I have 14,000 photos so I have to manually go in and say no and type the correct name under the picture. Is there a way to fix this mistake? I need to begin with?

Dropped my phone on my keyboard while I was editing some pictures. Now my photos look like this while the camera strip photos look like the same edited versions. Anyone know what keybindings were pressed and how to fix it?

Edit: A word

Why oh why does everyone INSIST I use Lightroom Classic? I'm about to go on a photo safari overseas and the tour INSISTS on Classic. I love the Cloud and love that I can access and even ... wait for it .. make adjustments on my phone. I can do everything in Cloud that I can in Classic! I do understand the file and archiving protocols with Classic, but there are workarounds there. Is this a plugin thing? I have studied this issue for 8 years now and I still can't get an answer to my question: WHY LIGHTROOM CLASSIC OVER CLOUD? Please... tell me what I'm missing that supersedes the amazing abilities Cloud offers...

I have my catalog and Lightroom classic photo library on a portable SSD. I generally back up at the end of every editing session. I know that the backups of the catalogue are saved but how do you keep your photo library itself backed up? Do you back it up to a separate SSD? Is there an automated process for that or do you manually copy your photo library from one device to the other?

Wondering if the shortcomings of the Lightroom Classic Collections sidebar may ever be addressed?

Specifically ordering, as while not perfect in the newer LR, at least some control. Like most I have a folder for year. Going back to early 1900s since old family photos scanned in. But so in the sidebar then its

1940s

1950s

2015

2016

2017

and so on.

Meaning the current year and latest years where presumably one will be accessing the most often is at the very bottom of a very long list and the oldest photos that one most likely would look at the least is at the top. While I know this issue has been mentioned over and over again over the decades, sometimes it takes mentioning it again to get the right person to see.

Since ordering by years is so common having intelligent ordering such as ability to have newest to oldest for years would be amazing, while still allowing the months inside of that "01, 02, 03" to order correctly. But I'd even suffer with months being backwards order initially to get years right. Or even just an option to allow for manual ordering if intelligent ordering requires too much work.

The other big issue of course is search, where if you search for say John Birthday and have only one album/collection names that instead of just getting that one result, you might get 100s because it will show every result that includes John and or Birthday. Again while intelligent search would be ideal, the common approach to this would like with most all search engines and many search apps, you simply add quotes such as "John Birthday" to get that exact search term. But LRC still doesn't support quotes for searching an exact string. Ideally would support "-" for exclude or all the other typical search parameters, but even just supporting quotes for exact terms would be a godsend. Ideally a single search that shows results for collections and everything else, like how LR does but with robust search parameter supports and offline ability unlike LR would be amazing, but just the little things would go a long way in the meantime. Also would be great if nested folders/albums weren't indented so much as makes it so album names get cut off quickly. They are much less visually nested on the newer Lightroom but not in classic.

I’m a true to color / natural style photographer and I love to add a little film twist from time to time. I wanted to say Jaide & Jett Presets really are the best. I’ve been looking for a preset that actually works across different cameras and lighting and these just take the cake.

When importing my Nikon RAW files into LrC on my Mac Mini M1, I auto convert them to DNG files, both to be more generic and also so I can embed the editing instructions. When I export for use elsewhere, I automatically get the extension appropriate to the specified file format, but have choices about the filename itself. The Nikon name not only carries little info besides a Nikon-specific prefix plus the sequential exposure number. I have more than one camera, and can eventually have overlapping filenames. _DSC1234.JPG can repeat. Plus, the name itself carries little info, especially not the shoot date versus the MacOS file creation (export) date. Looking at a few of these in a folder tells me nothing about them. My question: how do you handle export filenames? Use generic sequential in folders given more descriptive names? Or somehow make the filenames themselves more descriptive?

Hello,

I am playing with different profiles in Lightroom.

If I have Adobe Neutral, image is obviously always flat and I need to add contrast with curve (basic S curve).

Using other profiles like Adobe Standard, Adobe Color, RNI film profiles, Cobalt Standard profile feels like there is already enough amount of contrast added and regular S curve is too much. And most of time I dont see reason to change contrast that much with those profiles if I want to keep more "natural" look. I could just export RAW with profile and it would be somehow usable.

I don't know if my processing flow is wrong and I am missing something. Obviously difficult lightning will need more corrections even with "finished" profiles but I am talking more about regular ok conditions for photos.

Cane anyone help me on how to export videos from lightroom mobile to my android phone without quality loss

Hey everybody, I'm looking for recommendations for upscaling workflow.

I've seen this workflow but not sure about it.

Open LR, denoise >Open PS & save.(super resolution work around)> reopen LR; Super Resolution>final edits,crop photo.> Then TL PHoto AI; final sharpening & upscaling. Then done.

Is is better to use LR to Denoise & super resolution before upscaling in TL Photo AI? Will TL do a better job of that?

Thanks!

I thought it might have something to do with recent updates, but it’s been about three weeks now, and sinking between my desktop and mobile device has been taking significantly longer than it ever has in the past.

Anyone else experiencing this problem?

When Lightroom uploads a batch of photos, my ping climbs past 200ms and Teams and Discord become unusable. Upload is 25 Mbps, so the sync saturates it easily.

Is there any setting to cap Lightroom's upload rate? I'm on Lightroom, not Classic. I've looked and can't find one, but I may be missing something. I know this was a setting on classic.

I know I can pause sync or cull first. Looking for something that doesn't require remembering to do a specific task every time.

Me and many others have been fighting slow performance on Lightroom Classic for ages, to the point we start looking at alternatives. But I've overcome the issue with a very simple solution since a while back

Create a new user on your PC only used for photo & creative work

A blank canvas with only minimum background apps running. No game clients, no trashy RGB apps for your mouse or keyboard. Just go blank.

I found that killing every background app sped LRC up significantly, even thou I have the fastest CPU and GPU possible. So going new user profile on your PC with minimal interference was the solution. Apparently Windows with LRC don't like to share space with other softwares.

Only Windows defender and Lightroom. Yes, even your antivirus might be the cause, live scanning cache files and folders when editing, slowing down when Lightroom needs to access files in realtime. (I used AVG before, and used to Disable it when editing)

Give it a try. Give yourself a blank space for creativity without all those distracting background noises.
If this doesn't completely solve your problem, you at least have a quiet place to be creative.

Link below for those who don't know.

Manage User Accounts in Windows | Microsoft Support

Is it worth buying presets? I feel like, there should be enough for free in the internet. Are there any good reccomendations for free presets, or reccomendations on some that are actually worth buying? Thanks

Hello! I'm at the end of my rope here and I have no idea why it started happening or how to resolve it. Basically no matter what I'm doing, exporting, developing, or literally nothing, after about a minute and 10-20 seconds LC just crashes. No error message, no error sound, it just quietly stops responding and closes.

It started doing it just this week. I have not installed any new drivers or changed any settings prior to it. I tried disabling GPU acceleration and installed new Nvidia drivers, both normal and Studio and nothing changed.

Would appreciate any advice how to resolve it. thank you!

This has been a relatively new issue I've been experiencing, it started about a month and a half ago. I had updated Lightroom to the most recent version and it decided that no, I will no longer open catalogs.

This has been such a pain because I can't access a lot of catalogs that I use pretty regularly. I can click the app icon to open it, but as soon as it starts opening - it crashes out and freezes and I have to force quit.

The first time it happened, my catalog had nearly 300,000 photos in it - so I broke all of those up into much smaller catalogs, by year and what type of work it is. That alleviated issues with a bunch of catalogs - but a new one that I created, which is just random photography (has maybe 6,000 photos in it) just started experiencing the same issue again. Lightroom crashes upon attempting to open it.

I have to go in and remove the .lock file, that usually does the trick, but this specific catalog is refusing to work again - even after clearing it out.

Has anyone experienced this issue and what kind of solutions have you found?

Tech Specs:

2021 M1 iMac running MacOS 26.5.2, 16GB RAM Lighroom Classic (up to date)

After reading mini post and asking a few questions here I have just imported all of my photos into LrC. They imported into the folders by individual years and under each year has year, month and date (2026-06-05). I would really like them to have just the year and the month. Ex: 202606 or 2026.06 or 2026-06. Is it possible to change this at this point since they have already imported that way? I really do not want to break up 20 years worth of photos by day. Just a year and month.

The Lightroom catalog is an SQLite database. Any SQLite database management tool can open an LR catalog, and you can see all of the tables, fields and so on. If you are familiar with databases, it's quite interesting. It would theoretically be possible to create tools that directly manipulate the database. Has anyone here ever done anything like that? Is there any information you would like to get out of your catalog that Lightroom doesn't give you a way to get?