Adobe pushed an update for the iOS version of Lightroom that has deleted users’ data. On Wednesday, some found their photos and Lightroom presets gone. One Redditor claims to have lost two years’ worth of photo edits.
“I made a post yesterday that all of my photos and presets had disappeared after updating the Lightroom app. That was 2+ years of edits that are just gone, lost, unrecoverable,” said Extracount-13 on the Lightroom subreddit.
Some users claimed to have lost hundreds of dollars worth of paid presets.
Adobe rep Rikk Flohr responded to the fiasco in the Photoshop help forums confirming that the most recent update caused the problem. Adobe quickly issued a patch that fixed the data deleting bug, but it’s too late for those already affected.
Not all Lightroom users lost their data. Those with subscriptions who synced to Adobe’s cloud lost little to nothing. Many of those affected, use Lightroom to edit photos locally and do not see the point in paying for a subscription that mostly offers tools they won’t use.Adobe reissued Flohr’s statement apologizing but saying there was not much else it could do. The data is gone for good. Since the glitch affected photos stored locally, there is no way to retrieve them from its end. The company suggests that users might be able to recover edits and presets from a recent iPhone or iPad backup.
If you were unlucky enough to have the update triggered with unsynced photos and presets on your iPhone or iPad, unfortunately there’s no getting them back. Adobe has since confirmed via the Adobe help website that the deletion affected, “customers using Lightroom mobile without a subscription to the Adobe cloud. It also affected Lightroom cloud customers with photos and presets that had not yet synced to the Adobe cloud.” The company went on to apologize, saying, “We know that some customers have photos and presets that are not recoverable. We know how frustrating and upsetting this will be to people affected and we sincerely apologize.”
It’s hard for Adobe to compensate users effectively when potentially very important and unique photographs have been lost forever. The incident will leave a bitter taste in a lot of user’s mouths and places a question mark over how much users can really trust Adobe to keep their photos safe.
