Context:
I’m a longtime Lightroom Classic user. It runs great on my M3 Max MBPro 16” with 36g RAM.

But the MBP is too heavy for me to carry around, especially if I’m also carrying a camera. I leave it home, connected to a big screen monitor most of the time.

I’m going to be doing a lot of traveling next year and thinking about getting a MB Air 13 to travel with.

Questions:
I assume a M5 MB Air CPU/GPU is good enough, but what about RAM? In the old days, we used to say the fastest way to speed up Photoshop was to get enough RAM to fit the entire image in memory. But everything is so much faster now, is RAM really a concern anymore?

Also, thinking about using the cloud based Lightroom, so that all the files will be in the cloud when I’m traveling and download back to my Classic when I return.

I occasionally download photos to Lightroom on my iPhone and edit on the phone, with good success. So I’m thinking the MBAir would be something similar.
Other than Internet speeds would this be a problem?

I’m using full frame Sony cameras, 40~60Mpx RAW files.

Let me know your thoughts, thanks.

So I really wonder if this workflow is normal or I'm missing something. Often clients want to make the selection of photos for their shoot themselves and in those moments I'm uploading all the raw photos (in low res jpgs) to Pixieset.

Once they made their selection I want to copy the list of all image names (Pixieset offers this option) and then just paste it in Lightroom (modern version) but it doesn't work. When a client chooses like 150 images I have to manually go image for image and put them in an album for editing. This is so time consuming and feels so weird, no way this is normal to work like this right?

Does the copy paste option work for y'all? I tried both with and without comma (,) between image names, both options didn't work. Sometimes when I do like 3 image names it will actually find 3 and I can bundle select them into the designated album. But even just 10 images already doesn't work.

Is this a common issue in Lightroom? I've also read that it should work in the og Lightroom version, well, I'm not using that one and how does this function not properly work in the modern version then..

I’m curious if there’s a way to have some sort of automated workflow where I can import new photos into Lightroom (CC, not Classic) from my SD card as soon as I plug it into my Mac. I have a Mac mini set up at home that’s always on, and I’m hoping to connect an SD card reader to it so that when I get home with my camera, all I have to do is take my SD card out, insert it into the reader, and new photos auto transfer and import. I edit on my iPad and would love to have it so they’re ready in my Creative Cloud library from any device I use. Better yet, my camera has a USB port, could I even just plug it into my camera and have them auto upload? Would appreciate any help, thanks!

Currently have the Photography Plan and use Lightroom desktop almost exclusively. I can count on half a hand how many times I have used PS. If I understood the mobile sync better I might use that more often. I use the desktop app on one Mac since version one.

I want a plan that is LrC only.. If the mobile camera and sync is included that's fine. Is this what the $11.99 per month Lightroom plan is? Can't really make sense of the plans on the website.

I shoot RAW with a 20MP Olympus and a 50MP Sony. With images from both, when I am in the Library Module and try to switch between images with the cursor-left and cursor-right keys, the switch often takes several seconds or seemingly doesn't happen at all. This happens in around 50% of the cases, other switches are super fast.

I am creating 1:1 previews during import. It also doesn't seem to have to do with caching because a picture that has already displayed may still be slow if shown again.

Is anybody else seeing this? I am on Macbook with M1 Max and 64GB RAM.

I recently talked to a Lightroom Classic beta tester in Germany who has been part of the program for many years, and he said the whole beta process has gone downhill quite a lot.

Just to be clear, he didn’t tell me anything specific or confidential about upcoming features, internal plans or anything else that could break an NDA. We were only talking generally about how the beta program itself has changed over the years. According to him, the developers used to be much more active with the testers. There was more discussion, more feedback, and bug reports were more likely to get responses. Now he feels there is much less communication, fewer bugs actually getting fixed, and much less interaction between the developers and the beta testers.

He almost described it as if Adobe has abandoned the beta program compared with how it used to work. Obviously this is just one long-time beta tester’s experience, so I can’t say how representative it is of the whole program. But considering how many long-standing bugs and issues Lightroom Classic still has, it does make you wonder what is actually going on inside Adobe. Still its a old code base wound if the new UI like in photo beta 28 will go to classic?

I have been in with the beta for permiere and dont recognize this att all

I was recently editing some photos in LrC, and when I moved the Denoise slider with my mouse, my entire PC crashed, the screen froze and the sound cut out, so I had to shut it down using the physical power button.

I don’t know what to do; it doesn’t seem to be a power/performance issue, I have 32GB of RAM, an RTX 5070 Ti, and a Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

I don't know if it was always this way, or if something new, but when I make a shot full screen on LR cloud for the Mac I'm getting a checkerboard pattern in the border. I just want it to be black. Is this an option somewhere that I can't find?

I had my first Estate Agent photoshoot the other day. I spent a couple hours editing the pictures in lightroom to where I was happy with them and then sent them to the client.

They've come back with a mountain of adjustments to be made as it's "too dark here" "too overexposed here" ect ect.. I feel a bit defeated.

Upon viewing the pictures on my Iphone, they look completely different to my monitor... washed out and underexposed.

I have a MSI MAG 272QP QD-OLED X50 monitor. How can I adjust the monitor/windows settings so that I can best represent what the client is seeing on their presumably bog standard monitor/iphone. There are so many settings on my monitor that I don't understand. I need someone to explain this to me like im 5 years old.

I took HDR photos on the shoot using bracketing. I'm hoping someone can give me some advise.

I have a windows laptop and it’s obviously not ideal for editing. When I denoise on it, 1 photo will take a few minutes. I wasn’t sure what to get instead. I was thinking about an iPad but wasn’t sure how people like editing by finger vs using a better laptop with a mouse. I am open to hear all opinions! TIA

We use adobe cloud heavily on our studio. We use the albums to store different clients photos and use the lightroom web to upload the photos on the cloud. After the recent update our android phone and tablet that we use to edit photos keeps crashing whenever we try to view all the albums. The thumbnails are not showing. I personally use the LR mobile on the phone to edit my personal street photography photos but I cant do it right now because it is crashing constantly. This is the first time that we experienced this issue. We tried to use my partners LR Mobile on her iPhone and it works smoothly. We tried everything, clearing all the phone and tablets LR Mobile cache, even uninstalling and reinstalling the app and the issues still persists. We checked if there are sync issues via the LR web but there is non. It heavily affects our business.

I've encountered an issue with Lightroom that I've been unable to resolve. I would appreciate any help with this.

When I attempt to crop a picture, the picture will slide around out of frame, rather than the grid itself moving. Every time I try to move the grid, a hand icon appears instead, grabbing the picture and pushing it out of frame to crop it. Hopefully this makes sense.

The only known fix I've found for this is to reset Lightroom, which has not worked.

I had no issue with it earlier in the day, so I'm not sure what changed.

Has anybody else run into this issue? Any advice appreciated!

After more than a decade of LrC, even with an excellent file/folder hierarchy it takes a bit of scrolling to get to specific folders and collections that I use often.

Is there a way to create custom keyboard commands to navigate to specific folders or collections?

I'm planning to rebuild my keyword hierarchy in Lightroom Classic from the ground up, and I'd really appreciate some input from photographers who have experience organizing large photo catalogs.

My goal is to create a logical, consistent, and manageable hierarchy that will work well over many years, without ending up with thousands of redundant or poorly organized keywords.

I'm currently considering these 14 top-level categories:

1. Animals
2. Plants
3. Architecture
4. Art
5. Objects
6. Vehicles
7. Food
8. Places
9. Events
10. Nature
11. Activities
12. Photography
13. Visual Elements
14. People

The general idea is to use mostly three levels of hierarchy, with a fourth level where additional detail is genuinely useful.

A few principles I'm considering:

• Use plural names for categories and singular names for specific subjects.
• Give each subject a logical place in the hierarchy, avoiding unnecessary duplication.
• Keep photographic genres, techniques, and visual characteristics separate from the subjects themselves.
• Keep People separate, using Lightroom Classic's built-in face recognition and people management.
• Place Sports under Activities and Clothing under Objects rather than creating additional top-level categories.

I'd particularly like to hear your thoughts on:

• Are 14 top-level categories too many, too few, or about right?
• Are there any obvious overlaps or missing categories?
• Would you organize any of these differently?
• How deep do you typically go with your keyword hierarchy?
• If you've maintained a hierarchical keyword system for years, what would you do differently if you were starting over today?

I'm especially interested in practical experience from people managing large catalogs.

I'm not necessarily looking for the perfect hierarchy, but rather a solid foundation that will remain useful and manageable as the collection grows.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions, criticism, or examples of what has worked for you!

Hi all,

As a sports photographer, it is a big rule to make sure colours are accurate.

That gave me thought, what if there was a version of the WB tool where instead of making the point you select pure white, it makes it the exact hex code ask.

Obviously this means the user has to select the correct part that they want to be the colour.

Just and idea that came to me and thought Id ask for opinions? This may also already exist in which case I am sorry for wasting your time!

Thanks

Using LrC on a MacBook Air. Lightroom keeps merging the separate masks I am creating for people (in this case my daughter and grandson) into one mask when I try to either copy them or incorporate them into a preset. A quick google search and it appears this is a longstanding issue. Has anyone ever been able to find a workaround? If not a workaround, maybe a workflow to make applying skin tone masks to each individual image less painful? I want to rip my hair out right now LOL.

TIA.

A fun new quirk has started where when I hit the delete button the whole program freezes and ultimately crashes. This is the desktop app.

I already get the beach ball of doom a lot with LR, and it will occasionally crash when I ask it to do other things. But a restart usually fixes it. I restarted both the app and the computer and it still happens.

Is this a lightroom problem or a Mac problem? If so has anyone else run into this and if you fixed it please share!

Hello everyone. My PC failed a windows update last Thursday leaving me with only the recovery window. I spent close to 25 hours in the command window trying to fix the corrupted files so I wouldn't have to reinstall windows, but in the end I had to perform a clean reinstallation of the OS. I have my entire LR Catalog on a portable NVME since I work on my PC at home and the iMacs at work or a Macbook Pro on the road. I also used the robocopy command to copy my entire user profile as a secondary backup. When I got home from work yesterday I reinstalled windows, downloaded LRC & Photoshop, and launched LRC to get back to editing my photos.

Now inside of LRC I went to open my catalog on my portable drive. Doing so caused the application to hang and say "not responding". Forced it to close, relaunch and now it launched in a hanging "not responding" state at the splash screen. I took my portable drive to a neighbor's, who is also a photographer, to see if my catalog will open on his Macbook. Same issue. Lightroom was in a hanging state trying to launch my catalog. He reopened his from his files with no issues.

I am now at work and LRC hangs on launch. I tried opening my catalog itself in Finder but same hang.

I need this catalog to work both at home, and on the road/work.

I saw another post from 9 months ago with the same issue. They said to backup my photos (already done), and to save a copy of the catalog somewhere else on the drive. Then to delete everything else in the folder, restart the PC and LRC will launch.

Will this work around get rid of any XMP files? And should this fix its launch issues on both the work Macs and my Windows PC at home?

Thanks!

EDIT: Files next to .lrcat

- Helper.lrdata
- Previews.lrdata
- Smart Previews.lrdata
- .lrcat-data
- .lrcat-shm
- .lrcat-wal
- .lrcat.lock
- folder for Old Lightroom Catalogs

So normally I apply batch Denoise to the photos at night. But today I exported day photos (without Denoise) and the time for exporting to jpegs was way less.

My question is, does Denoise affect the export time? Even after waiting for Denoise to be applied

Going in circles this morning. Any preset I create is italicized and greyed out. I have never seen this before, unless I mistakenly bring a jpeg file into LR. The files are Nikon NEF files, the same camera I’ve been shooting on for the last year. Create presets at least every week and never seen this. The Adobe presets aren’t italicized/greyed out, just the ones I create. If I start with an Adobe preset and make a slight modification to it and try to save it as my own preset, it’s italicized. Confusing! TIA

I'm researching whether a small photo-recovery utility would be useful. Before building anything, I'd like to understand a specific Lightroom workflow: a client sends screenshots of their picks, but the screenshots have no readable filenames and you need to locate the original frames in your catalog.

If this happened on a job in the last three months:

1. Roughly how many screenshots and original photos were involved, and were you using Classic or Cloud?

2. How did you find the originals, how long did it take, and were similar burst frames a problem?

3. How often does it happen? If a tool or a change to your proofing process solved it, what worked?

I'm aware that filename lists and gallery favorites already solve many selection workflows. I'm specifically asking about screenshots where the filename is gone; "this is rare" or "our current process handles it" would also be useful answers.

I'd like to walk through one recent recovery using existing tools before deciding whether anything new is needed. If you're open to that, say so in a reply. Start with a description; please don't post client images or private links here. There is no product, signup or paid offer attached to this question.

I had the link to my 2025 Ball Photos but the photographer privated the album. It says I need an account to view them. I don't know much about Adobe Lightroom but if I made an account could I know who the owner is and email or message them to ask for access? There's some photos of me and my friends I didn't download at the time but I want to see again.

I am thinking on getting an Ipad Air with the M1 chip to be able to use the AI Denoise feature. My question is how long does it take to complete the process on a Nikon Raw file 25MB? Also, can you batch multiple RAW pictures at once?

Thank you.