Adobe Apologizes For Lightroom iOS Bug That Permanently Erased User Photos, Presets

A bug in Adobe's Lightroom app for iOS has unintentionally erased all user photos and presets, with no other way to get them back but an iCloud backup.

A number of iPhone owners who use Adobe's Lightroom app have complained that their photos and presets had been deleted after updating the app to version 5.4. Adobe took notice of these complaints and acknowledged the existence of such a bug in Lightroom version 5.4.

“We know how frustrating and upsetting this will be to people affected and we sincerely apologize,” Adobe said in a statement.

It released a new version of the app, version 5.4.1, which includes a fix for the said problem. Those who update to the new version will not have their photos and presets deleted automatically.

Sadly, while the company “sincerely” apologizes for the issue, it said that the erased photos and presets “are not recoverable.” Those who do not have backups will not be able to restore the lost data, even if they've been stored on the iPhone or iPad for years.

The new update came after numerous users aired the issues they encountered with the latest version of the Lightroom app via various platforms, including the Photoshop feedback forums and Reddit.

According to one user named Mohamad Alif Eqnur, all of his pictures and presets were “gone” after updating the apps on his iPhone. Other users echoed his complaint, saying they also lost all the photos and presets on their iPhone after updating Lightroom to version 5.4.

It appears that the issue isn't isolated to those who use Lightroom's free version. One affected user named Tim Ryland said he uses a paid version (which requires a subscription), but his photos and presets were also deleted. He added that “watermark font and size have been lost” as well.

Some who have backups in the cloud were able to restore their photos and presets. One user restored his device from backup and said he was able to get back his ”50GB Lightroom library.” However, all of the data he successfully restored got deleted again after launching the app, indicating that version 5.4 really is the problem.

“I tried to restore my iPad from backup and it did in fact restore my 50GB lightroom libary (it shows in iPad Preferences/Storage), BUT as soon as i tried to launch the app, it again deleted the whole library. Also, looking again in Preferences, now Lightroom shrinked from 50GB to 500MB, so in fact launching the new App version 5.4 deletes the library,” Willerscheidt said.