Adobe users lose their photos and presets after Lightroom update bug

'We know how frustrating and upsetting this will be to people affected and we sincerely apologise,' Adobe said

Adobe’s recent update for one of its photo editing apps has deleted many photographers photos – with the company confirming there is no way to get them back.

Lightroom for iPhone and iPad customers removed users photos and presets, the company confirmed. Some users paid hundreds of dollars for professional presets.

“This 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,” Adobe said in a statement.

Although the company has now released a new version of the software (Lightroom 5.4.1) that fixes the bug, the photos and presets are unrecoverable.

“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 apologise,” Adobe says.

On Adobe’s forum discussing the error, many users were distraught that there photos were irreversibly deleted.

“This is so heartbreaking for me. I shot several images using the LR Mobile Camera feature so as to get RAW images I could later edit. I was in the wilderness with no cell signal and had my phone on Airplane mode. I shot an incredible sunset on Mt Adams and then some fantastic images of my partner with the mountain in the background”, one user laments.

“I was able to view and edit while in the field but was planning to do the bulk of my edits on my desktop once I got back. Due to not having an internet signal, no backups were able to be made. I never thought in a million years something like this could happen. So disappointing. All of my images are gone!”

Similar complaints were documented by PetaPixel, which quoted a Reddit user who had been talking with Adobe’s customer service for hours over a few days, to no avail.

“Adobe is unbelievable some times. All I got was a ‘we’re sincerely sorry’ and nothing else. 2+ years of photo edits just gone because of Adobe and all they give is a sorry”, they said.

Users on the Adobe forums have suggested that Apple users who made a backup of their device may be able to restore their presets and photos from a previous backup, regaining their work and any presets that they may have paid for.

Barring that, there is no way for users to retrieve any lost data.