
Lightroom app update wipes users' photos and presets, Adobe says not recoverable - fraXis
https://petapixel.com/2020/08/20/lightroom-app-update-wipes-users-photos-and-presets-adobe-says-they-are-not-recoverable/
======
Brajeshwar
In another story, I needed Lightroom for about a week to do some photo work. I
started with their subscription for the month and I wanted to let go if I'm
done in the first month.

While trying to cancel my subscription, I realize I can only do that after
paying for the remaining 11 months (rough calculation).

With no other option, I paid my penalty and left Adobe for good. I have
deleted my 15+ year old Adobe account.

Alternatives and to serve nostalgic attachments, I bought the whole suite of
Affinity[1] Products. I've also bought Darkroom[2] for photo editing on iPad.

1\. [https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/](https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/)

2\. [https://darkroom.co](https://darkroom.co)

P.S. (edit/addition) I ended a 25+ year relationship with Adobe. I paid myself
through my school and college with PageMaker, and other softwares (both open
source, free, and paid).

~~~
AdamJacobMuller
I recently signed up for adobe CC to test out premiere for some video editing
work (side note, Final Cut is better) and instead of inputting a real card I
used a privacy.com one. When I decided I didn't want it, I just disabled the
privacy card. I only have to deal with a few annoying emails from adobe. I
didn't even bother trying to cancel. Reading your comment makes me realize how
smart that was.

~~~
Aachen
Is that legal in the USA? Entering into a purchase agreement
("koopovereenkomst", not sure if I'm translating the jargon correctly) and
then just not paying? Because that's certainly not legal where I live.

I understand that the odds of repercussions are small and that there are no
damages on Adobe's side since you haven't physically taken their goods so it
would probably have to be taken up by the public prosecutor rather than become
a civil case... but still, I'd not be happy having my name on a "doesn't pay
their bills" list, nor is it quite honest.

Or am I misunderstanding the situation and did they advertised with monthly
cancelable? (False advertising) Nobody mentioned that in the thread though,
and from this comment it sounds like it was very clear that you were agreeing
into a year-long subscription:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24232282](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24232282)

~~~
tobyhinloopen
I did the same. I just stopped paying and told my CC company to block
transactions because I never agreed to them.

Adobe is very unclear about what you’re actually agreeing to up until the
point you’re cancelling.

I just blocked transactions and never heard from them again (except for some
emails).

If they want to fight it, good luck winning it in Dutch courts when the
conditions are unclear.

~~~
wodenokoto
Everybody on the net is always like "Just told my bank to block the
transaction" \- when I did that, in a EU country, my bank was very reluctant.

They wanted proof that I had been in contact with the company and tried to get
a refund from them, and that I in fact didn't owe them money.

~~~
aspaceman
You shouldn’t be contacting a bank - I think that might be the distinciton.
When people say this, I interpret it as contacting their credit card and
asking for a chargeback.

This depends on the credit card company but mine is very willing to charge
back if I call. They find it pretty trivial.

I’ve never done anything like this with a debit card or bank though. I think
the money that leaves through debit is actually gone and that’s a distinction.
I know the EU is more debit focused.

~~~
folmar
It is not that much debit focused, but you normally get credit card from a
bank here.

~~~
tluyben2
Which country? Because here in south eu all banks give out debit cards as
standard card. NL is different in that they use maestro so if you want to
travel (outside of eu) you have to request a regular debit/credit card and
most NL banks do not issue debit cards outside maestro, so you get a Cc.

~~~
krageon
> if you want to travel (outside of eu) you have to request a regular
> debit/credit card

The era where maestro cards were impossible to use abroad was already over ten
years ago. The only thing you might need a creditcard for abroad is hotels and
car rental, which you wouldn't be able to do with any kind of debit card
(outside of a relatively small selection of hotels).

~~~
tluyben2
That doesn't match, at all, with my experience. I had to travel for work all
over the world the past 8 years, usually twice a month and my maestro cards
didn't work in any US atms or shops, nor in chinese ones, nor in hk,
indonesia, australia, cambodia, most atms in thailand and other places.

In the US & China, it had big maestro stickers everywhere, but it didn't work
at all. Different cards, different banks; on calling the banks they said they
did not even see a transaction coming in and they the cards are set for
international travel (and work fine everywhere they are accepted in the EU).

And it's not for lack of trying; One time on a big slog from US -> China ->
AUS, I (stupidly) brought 1 credit card and 3 maestros and my CC got cancelled
(fraud); I tried literally every atm , shop in these countries and could not
get $1. I had to borrow from my colleagues. This is a few years ago.

------
userbinator
When things like this happen, is it any wonder an increasing number of users
are viewing any sort of "updates" with extreme apprehension? "It was working
fine just before, and now I've lost everything. Why should I have even
updated!?!?"

I still remember when the general advice was "do not upgrade/change what
works, unless you need something in a later version", which then changed to
"updates are recommended", followed by "updates are _strongly_ recommended",
and more recently, "updates are mandatory".

Adobe isn't alone, Microsoft had done worse not long ago --- with a _forced_
update too:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18148376](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18148376)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18189139](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18189139)

(On the flip side, at least you're able to run file recovery programs on a
PC.)

~~~
akerro
> "updates are recommended", followed by "updates are strongly recommended",
> and more recently, "updates are mandatory".

This is 5 years old, today we are doing:

Updates happen in background automatically without user knowing and sometimes
when autoupdated software is being used at the time, it crashes when new
action is performed and all not saved user data is lost.

Move fast, break things!

~~~
swebs
That's my experience every time Firefox updates these days through unattended-
upgrades. The sad thing is that it handled it just fine without crashing up
until a few years ago.

~~~
modo_mario
A quick scroll trough the settings page shows me you can turn the automatic
updates off if you want. Also not something i've experienced. Have you checked
whether the crash isn't caused by some weird addon or the like?

~~~
swebs
The problem is caused when Firefox is installed through your operating
system's package manager. But after a bit of searching, it looks like you can
just get a version of Firefox from Mozilla's website that contains its own
updater and avoids this problem.

[https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/b5jb7i/how_to_prev...](https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/b5jb7i/how_to_prevent_firefox_from_demanding_a_restart/ejfa00e/)

------
akersten
Slight sidebar: it's so frustrating that Adobe made the new Lightroom some
cloud based monstrosity. For photographers with serious workflows involving
local disks, we're now relegated to "Lightroom Classic" which makes me feel
like I'll be discontinued in N years from now. I hope they change course and
drop this whole cloud thing, the yearly subscription model is bad enough.

~~~
darren_
They've also pulled off an incredibly hostile move for paid users of older
Lightrooms - they're refusing to update it for 64bit-only OS X. The app itself
is 64bit (in fact, the app itself is _only_ 64bit), but its
licensing/installer components are not. So if you update OS X, it's not
guaranteed that Lightroom (that you paid for) will run, or if it does, how
long it will continue running for. This isn't some ancient software, this is
the 2015 version of Lightroom.

This is 100% intentional to drive users to subscriptions.

~~~
flandry93
Regardless of the apology, Adobe should not be allowed to simply dismiss that
they deleted user files. In effect, due to Adobe negligence, they have
destroyed user intellectual property. A signal and example needs to be made.
Individual users can sue for damages -- lost value and opportunity -- illegal
destruction of property.

The computer fraud and abuse act could also be applied for criminal charges --
Adobe misused and misappropriated their access to customer data and systems.
Arguing that it was a "mistake" and "we are sorry" does not correct the damage
done. If Adobe makes such a fuss over protecting their IP, then they should
not be surprised when their customers do so also. There is a potential for a
class action here as well. And Adobe is very profitable -- some legal team
representing this case, even if pro bono, will be/become quite rich.

Moreover, telling people that they should have X, and Y, and Z, to protect
themselves from the mistakes of rogue actors/apps, is simply a displacement of
responsibility tactic.

Just because something illegal/damaging was "done with a computer" does not
mean it was "ok" and "an apology is enough" \-- now pay us for our services
you miserable worm/user!

~~~
bonoboTP
Software licenses always disclaim any warranty, implied or explicit, it's all
"AS IS" and you accept it when you click that Accept button upon installation.

And honestly, it's good this way. If you want to secure your photos, make
backups yourself or sign a contract with some company that will guarantee
something. But once they are liable and can be sued, the service will be
astronomically expensive.

~~~
flandry93
In proportion to the margin, the "service cost" is already astronomically
expensive.

Moreover, the the click accept "contract" is not license for extortion -- does
not make extortion legal. A mere contract does not make arson legal, even if
accidental; does not make man-slaughter legal, etc.

The computer fraud and abuse act applies, regardless of contract. Adobe
accessed user computers/hosts in a way inconstant with user defined
permissions, usage policies, etc. I have a usage policy that you "signed" or
did the equivalent of "clicked through": if you (Adobe) elect to install your
automatic app update on my host hardware, you certify that you will not delete
any data files stored on that hardware. Just because Adobe did not bother to
read the language of my hardware usage policies, which has language that it
"supersedes all other agreements between the hardware host owner and the app
installer, does not mean that they/Adobe are "immune" and can simply ignore
their liability for IP destroyed.

There has to be a way to get these $#%@#% -- enough is enough.

~~~
bonoboTP
If you want bulletproof software with guarantees (like the medical industry or
aerospace or traffic light systems or banks) you'll get extremely
conservative, boring old tech with no flashy new features all the time.

If the cost for breakage is too high they just won't make any changes unless
absolutely necessary. But the market has spoken and people prefer flashy new
features and updates instead of boring railroad control-like software that is
works the same way for decades.

You can't have it both ways. If your data is important don't just store it on
a single device. These photos were just stored on a single device that could
break for any reason any day anyway.

Unless Adobe can be shown to have been criminally negligent or intentionally
malicious I don't think there's a case here but ianal.

~~~
ta17711771
> Unless Adobe can be shown to have been criminally negligent

Not having multiple site backups isn't criminally negligent when running a
paid cloud service?

~~~
Dylan16807
They didn't lose the cloud data.

------
benrbray
Well, this is as good a time as any then to try out Darktable [1]!

[1] [https://www.darktable.org/](https://www.darktable.org/)

~~~
humanlion87
I did this a while ago. I was super excited to try out a digikam + darktable
workflow. But the learning curve for darktable is so steep. I am just an
amateur photographer who takes landscape photos. I used to make small edits
using Lightroom and some panorama stitching. It seemed so straightforward in
Lightroom. I am still struggling to figure out how to edit my photos and what
modules to use in darktable. I am looking at YT videos and posts on pixlus,
but I still have not been able to wrap my head around all the concepts. One
day I will hopefully get it...

~~~
vr46
Agreed. I've been on Lightroom since v1.0 and long-ready to get away, but I
need to replace the cataloguing and manipulation. Digikam was great to begin
with, but then just stopped working smoothly, and Darktable has so many issues
that I cannot understand all the suggestions to convert. I wish I could
contribute to the codebase.

I've tried Affinity Photo, Pixelmator, no dice. Tried Capture One but it's
like a slug dragging a ball-and-chain and the cataloguing workflow turns me
upside-down. Image manipulation is blindingly good, however.

------
virgilp
Does anybody know a good photo management software that's not Lightroom? I
don't actually need to do edits to my photos - I need to manage my photo
library. Lightroom is not great at it but is passable - is there anything
else? What I'm looking for is software that:

\- Is fast

\- Is capable of leaving photos where they are ("import-in-place").

\- imports photos from card to NAS, organized by time ( year/month/day)

\- allows me to make selections & export e.g. to Google Photos (exporting to a
different local folder is good enough, I can setup google photos to sync, it's
only slightly inconvenient).

\- Ideally has good features for finding image duplicates, and maybe for
searching.

\- Keeps my photos locally/ doesn't insist on a cloud location.

~~~
prox
open source darktable is what I use.

[http://www.darktable.org/](http://www.darktable.org/)

It’s fast

Leaves it in place

I think it can make collection, but not sure on this point

Not sure

It keeps files locally

Also it is open source ;)

------
c0l0
I'd wish for every disgruntled Adobe client who now switches to another tool
that satisfies their requirements, saving a few (or considerably more) bucks
in the process, to donate a small part of that to the FOSS, libre alternatives
for much of Adobe's product portfolio:

[https://www.gimp.org/](https://www.gimp.org/)

[https://inkscape.org/](https://inkscape.org/)

[https://darktable.org/](https://darktable.org/)

[https://krita.org/](https://krita.org/)

...

You could do so much good with relatively little! :) Thanks everyone who
considers donating!

~~~
ungzd
Also [http://rawtherapee.com/](http://rawtherapee.com/)

------
newscracker
> This is also a great reminder for photographers that you should always back
> up your images, in multiple places, so you’re never subject to a single
> point of failure. Mistakes like this happen, even at some of the world’s
> largest companies

For a long time, I’ve been thinking that for all the value that Adobe provides
in some of its products, it’s still quite a bad deal for the users. _The
single point of failure for people who use Adobe is Adobe._ Those who have
realized this sooner (around the time it went full-on into subscriptions) and
made changes to take more control over their workflow would be better off
without being controlled and swayed in every which direction because the
company just wants to make more money.

While I feel pained at the loss that the Lightroom app users are going through
(any kind of data loss is quite painful), I hope that for their own sake, many
more users start looking at alternatives that aren’t premised on holding them
hostage.

------
causality0
Yet another tick on the list of "ways mobile devices are not real computers".
If something erases my files I ought to be able to run a recovery scan and get
them back in minutes, assuming they haven't been overwritten with new data.

~~~
humaniania
That doesn't work so well with SSDs :(

[https://www.howtogeek.com/125521/htg-explains-why-deleted-
fi...](https://www.howtogeek.com/125521/htg-explains-why-deleted-files-can-be-
recovered-and-how-you-can-prevent-it/)

~~~
causality0
A real computer can run automatic backups to a second local disk or over your
home network. Even if you do feel like paying Apple for adequate iCloud backup
storage you're consuming bandwidth and using large amounts of data.

~~~
vladvasiliu
You can do that with an iPhone too. You can do a full backup of the phone to
the mac, encrypted, which also contains "sensitive" data, etc. Can be run over
wifi if you don't want to bother with cables or via usb if the local wifi is
shoddy. No need to pay Apple anything for any storage.

~~~
beagle3
But you can only restore an entire phone, likely losing all of your work since
He last backup - was that yesterday or last month?

And sometime around iOS 6 or 7 they killed the option to maintain multiple
backups - so you can’t backup, restore older version, save data, return to
latest.

------
goblin89
I have recently migrated off Lightroom to Rawtherapee, and would recommend it
to photographers serious about raw development. I don’t see myself going back,
really.

Open-source, plain-text profile format, works everywhere. Like Lightroom, it
handles DNGs natively, but allows more control as you create your image from
raw scene-referred data.

Its GUI is somewhat laggier, but if you do a lot of batch processing you may
be able to more than offset that by writing a simple script that delegates
processing to your own cloud compute (it has a CLI tool, something Lightroom
is unlikely to offer). Profile once, apply without having to launch the GUI.

------
jacquesm
Happy with that cloud based software yet? There is nothing more frustrating
than to see all these software packages that have been turned into eternal
cashcows by forcibly grafting on a service that absolutely nobody needs.

Then to top it off they lose your data. Fantastic.

~~~
themodelplumber
We should come up with a grassroots cloud service measurement system. You know
how lakes and reservoirs sometimes have an "N deaths so far this year" sign.

Something like, "N cloudfails the last 3 years" for us cloud software users.
Kept in a nice table so you can sort by least-bad records.

------
pier25
Affinity Photo or Pixelmator Pro are great replacements for Photoshop. Resolve
and Final Cut are much better than Premiere.

I'm still looking for a replacement for After Effects and Illustrator though.

I've heard Affinity Publisher is a great InDesign replacement although I've
never used it.

~~~
Shared404
Inkscape is a decent replacement for Illustrator, at least in my experience.

~~~
thdrdt
Inkscape is great but not if you are working a lot in CMYK.

------
panpanna
Top reasons I prefer Darktable over Lightroom:

1\. It runs on all platforms

2\. It is not cloud based

3\. It does not delete your photos

------
_jal
There's one winner here: the law firm that puts together the class action.

~~~
bonoboTP
Was there any warranty? I guess the license is the bog standard everything
disclaimed, all "as is" type.

~~~
wmeredith
Doesn’t really matter if they were negligent and there are real damages.

------
stephen82
OK, seriously now...first Canon, now Adobe?

Am I missing something here, what's going on?!

~~~
dylan604
Push QA to users. What could go wrong?

~~~
newscracker
> Push QA to users.

“We need to increase our margins and we know our users aren’t going to abandon
us. Where will they even go to since we have them held hostage all these
years?“ _evil snide laughter_

~~~
dylan604
you forgot the mustache twirl

------
VoxPelli
At least, this time Adobe only deleted their own files, unlike in 2016 where
they on MacOS deleted files owned by others:
[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35577498](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35577498)

------
FactolSarin
Obviously this is a screw up on Adobe's part, but this is a good time to
remind everyone that if you're not backing up your data, then it must not be
very important to you.

Back up your stuff! You never know when something unexpected will cause you to
lose it!

~~~
swiley
Is there an alternative to iCloud for backing up the iPhone? I’ve kind of
given up on checking what’s aloud this year.

~~~
aikinai
Local backups have always been an option, both encrypted and unencrypted.

------
whiddershins
This is another example of deeply yet inadvertent hostile behavior by a tech
company towards artists and creativity.

It is hard to overstate how much this matters, and is overlooked.

I am constantly grateful that I live in a time where I have all these magical
creative tools.

At the same time, tech companies have a tendency to internalize ignorance
about what artists and musicians actually need, and what is nurturing or
destructive to creativity.

I think the best example of this is the YouTube algorithms that favor frequent
uploads for discovery. Probably nothing could be more hostile to human
creativity, and I’m not sure it’s purely profit seeking. I think it is
actually just ignorance.

—edit—

Apple has not made it obvious how to back up all the content from your apps,
nor has Adobe, nor has either of them made it easy to do it in a non-
proprietary fashion. This is anti-artistic. It makes me not have true control
over my creations, and this is discouraging and damaging to creativity.

—edit2–

I believe almost any artist would say: “having control of the durability of my
art is extremely important, the latest Lightroom feature is largely
insignificant.”

------
aosaigh
> It seems the latest update to the Lightroom app for iPhone and iPad
> inadvertently wiped users’ photos and presets that were not already synced
> to the cloud.

“Not already synced to the cloud”. Whatever you think about Lightroom, this
headline makes it sound much worse. Photos on the device that haven’t
previously synced are lost, not all your photos in your library.

------
blacklight
This is a common mistake when it comes to cloud synchronization with an
equally simple fix. When you compare a set of items A on the user device
against a set of items B on the cloud you should FIRST check (either through
file name, hash or creation/modification timestamp) that:

\- An item in A is not present in B before uploading it to B. \- An item in A
is present in B and has changed on A before updating it on B. \- An item in A
is present in B and has changed on B before updating it on A. \- An item in B
was present on A but it's no longer there before deleting it from B. \- An
item in A was present on B but it's no longer there before deleting it from A.

Seriously, this is the ABC of cloud sync. Many free products also got it
right. There's no excuse for the engineers at Adobe not to get it right in
their overpriced products.

~~~
ukyrgf
Spend one day trying to work on a graphic design project with the file saved
in the Creative Cloud sync folder. The amount of "filename (Sync Issue1).ai"
files you'll see accumulate will make you never want to use it again.

------
adarshaj
It may be coincidence, but just earlier today, I had to use a photo for
display pic and default crop won't let you keep the whole photo in original
aspect ratio, so I installed Lightroom to do resize but filling a blur. I
believe this was my first time installing the app from play store, I signed in
through Google login, I was surprised to find some 40 to 50 photos of absolute
stranger synced to my email! I don't know who that person is, I assumed they
may have put in my gmail instead of theirs, but it's stupid that they would
start associating backups without verifying the email! Adobe has lost any
respect it had. I will never trust them with my data.

------
coding123
My wife tells me to never update apps on phones. The updates are never worth
it, they are just mucking around, no real progress is made on these apps, and
worse, sometimes the updates introduce ads. The red circles beckon me anyway,
all the time. I can't stop myself. I just disabled my updates, and I'm finally
going to listen to her.

Beyond this major disaster, I updated my phone about a month ago. Ever since
Chrome just randomly freezes now. I have to switch apps, and switch back to
get it flowing again.

~~~
VoxPelli
This is really bad advice.

If nothing else, you do want to get the security updates that are released.

In general: Update but if possible, don’t be the first one to update to a new
version, wait for a day or two

------
gorgoiler
It was amazing that Lightroom came with free upgrades, year after year. I
would probably have happily paid $99 each time there was a major version
number increase, even if that meant paying effectively $99 a year.

That’s not far off the subscription price. Something about the subscription
model feels so arrogant though, on Adobe’s part, that I just can’t stomach it.
Is it because it feels like rent?

May Lightroom 6, and the hours and hours of face and location tagging I’ve
sunk into it, last forever.

~~~
DigitalComrade
Every year I buy a 1 year license off amazon for the photography plan (which
includes both lightrooms and Photoshop). It works out cheaper (£89 for the
year instead of £10 x 12)

Each year I revaluate the alternatives, but so far they always come up short.

------
svnpenn
This is exactly why I do manual updates for pretty much all my software. Any
time I mention it, people hound me with "what about security issues!"

uh oh yeah thats a concern, but I will take that risk over shit like this
where personal files are just getting wiped. Most users _dont_ need bleeding
edge software. You can run months behind and be fine in most cases.

I read release notes. When an update comes out, unless some big feature that I
need is introduced, I skip it.

~~~
ta17711771
> You can run months behind and be fine in most cases.

Out of curiosity, what's your coronavirus take?

~~~
svnpenn
what in gods name does that have to do with software?

------
mtnGoat
You think Abode is bad, try cancelling any recurring billing from Google, even
when fraudulent. A CC of mine was compromised and a YouTube premium account
was made. I've changed my card number three times, yet somehow Visa let's them
keep billing me. Finally had to cancel the CC account, Google kept trying to
bill it for 90 days even after multiple chargebacks and the account being
frozen from all charges.

------
diebeforei485
It's not the first time Adobe would have deleted stuff. I remember the
Backblaze fiasco from a few years ago.

Also, App Store Review didn't protect users from this.

------
StanislavPetrov
Reason 23,541 why I refuse to use any "cloud" based service. There is no
"cloud" \- its just stored on someone else's hardware.

------
cannedslime
Ah yes, the cloud! Trust in the cloud folks! How about adobe stops treating
their pockets as my personal storage space, and keeps my files secure on my
own device instead of deleting everything they didn't have a copy of. This is
why I don't buy software that comes with a subscription and a deal with the
devil.

------
overcast
CaptureOne is a great product if anyone is looking for alternatives at this
time. No BS subscriptions, just a license.

~~~
scblock
They have plenty of subscription options and push subscriptions hard on their
landing page. They also have a really goofy "buy different versions depending
on your camera" model. It's kind of gross, frankly, and has kept me from even
trying the software.

~~~
ip26
I don't have strong evidence for this but at one point it seemed strongly like
those camera-vendor-locked editions were actually subsidized by the vendor(s)
in question. Said vendors have generally been the camera underdogs. Once upon
a time Sony cameras even came with a bundled, vendor-locked Capture One
license.

------
oedmarap
I switched to Phase One's Capture One a long time ago -- it's light years
ahead of anything Lightroom has to offer.

The biggest improvement is performance, due to C1's use of Sessions, which are
basically folders where you store your RAW files, edits/history, trash, and
exports per shoot.

While C1 does support the antiquated method of using a Library, there's more
safety and manageability in using Sessions, and most professional
photographers use this for good reason.

And regarding presets, C1 stores all (incl. user) presets in a standard
directory in your home folder, so it's trivial to keep them automatically
backed up.

------
puranjay
Slightly OT but does anyone else here just not update key software anymore? I
haven't updated my Mac because the last time I did it, it caused a major
startup error and I lost documents.

------
kevincox
This is clearly not ideal and reflects poorly on Adobe's QA process but this
is about items that are not backed up. Of course most of these users probably
had their iOS device "backed up" to Apple's servers but this backup is just
replication. It helps if you lose your phone, but it doesn't help if an app
has a bug or you make a mistake.

It would be very cool of Apple or Google device backups supported a point-in-
time restore. (Ideally a per-app point-in-time restore).

------
ChicagoDave
Are they saying they deleted the photos from your phone/tablet or just the
adjustments in Lightroom?

If they're just talking about Lightroom data, then although that's pretty
crappy, it's what I expect out of apps. I remember the Apple Pages used to do
this too. If you deleted or upgraded, the data was erased. That's all changed
since they enabled cloud, but still was a horrible design.

------
armandhammer
But but... I thought Apple's excuse for their 30% tax was that their App
Review process and locked down OS etc is supposed to prevent apps from doing
such malicious things on iOS? To keep us and our data "safe"? Err... right?

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Kye
Good thing I went with Capture One.

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jiggliemon
From what I gather, this only affects the new Lightroom app, and primarily the
iOS apps.

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trophycase
For many years now I've been a proponent of "never update unless you
absolutely need to". I just updated my old Macbook Pro to Catalina and now it
gets ridiculously hot watching even simple YT videos.

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microcolonel
Darktable is great by the way; nothing's perfect, but its indexing and
navigation is faster than Lightroom and the filters are basically what you
use. I've also heard good things about RawTherapee.

------
Imagenuity
The title of this should be "Lightroom _iOS_ app update..." and save some
panic for a desktop user.

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johndill
And that is why I use Lightroom classic with a hard drive local and an Amazon
cloud drive backup. Still can't trust the cloud as your only backup

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blackoil
Honestly, from all the posts only actionable I could figure out, is to have
multiple backups of important files, preferably real-time.

Whole thread is about repeated tropes of why they hate subscription/Adobe/MS
etc. All these comments on alternative s/w for Desktops are funny and typical
HN as the issue is with mobile apps and none of the comments showed any
pattern with Adobe of poor QA. Assuming, none of the alternatives will ever
have a catastrophic bug is also ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ .

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xwdv
When the stock drops tomorrow I’ll pick it up because at the end of the day
Adobe has whole industries by the balls.

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officemonkey
I've just deleted every Adobe app from my phone and tablet.

I'm not going to trust this corporation.

------
j45
The cloud, nor one computer should ever be your only backup

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hellofunk
I think we can just chalk this up to a competition between Canon and Adobe on
who can delete the most photos from the world.

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sarasasa28
just pirate it

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chadlavi
* They're

~~~
dang
Fixed now. Submitted title was "Lightroom Update Wipes Users’ Photos/Presets,
Adobe Says Their ‘Not Recoverable’".

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cma
Apple's 30% pays for strict reviews that should have prevented this...

~~~
jug
Good point. User safety is Apple’s argument for their fees, and one made quite
recently too.

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clemensley
This is why apps should be built on blockchains

~~~
codetrotter
How would that work? Are we gonna host petabytes of photos on a blockchain?
Maybe many exabytes even? Maybe in the future, but even then, as storage
capacity increases I think file sizes too will keep growing for the
foreseeable future as well.

