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Known Participant
August 13, 2025

P: v14.5 Lightroom has encountered problems reading this photo | Round circle ‘!’ warning on Images

  • August 13, 2025
  • 78 replies
  • 6319 views

OS: Windows 11
LrC VERSION: 14.5

A couple of days ago I upgrade to v14.5.
As for every update, I regurlay empty cache, optimise catalog, remove all previews and generate new standard ones (also, I wanted to test how was was the new option to use GPU for generating previews).
Never had a problem with this workflow.
After previews generation process was completed (1h 30m for 29.000 files, 23.000 jpegs and 6.000 raws) I got an error: for 21 RAWs the preview could not be generated. Looking in the catalog at those files, I realised they have an exclamation mark on a dark circle: this is not the missing photo mark. If I click on the exclamation mark, I see error "Lightroom has encountered problems reading this photo, you are not allowed to edit this image. "

Yet, I can still enter develop module and edit the photos without any problem: the editing history is there, I can zoom in at 100% (generating the 1:1 preview), I can change sliders, export... Everything... (PS: I do not use smart previews).

 

The 21 problematic photos are in different folders and have different dates.
The files can be opened by any other program, including Fast raw Viewer.

For a couple of problematic photos, I tried deleting the photos from file explorer, and the square light missing photo question mark replaced the round dark question mark.
I restored the files from three sources:
1- the original file
2- a backup from a second HD
3- a backup from Amazon Photos


In all three cases above the black round exclamation mark came back: this should prove that it's not a problem of corrupted files, I instead believe it's an issue in LrC.

78 replies

Known Participant
October 26, 2025

Well this is the 3rd time I get a new version a few days in advance 🤷🏻‍♂

johnrellis
Legend
October 26, 2025

@Giovanni Stoto: "Version 15 just installed"

 

Before everyone jumps on this: As of Sunday Oct 26 9:30 PDT (16:30 UTC), LR 15.0 hasn't been officially released yet -- there are no official announcements posted on Adobe.com or Lightroomqueen.com and the Creative Cloud app  generally isn't showing the update available.

 

In the past, the new annual release has been available on the first day of Adobe Max (plus or minus), which this year is Tue Oct 28.  But there often have been reports of new releases being available to a few people a couple days earlier. This may be part of a deliberate slow "rolling release" strategy that some companies use to minimize any boo boos in the release process, or it could be that someone in Adobe jumped the gun. Adobe has never said.

Known Participant
October 26, 2025

Version 15 just installed and it seems issue has been fixed: can you all confirm?

johnrellis
Legend
October 13, 2025

While it would be excellent if an employee responded, beware that Adobe rarely indicates the ETA for bug fixes or new releases.

 

The entire LR ecosystem releases about every eight weeks. LR 15 will almost certainly be released in two weeks during Adobe Max (10/28). 

Known Participant
October 13, 2025

@Anshul_Saini and @Sameer K I think we all deserve and answer here about ETA of the fix

jm68902488
Known Participant
October 13, 2025
Yes this is getting ridiculous already
Known Participant
October 11, 2025

@david48lindsay I'm the one who first reported this bug to Adobe 2 mi tha ago. I have your same workflow or better similar: for every shooting, after deleting bad photos, I mark those I wanna keep in RAW and those that can be converted to JPG with a basic auto conversion. I then export the latter in full JPG, delete the RAWs from catalog and import back the JPGs. I have never seen a ! on a JPG though, only on very very very few RAWs.

johnrellis
Legend
October 7, 2025

"anyone knows if a new version of LrC has been released with a fix?"

 

LR 14.5.1 (released 2025/8/26) is the most recent version.  LR 15 will most likely be released the week of Adobe Max (2025/10/28). Based on past behavior, I think it's very unlikely Adobe would release 14.5.2 before then, considering that at least some are reporting you can still edit photos despite the erroneous warning.  I have no inside information, and Adobe rarely indicates ahead of time when bugs will be fixed.

Known Participant
October 7, 2025

I have been away for three week in Indonesia and I was back yesterday with 4.000 pictures to cull and edit: anyone knows if a new version of LrC has been released with a fix?

@Anshul_Saini any news here? It's been two months already if I remember well.

Participating Frequently
September 27, 2025

I was having this bug and today I tried to do one of those problematic masks and it didn't happen. Maybe they fixed something in their end that didn't require an software update? Try it and let us know if the problem persists for you.

Known Participant
September 27, 2025

@Sameer K it's been over a month since I reported this bug for the very first time.

 

First of all, it took days to persuade Adobe this was a bug, even if I explicitly said that it is my profession and I'm used to distinguishing between a misconfiguration and a bug.

 

Second, it's been at least 3 weeks since the bug has been acknowledged by Adobe. Now, acknowledging a bug doesn't mean you know how to solve it, which I start doubting.

 

Since we are paying money for a broken software, and we have been paying for years, the least you can do is to update us and to provide an ETA for this fix.

 

Thx

jm68902488
Known Participant
September 27, 2025
Yes totally agree and unfortunately the way Adobe takes their sweet time to
fix something after taking weeks denying it is their problem and throwing
the blame everywhere else.