Lightroom 15.3 Merge to HDR not working properly

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​@JW_JW Hello, is there any resolution to this yet? Every time I try an HDR merge of 5 bracketed images, LRC crashes.

With the original post in this thread, the problem was specific to the poster’s machine -- others weren’t able to reproduce the problem. There hasn’t been any resolution posted here yet.

When you say “crash”, do you mean that LR hangs, or does it exit entirely?  If it exits entirely, do you see the Adobe crash dialog asking to submit the crash log? If so, be sure to enter the email address associated with your Adobe Id, which will allow Adobe to associate the crash report with the thread here.

Also, please do the LR menu command Help > System Info, click the Copy button in the upper right corner, and paste into your reply here, so we can see exactly which versions of hardware and software LR thinks you're running and important LR options that are set.

Hello, is there any resolution to this yet? Every time I try an HDR merge of 5 bracketed images, LRC crashes.

Hi ​@John_Gerard ​@Ralf23454699c6x8,

Thanks for the detailed updates. Before escalating further, please try one key step: Try HDR merge in a new test catalog in v15.3, as we are unable to reproduce on our end.

Also, quick check, if you haven’t done so earlier, try temporarily disabling third-party plugins (ON1, Topaz, etc.), then test.

If the issue persists on 15.3,  please share a short screen recording of your entire workflow leading up to the stall.

Thanks again for confirming the sample files work elsewhere. Once we confirm behavior after disabling plugins/new catalog, I can take this forward with the product team.

Regards,
Anshul Saini

I had the same problem. Reverted back to 15.2.1 and it’s all working again, no more problem with HDR. 

Thanks ​@johnrellis and ​@Ian Lyons , I’m not sure what combination of settings & hardware are leading to my problem when I move to LrC 15.3 but I’ll need to tinker with things when I have more time.  I’ll go back to 15.3 and reset the preference file as suggested earlier.  

I was also able to stack and merge the sample photos on my LR 15.3 / Mac OS 26.2 / Macbook Pro M2 Max 64 GB. While it’s possible that you’re on Mac OS 26.3.1, which is the cause of the issue (e.g. a different GPU driver), that seems unlikely. It seems more likely there’s something specific to your installation.

I use a Canon EOS R5 shooting in RAW.  3 bracketed shots -2, 0, +2.  I also use a DJI Mavic 4 Pro in RAW.  5 bracketed shots.  I experienced issues with stacks from both cameras.  I’m shooting for real estate and this process has worked extremely well for years using the same canon camera and my previous DJI Air3 drone.  My typical workflow is to import all images from both cameras, auto-stack by time, verify the stacks, Select all stacks and hit CMD+H to allow LrC to process all of the images to HDR.  It generally take 20-30 minutes.  This was a smaller job and as I ran into issues I started selecting only a single stack, then opening the stack and selecting the individual images.  I even tried to open in Photoshop and Merge to HDR (from the menu) but LrC still stalled on that, very different, workflow.  

With LrC 15.2.1 reinstalled I started with single stacks but finished up by selecting all remaining stacks, about 8, and all HDR images were processed and stacked as expected.  

Please do the LR menu command Help > System Info and copy/paste the entire contents here so we can see exactly which versions of hardware and software LR thinks you're running and important LR options that are set.