Participant

Question

P: Failed to initialize AI Edits storage

Forum|Forum|6 months ago
November 2, 2025
12 replies
4287 views

Hallo, with the recent update of LrC, it upgraded my catalog file and then ended with an error screen telling: Failed to initialize AI Edits storage

What/where is AI Edits storage?

How to open my catalog file?

Windows 10 with latest AMD drivers.

LrC 15.0 Build 202510171722-44f87028

That catalog file is 1.3 GB

free disk space is >100GB

Windows

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

You posted this in the wrong forum, so it will be moved eventually. I’ll answer it here, because moderators do not have the ability to move posts since the forum update.

Lightroom Classic stores AI masks and other AI data in 'Catalogname.lrcat-data'. Sometimes this file (Mac)/folder (Windows) gets corrupted, or the permissions are getting set wrongly, so Lightroom Classic cannot write to it. That explains what you are seeing. Take the following steps:

1: Review this document: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/ai-edits-storage-error.html to make sure you are not affected by the items listed there.
2: Contact Adobe Support as they have an lrcat-data recovery tool that can fix your corrupt file. Contact Adobe Customer Care at https://helpx.adobe.com/contact/what-contact-options.html. Scroll to the bottom and click on the “Start Now” live chat link in the lower right of this page. Typing “Agent” into the chat text field will bypass the initial chatbot.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

Jenni22952739orvw

Participant

message I receive all the time:

Lightroom has encountered an issue updating AI edits. Future AI edits may not be saved and could be lost. Please contact Adobe Customer Support for troubleshooting.

S

Sunny_Bee1766

Participant

Hola, tenía el mismo error, algo que hice y me funcionó fue verificar el catálogo, sólo debes mantener presionada la tecla Alt (Windows) y cuando abre una ventana, crear un nuevo catálogo.

Eso solucionará el problema del catálogo y te dejará funcionar Lr

N

NotThatBobJames

Participant

I expereinced this today.

The error is catalog-specific, not programatic.

The corrupted file is in the .lrcat-data file.

FIX
Move the .LCAT file to its own, non-cloud folder. Double-click. It will give you an error message about missing previews. Click continue. It will generate all new support files.
Close LR. Now delete all the files in your original folder, except, optionally, Previews and Smart Previews. Now move all LCAT and the newly generated files into your original LR folder.

Now it should work.

johnrellis

Legend

@NotThatBobJames, "The corrupted file is in the .lrcat-data file."

It's important for others reading this to be aware that deleting the .lrcat-data file (which the steps above effectively do) will force new variants of Generative AI Remove to be generated, and you won't be able to recover the original variants. The new variants are more often than not perfectly acceptable, but sometimes they're not, especially if you had examined many variants before deciding on the best one.

N

NotThatBobJames

Participant

Didn’t know that! Thanks for letting us all know. For me, it’s not a big deal, as my photos currently are edited and exported and I don’t plan to go back to them.

Yeah, so maybe do such a repair between shoots when you’re caught up 🤣

E

elPavlos

Participant

Same error here. I have just sent my files to @arjunhaarith .

E

elPavlos

Participant

This workaround worked for me (for now): opening Lightroom 15 with a new catalog and then importing the updated version of my latest catalog.

K

KristiKamera

Participant

Try deleting the CURRENT file in the lrcat-data folder. I was told by someone who I outsourced to that this fixed the problem after they got the error message when trying to open my catalog.

arjunhaarith

Adobe Employee

Hi @KristiKamera ,

Is this working fine for you now?

Can you please share the above requested data.

Thanks,

Arjun

K

KristiKamera

Participant

Yes this has been working for me. I have swapped a couple different catalogs back and forth between my editors and each time I just make sure the CURRENT file is deleted and then it has worked.

J

Jason@rebranded

Participant

Hi, I have had the same issues this week. I have solved it by:

Uninstall Lightroom 15

Install 14.5

Start lightroom 14.5 and it highlights that the catalog i had was newer

Choose another catalog to get it running

then upgrade back to 15

open and it will ask to upgrade your catalog to new

open lightroom 15

That has worked for me and not sure whats gone wrong and had to use an old catalog but at least its running for me again. Hope it helps.

P

peterp5879751

Participant

Replicated your approach. Created a new catalog with only a small sample of images in 14.5 which opened successfully in the 15.1 upgrade. I then loaded the main catalog that was created in the first failed 15.1 so now all is well. Thanks Jason

R

Rainman-72

Participant

Same exact error message today, and after acknowledging the error message, LrC just closes down. Not able to launch, not able to change/revert back. Super frustrating as I'm working through wedding shoot edits.

arjunhaarith

Adobe Employee

Kindly share the below information :

1. Are you using any third-party plugins with Lightroom? If yes, please share the names of those plugins.

2. Please share the following files:

a) The affected Lightroom Catalog file (.lrcat)
b) The corresponding LightroomCatalog.lrcat-data file
c) The lrc_console.log file located at:

Mac: /Users/xxxx/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom
Windows: C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\undefined

d) System Info (from Lightroom Classic → Help → System Info)

e) Diagnostic Report (HTML file):
Go to Lightroom Classic → Preferences → General, hold the Alt/Opt key — a new button called Generate Diagnostic Report (HTML) will appear. Click it and share the generated HTML file.

Kindly zip all these files into a single folder and email it to haarithg@adobe.com.

Thanks,

Arjun

arjunhaarith

Adobe Employee

Hi everyone,

While we continue investigating this issue, we would appreciate some additional information from those who are affected.

1. Are you using any third-party plugins with Lightroom? If yes, please share the names of those plugins.

2. Please share the following files:

a) The affected Lightroom Catalog file (.lrcat)
b) The corresponding LightroomCatalog.lrcat-data file
c) The lrc_console.log file located at:

Mac: /Users/xxxx/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom
Windows: C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\

d) System Info (from Lightroom Classic → Help → System Info)

e) Diagnostic Report (HTML file):
Go to Lightroom Classic → Preferences → General, hold the Alt/Opt key — a new button called Generate Diagnostic Report (HTML) will appear. Click it and share the generated HTML file.

Kindly zip all these files into a single folder and email it to haarithg@adobe.com.

Thanks and appreciate your help,
Arjun

P

pisiAuthor

Participant

Hallo Arjun,

Today, I created the diagnostics data in v14.
Then upgraded to v15 again.
Now the issue is gone?!

Anyways, have sent you the requested diagnostics data.

Regards,
Christoph

C

CCourtney

Participant

Same problem migrating to m5 mbp

B

benherrmann

Participating Frequently

Hello all...

With the latest series of Adobe updates, once the Lightroom 2026 classic update was downloaded and installed on my Windows 11 machine, I get an error message while trying to load the program that says:

"Failed to Initialize AI Stages"

There is some smaller print below that in the error window that also says:

"Please refer to the backup catalogue and contact customer service."

This error window appears just for a split second, then disappears, followed by the program crashing. I've tried rebooting my PC several times, but that did not fix the issues and as of now, I can't even bring up Lightroom classic without it doing that time after time - meaning, the split second error window, followed by the crash.. Again, that error window appears for just a split second, then it goes away, followed by the program crashing.

Any help or suggestions here? Thanks in advance...

Ben Herrmann

Fuquay-Varina, NC

B

benherrmann

Participating Frequently

One more thing here. So what I did then was to just delete the Lightroom Classic program, assuming (hopefully, not wrongly so), that if I did a Creative Cloud update request, it would notice Lightroom Classic missing, and then download it all over again. However, that didn't happen?

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