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A
Aviator
Participant
July 21, 2026
Question

Photos show up, but I am unable to edit them on the desktop version.

  • July 21, 2026
  • 3 replies
  • 49 views

I recently got a new laptop in order to be able to have a device more dedicated to photo editing, however, I am encountering issues in doing so. When I access the “local” area of the desktop version, I can see all the photos in folder as thumbnails, but when I select a particular photo, I only briefly get a “loading edit settings” message before a grey screen, with all edit options greyed out. I encounter a similar issue when uploading the photos to the cloud and accessing them that way. However, I am able to edit the same uploaded photos in the browser version- but I would prefer to be able to use the desktop version to avoid the hassle of uploads. If it’s any help, I am running on a Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme with 48Gb of ram, integrated graphics.

Example of Grey screen, greyed out editing options.

 

    3 replies

    Anshul_Saini
    Community Manager
    Anshul_SainiCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    July 22, 2026

    Hi ​@Aviator,

    Thank you for reporting this. I can see you're running into a frustrating situation where your photos are visible in Lightroom Desktop (cloud-based), but the editing controls remain disabled, and you get a gray preview when you try to work on them.

    Since you confirmed editing works fine in Lightroom Web, this narrows the issue down to the desktop app on your specific hardware. Please disable GPU acceleration temporarily. Go to Preferences > Performance and set Use Graphics Processor to Off, then restart Lightroom. This forces the app to use the CPU rendering path. If editing starts working, we know the GPU pipeline is the culprit.

    If that doesn't make any difference, could you please share & confirm:

    • Copy & paste your Lightroom system info from Help > System Info.

    • Did you install the app from the Creative Cloud desktop app or somewhere else?

    We look forward to hearing back from you.

    Best regards,
    Anshul Saini

    A
    AviatorAuthor
    Participant
    July 23, 2026

    Hello,

    Unfortunately, disabling GPU acceleration appeared to have little effect- a similar error is occurring. However, now I don’t seem to get that brief “loading edit settings” message when selecting a photo. I did download lightroom through the Creative Cloud app, here is the system info you requested: 

    Lightroom version: 9.4.1 arm64 [ 20260625-0318-d30e963 ] (Jun 25 2026)
    NGL Version: 1.43.0.5
    WF Version: 8.4.1 542baca
    VF Version: 1.0.164
    HIL Version: 40501
    Adobe GSDK Version: 1.4.0.210
    CR Version: 29.0.0.202506270818_710830c
    Catalog ID: bdaf6ba067f9475ebfb7ac228e32983e

    Operating system: Windows 11
    OS Version: Windows 11 Home (2009)
    Application architecture: arm64
    System architecture: arm64
    Computer model: ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607OA / Snapdragon(R) X2 Elite Extreme - X2E94100 - Qualcomm Oryon(TM) CPU
    Logical processor count: 18
    Processor speed: 3.0 GHz
    Real memory available to Lightroom: 48758.6 MB
    Real memory used by Lightroom: 920.9 MB (1.8%)
    Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 1010.6 MB
    Memory cache size: 0.0 MB

    Internal Camera Raw version: 18.4 [ 2608 ]
    Maximum thread count used by Camera Raw: 10
    Camera Raw SIMD optimization: Neon
    Camera Raw virtual memory: 32MB / 22331MB (0%)
    Camera Raw real memory: 33MB / 48758MB (0%)

    Display: 2880x1800
    System DPI setting: 192 DPI (high DPI mode)
    Dark Mode: Yes
    Desktop composition enabled: Yes
    Input types: Multitouch: Yes, Integrated touch: Yes, Integrated pen: Yes, External touch: No, External pen: No, Keyboard: No

    Graphics Processor Info: DirectX: Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X2-90 GPU (32.0.149.0)
    Graphics Processor Detail: loaded: Yes, supported: Yes, compute: Yes, init: I3_GPU4, hard: success, soft: success, al: No, dl: No
    OS Media Capability: true

    Application Folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Lightroom CC
    Settings Folder: C:\Users\amg02\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom CC
    Library Folder: C:\Users\amg02\AppData\Local\Adobe\Lightroom CC\Data
     

    Claire H.
    Community Manager
    Claire H.Community Manager
    Community Manager
    July 30, 2026

    Hi ​@Aviator, thanks for sending your system information. Your system looks good, so let's try a few things:

    1. Go to Preferences → Local Storage and click Clear Cache. Then restart Lightroom.

    2. Reset Preferences

      • Close Lightroom completely

      • Hold Shift while launching Lightroom — you should get a prompt to reset preferences

      • This won't affect your photos or edits (they're in the cloud).

    If none of these steps work for you, let us know, and we can continue troubleshooting. I hope this helps! ^CH

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