Problems with Exporting JPGs

Hi Srishti,

I have not heard back since my last message, and I would like to follow up.

Result of the offline-album test you asked me to run:

I created a new album containing the six affected JPEGs and selected "Make Album Available Offline". After 15 minutes the album had still not finished downloading — the photos remain marked as pending — and the subsequent export never started at all.

This means the failure is not in the export step. Lightroom is unable to retrieve the master files themselves, even when explicitly asked to make them available offline. The same six files download without problems from lightroom.adobe.com when requested as "Original", which indicates that the assets do exist server-side, but that the desktop application cannot fetch them.

Summary of the problem as it now stands:

• Exports fail with embedAuxFilesIntoXMP: unexpected failure: dng_error_file_not_found, including on files with no masks, no healing and no crop — i.e. completely unedited images.
• Batch exports also stall silently, with no error message and no further disk or network activity.
• Making the files available offline does not complete either, as described above.
• The behaviour is reproducible on two separate computers, so it is not specific to one installation.
• Re-editing, duplicating, and exporting in other formats all fail identically.

Why this matters beyond convenience:

For most users, a cloud photo service is also where their originals live. When retrieval fails, the practical consequence is that images cannot be recovered from Adobe's custody. For the files affected here, that has been the case for weeks. The combination of working web downloads and failing desktop retrieval points to an inconsistency between the stored assets and the metadata Adobe holds for them.

I would therefore appreciate answers to two questions:

1. Can Adobe confirm that the master files of the affected assets are intact server-side, and that no image data has been lost?
2. What is the status of the investigation, and can the case be escalated if it cannot be resolved at this level?

I remain willing to provide logs, asset IDs and a screen recording, and I would like to know which of these would be most useful to you now.

Best regards,
Per

Hi Srishti,

Thank you for the updated instructions. I will try the offline album and report back with a screen recording and the diagnostic logs if the problem persists.

Answers to your questions, plus a few findings that may narrow things down:

Number of files. My cloud library holds roughly 77,000 images, the large majority of them JPEG. I am not exporting them all at once — I work year by year, selecting between roughly 150 and 850 images per batch.

Batch size does not appear to be the trigger. The export also stalls with batches of 10–20 images, and individual files fail on their own. Conversely, several batches of 300+ have completed without problems.

Two distinct failure modes:

1. Stalling — the progress indicator stops and no further disk or network activity occurs. Opening one of the pending images in Detail view often lets the queue continue for a while, which suggests the export is waiting on full-resolution data that is not being retrieved.
2. Hard failure — embedAuxFilesIntoXMP: unexpected failure: dng_error_file_not_found. This occurs on images with no masks, no healing and no crop, i.e. completely unedited files. Re-editing, duplicating, and exporting as JPG or JXL instead of Original all fail identically.

Two further observations:

• The same behaviour occurs on a second computer (an Asus laptop), so it is not specific to one machine or installation.
• Downloading the same files from lightroom.adobe.com as Original at full resolution works reliably, including the files that fail in the desktop app. This suggests the master assets are intact server-side and that the problem lies in the desktop app's retrieval of asset/aux data during export.

Best regards,
Per

Hi ​@PerHomann ,

Thank you for the detailed write-up and for taking the time to perform such extensive troubleshooting. The information you've provided is extremely helpful.

Based on your observations, this appears to be related to how Lightroom (cloud) retrieves full-resolution originals during batch operations. The fact that opening one of the images in Detail view temporarily allows the export or DNG render queue to continue suggests Lightroom may be encountering an issue while fetching or preparing the full-resolution asset in the background.

I'd recommend trying the following:

1. Pre-cache the affected images
Before starting a large export, open the affected images in Detail view and browse through them to encourage Lightroom to download and cache the full-resolution data locally. While this isn't practical for very large libraries, if it consistently allows the export to complete, it would help confirm that the issue is related to background retrieval of cloud assets rather than the image files themselves.

2. Verify your Local Storage configuration
Since you've noticed the Local Storage location occasionally reverting to the default drive, please verify which location is currently configured before starting the export. Also, ensure that the selected drive has plenty of available free space (ideally 50 GB or more), as Lightroom needs local space to cache originals during export and rendering.

3. Try exporting in smaller batches
As a temporary workaround, try exporting 50–100 images at a time instead of several hundred or thousands. This reduces the number of simultaneous cloud retrieval requests and may help avoid pipeline stalling.

4. Capture diagnostic logs after reproducing the issue

If the export stalls again, please capture the diagnostic logs immediately afterward:

1. Open Preferences in Lightroom.
2. Press and hold the Alt key on your keyboard.
3. You should see three additional options: Diagnostic Log, Sync Issues Report, and Exhaustive Report.
4. Please generate the Diagnostic logs and share them with us for further investigation.

   

    

These logs can provide valuable information about what is happening when the export stalls and help us identify where the process is getting interrupted.