1 Correct answer
Looks like a resource issue. Try to zoom in and out on the picture in Develop, the Auto button and profiles should come back within seconds. How many seconds depends on your system's resources.
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Replies
Thank you for your hlep.
@DdeGannes : There is no default development setting during the import process.
@AxelMatt : I have just realized that the problem doesn't happen on my laptop. My desktop is rather old and has no dedicated GPU, only the one which is integrated in the CPU (Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz 3.40 GHz). This GPU doesn't work properfly with LR, so I've disabled GPU in LR preferences
@all of you : things are getting strange ! The "Auto" button is grayed out when I select a picture in the Develop pannel. However, after switching to another picture and then back to the original one, the Auto button becomes active ???? See this short video : https://youtu.be/NKO_C_Ycvqk
Normally, when you open a photo in Develop, LR initially greys out Auto and starts calculating in background whether the current develop settings match those that would be applied by Auto. If they're different, then it enables Auto and ungreys it. This typically takes no more than a second or two after opening the photo in Develop, even on older computers.
But in your case, not only is Auto greyed out, but the Profile Browser is also greyed out:
Someone else recently reported the same symptoms:
They discovered that you could also enable the Auto and the Profile Browser buttons by zooming to 100% and then back to Fit.
In years past, there have been problems with the asynchronous display of other settings in Develop that are worked around by zooming to 100%, e.g.
Zooming to 100% loads up the Camera Raw cache with the photo as part of rendering it, accelerating the Auto and Lens Profile computations.
I believe, based on years of observation and forum posts, that internally, the implementation of Develop is fragile, with many "race conditions" where the correctness of asynchronous computations is timing-dependent. Such race conditions typically show up only when some part of LR is abnormally delayed, e.g. because LR is running with a slow or absent GPU. or trying to display a very large raw.
A couple of things you might try to ameliorate the problem:
1. Build 1:1 (100%) previews either on Import or with Library > Previews > Build 1:1 Previews.
2. Do Preferences > Performance > Camera Raw Settings > Purge Cache. Perhaps the current cache contents are causing it to perform extra slowly.
3. Restart your computer. If the problem persists, try resetting LR's preferences as suggested above by AxelMatt:
https://www.lightroomqueen.com/articles-page/how-do-i-reset-lightrooms-preferences/
LR sometimes soils its preferences file, and resetting it can fix all sorts of wonky behavior. That article explains how to restore the old preferences if resetting doesn't help.
4. And if none of this helps, then as suggested by AxelMatt, 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.
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