Content aware remove edits from Lightroom Classic not appearing on ipad or iphone Lightroom apps

Report · Nov 03, 2023

I edited a number of photos in LR Classic, then created a collection from them. I can see all the photos on the LR apps on my iphone and ipad. Everything seems to be synched (and all the apps say that synching is complete). However, I had a dust spot on the camera sensor which I removed in these photos using the content aware remove tool and whilst they don't appear in LR Classic, they do appear on the mobile apps. Interestingly I also exported these photos as jpegs and the dust spots don't appear in those images.

I think all the other edits I made to the photos have synced correctly.

I have turned synching off and on again,closed and reopened the apps and LR Classic but the spots remain in the mobile versions of LR

Also getting 'Waiting for settings' message on some of the collection on the phone app (not on ipad)

Classic version 13.0.1

Mobile app version 9.0.0

Fully synced and backed up

Green tick on cloud synch icon (top right of LR Classic)

Ventura 13.6

iOS 16.7.1

Report · Nov 05, 2023

Additional info:

MacOs now upgraded to Ventura 13.6.1 and iOs now upgraded to 16.7.2 but the edits that I made using the content remove tool still aren't shown on the mobile apps (resulting in the spots still being visible)

The spots are also on the web version (ie. when I log onto my Adobe account and view the photios that way)

Report · Nov 12, 2023

In case anyone is interested, I think I solved both problems (i.e. edits made in LR Classic not appearing in LR mobile for synched photos + the dreaded 'Waiting for settings' message in the mobile app versions) - for me anyway. I hope it helps someone else..........

I clicked on a button that I've never used before - the 'Synch settings' button next to the 'Auto Synch' button at the bottom right corner of the Library view in LR Classic. I've never used this button before in several years of using LR Classic, in fact I think it was previously greyed out (& is again now after my "fix). Selecting 'Synch settings' showed me all the attributes that are synched but I noticed that for this synched collection, the masking option wasn't ticked (it is for my other synched collections that don't exhibit the described symptoms).

So, I ticked that Masking option and initiated a manual synch and hey presto, all my edits from LR Classic appeared in LR mobile and the 'Waiting for Settings' message in LR mobile disappeared! On downside was that the photos in both LR Classic and LR mobile (for this collection only) all then had their exposure changed. Only looking at the develop history, every photo had a 'Paste settings' step added after the very last action I'd taken (which is always 'Export' in my case). I had to go through 200+ photos and revert the last action to the Export step (ie the penultimate step shown in the develop history). Strangely, even when coming out of Develop mode into Library mode, or exiting LR Classic altogether and re-starting it, the rogue, new 'Paste settings' step was still shown in the history panel as the last action but as the penultimate step (Export) was still highlighted, the Paste settings step wasn't applied. Usually the process I followed would have removed that 'Paste settings' step from the history.

So, to the cause........

Honestly I don't know but i do know these things for sure:

I didn't change the sync settings options to stop synching masking. I've never used the ''Synch settings' button before and would never have a reason to stop synching masking.
I didn't add a paste settings step to the 200+ photos after I exported them. In my workflow, export is always the very last thing I do. I guess it must have been done to the whole collection in one go but I wouldn't even know how to do that.
At some point between when I imported the photos into LR Classic and the error happening, there was an upgrade to LR Classic and a requirement to create a new catalog. I'm suspicious that this was the cause of the problems but can't be sure. However, I can think of no other possibilities

Hope this helps and also that the problems don't re-occur

PS I was disappointed that Adobe didn't try to help me fix this

Report · Jun 13, 2024

I hope that I'm not being overly optimistic here but I've been almost constantly on the phone/chat with Adobe in the past 2 days regarding another sync issue (where LrC never seems to complete synching with the cloud even though the number of synched items in LrC and the cloud are the same). It appears that in the very latest version, (the one where Adobe introduced Generative AI removal v 13.3.1) they have also completely re-structured the sync architecture. It has caused my machine and LrC to run very slowly ever since I upgraded to 13.3.1 but they were apparently expecting issues and I'm told I'm not the only one who has them. It can take a long time (days in my case) for the sync to sort itself out but they assure me it will. Please don't ask me how, but my hope is that the sync architecture changes will fix the problems we've been experiencing on this thread. You never know!!

Report · Nov 16, 2023

Hi Jonathan, I found out that I have the same issue except that I'm working on a Windows 11 PC and synching onto an Android phone.

I'm not willing to go with the "Synch Settings" button workaround because these are probably related to synch settings when synching an edit from one image to another. I don't know exactly what you did but probably it is the cause of your side effect. As I already edited 400 images from a recent trip in Namibia, I don't want to mess them up. Will try reaching out to the support via the chat feature which in the past worked very welll

Report · Nov 16, 2023

Fair enough Phil but I only posted the solution which worked for me in case it helped someone else.

I think 'Synch settings' list the options for which edits a user makes in one type of LR to another type where the photos are synched. So in my case, I edited in LR Classic (on my desktop) and synced to LR mobile on both my iPad and iPhone. Most of the edits I made in LR Classic appeared in LR mobile on both my iPad and iPhone (& also the web version of those photos) but any edits where I'd used the mask tool didn't + I also got the 'Waiting for settings' message in LR mobile. Opening Synch settings showed me that the option to synch 'Masking' had been unchecked (not be me). When I checked this option and re-synched, all the edits then appeared correctly on the iPhone, iPad and Web, and the 'Waiting for settings' message disappeared. To be clear, I never lost any of my photos or edits in LR Classic so I doubt you'd "mess them up". You don't even have to go through with the re-synch if you don't want to but it might be interesting to see if that Masking option is checked or not in Synch settings.

I hope you have better fortune with the chat feature than I did & that you resolve the issue

Report · Jan 19, 2024

I had the problem re-occur on another collection yesterday. From a small collection of 32 photos, 12 of them got the 'Waiting for settings' message on my iphone and iPad. There was nothing consistent about how these photos had been edited that would give a clue to why these 12 and not the other 20 had the problem. This time, the method that I used previously didn't work but the method suggested elsewhere did work. I adjusted white balance temp by a tiny value of 1, and as I did that, LRC synched that photo and the message disappeared on the iphone and iPad. This is going to be a complete pain if Adobe don't fix it soon - there are obviously multiple paying customers who are suffering it, having their time wasted by Adobe, and losing faith is Adobe's ability to provide a working ecosystem.