Edits disappear

Report · Nov 15, 2025

Lightroom Classic-Version: 15.0.1 on Mac OS 26

I wanted to edit photos in LRC for the first time since August and noticed that photos that had already been edited lost all their edits after a “double-click.” The thumbnail image in grid mode is initially correct, but after double-clicking, the image and thumbnail image revert to their original state.

This started with version 14.5.x (unfortunately, I didn't note the version number) and is still present in the current 15.0.1.
Restoring the catalog file “Lightroom - xxx.lrcat-data” from the backup had no effect.

Fortunately (and strangely enough), the change log for each photo is still available, so I can restore the edits, but doing this for each photo is impossible.
Even stranger is the top entry in the history all photos: “Export - Hard Drive (12/02/24 07:56:48),” but I can't remember having done this!

Other potentially useful facts:
* I have several catalogs, but I haven't changed catalogs recently
* I still have the problem that I can't always switch to the next image in development view (neither with the key nor with the mouse). Therefore, I uninstalled and reinstalled LRC. Unfortunately, I can no longer say whether this was in December 2024.
* I updated my subscription form in October.
* I also disabled GPU usage, but unfortunately this did not help.

I am more than grateful for any advice!

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Hi @raminm65673045,

Thanks for the clear description. Based on what you shared, this does not look like actual edit loss.

What’s happening is that the photo appears edited in Grid view, but when you open it in Develop, Lightroom re-renders it incorrectly and shows the original. This points to a preview or catalog rendering issue, not missing edits.

A few quick things to test:

• Run File > Optimize Catalog, then restart Lightroom.

• Confirm the original files are online and not on a sleeping or intermittently available drive.

• Create a small new test catalog and import a few affected photos to see if the behavior repeats.

• Quit Lightroom Classic and move (some other location) the Previews.lrdata and Smart Previews.lrdata folders next to your Catalog, then reopen LrC and let previews rebuild.

Please let us know the results. If it is still not resolved, then to move this forward, we’ll need a bit more info:

• A short screen recording showing the Grid view > double-click > revert behavior

• Copy & paste System Info from the Lightroom Classic Help menu here.

• Exact location/ path of the Catalog and photos are stored (internal disk, external disk, network, or cloud-drive location)

Once we have that, we can determine whether this is a catalog-specific corruption or something that needs escalation to the product team.

Thanks for your patience, and we’ll help you get to the bottom of this.

Best regards,

Anshul Saini

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Hi Anshul,

many thanks for your reply.
It turned out that the concerned catalogue was damaged. I went back in the backups and found the last version which was working fine. To be honest in course of this action I came across a folder created by LRC indicating that the catalogue was damaged, unfortunately I overlooked it at that time.
I lost a number of edits, but it is ok.