P: AI Masks Require updating and/or disappear

[Shelemiah]

Hello,

I recently had a call with Adobe support with no luck. I have found some threads on this but nothing presents a solution and it seems hard to find what the actual issue is.

If I edit a client gallery and use any healing brush tool or AI masking tool, the mask or healing brush/generative AI will get a red dot underneath after going back to the start of the gallery, my AI edits are gone....

I also noticed this happens 100% of the time when I quite and reopen lightroom, I can fix the mask, update ai settings but it just resets each time I open lightroom.

We tested a new catalogue, we tested a bunch of things with no luck. 

We really need a fix on this Adobe it is killing workflow, not sure what broke this setting. I can't revert to an old version because I have lots of photos (I do 1 catalogue per year) and can't go back weeks of client work.

Also this catalogue was started at the begining of 2025 so there is no version 13 of this catalogue to revert to and test.

PLEASE HELP ADOBE!

[brendardzphoto]

Hello Everyone,

I´m currently having issues with my Lightroom Classic.

I´m using the generative AI to edit out backgrounds and other details in my wedding photographs. However, when I use the develop tab, and edit several hundreds of pictures at a time, I sometimes go back to a picture to check it out. Turns out a lot of my edits are not being saved for some reason. I´ve seen this happen when going back to pictures or when trying to export them through the Pic-Time plugin to save them in a gallery at Pictime. 

The generative AI keeps asking me to update the changes made, but why is it just not saving what it already did?? "Some Remove settings need to be updated" keeps showing up in many of the pictures I did and the experience is just not consistent throughout all the editing. I´m wondering maybe i have some kind of setting not set up properly but this is annoying and I need to rework many pictures. 

Another thing I´ve noticed is if I export them 1 by 1 the settings tend to save, but when I´m doing hundreds of pictures, or export them several at a time, the edits are not saved and the "Remove Settings needing to be updated" shows up again.

Any help is appreciated!  I´m using a MacBookPro 2.6 i7 amd radeon pro 5300M 16gb mhz ddr4 sonoma14.5

[brendardzphoto]

 As you can see here, I updated 7 (SEVEN!!) times, I just wanted to remove a waiter that was in the background. While seeing the picture, I could see the waiter removed every single time, but the changes would not save. Is there some kind of setting I need to check to make sure those changes are saved properly? I would imagine not, since if they´re being shown in the history, it means that the changes ARE occurring and are being registered properly within the application and system and into the picture. Any ideas on how to fix this?  

Also, when editing pictures and using the app, some pictures may show signs of being ´corrupted´, like light streaks of cyan, yellow, red, white. If I close and reopen the application, the picture where i saw this is completely fine again. It´s weird, I´m wondering if I´m doing something wrong within the app. Thanks!

[GoldingD]

You are attempting this in batch?

[brendardzphoto]

Hi! I am not editing things out in batch, no. I check and edit every single picture out individually, including removing people several times for similar pictures like the one shown in my second comment! However, I am exporting into Pic-Time in batch, if that´s what you meant.  Hope this helps 

[JohanElzenga]

AI masks (and I assume also AI remove) is saved in 'Catalogname.lrcat-data', an extra file next to the catalog file. We have seen reports where AI masks could not be saved because 'Catalogname.lrcat-data' was locked for some unknown reason. There is a long thread in this forum about this problem. Perhaps this is the same issue. What you could try is remove 'Catalogname.lrcat-data' from the catalog folder, so Lightroom will rebuild it. It does mean you will have to update the Remove Settings once again, but hopefully then this will 'stick'.

[Herman38347346n04d]

I'm running into the same issue. We used the AI removal tool to remove a whole bunch of tapes in the background with 2 days worth of shots. After moving the catalogue files and exporting them, all the remove settings need to be updated, and there is no way to update all. The update AI function in Library mode only updates the masks, but not removals... so I'm painfully cliking them one by one this moment, and gonna be here for hours until Adobe fixes this.

[Sky Photography]

Is anyone else having Ai mask issues in LrC? Generative ai - for example, I remove, come back to photo and says "Some Remove settings need to be updated". Update All button, but, I come back and still need to update again. I've searched the web, but very little, but recent which makes me think it's a new problem.

Ai Masks are the same.

I'm all up to date on Mac and LrC updates.

Read/write on Cat locations.

It's stopping me from delivering weddings

Is anyone else getting super frustrated out there?

[john beardsworth]

The lack of other reports is an indication that it's not a common problem, and I don't think I've seen anything like you describe.

Are these photos synced?

[GoldingD]

Not on a MAC, but is something going wrong with the access rights to the file .lrcat-data  ??

[Sky Photography]

Hi John,

Thanks for your reply.

It's only been in the last week and 4 complete weddings edited!

I'm in a Photographers Facebook group, and others are reporting the same issue.

I'm not using syncing.

[Jb _estudio]

Hi, I've also been experiencing the same issue for the past two weeks, and it's quite frustrating. I tried everything. I contacted Adobe support, but they couldn't access my machine. I installed updates, uninstalled and reinstalled, restarted, and even restored a backup of my computer—I tried everything, and nothing worked. When I reopened LR, it asked me to update the last catalog I was using, and the same problem occurred.

Solution? I just created a new catalog since someone mentioned that the previous one might be corrupted, and voilà—it seems to be working fine now. This is something that tech support could have told me. As mentioned earlier, it's disappointing to pay for a subscription and not have effective solutions.

[Moved to Lightroom Classic forum by moderator]

[kglad]

assuming a lr question.

in the future, to find the best place to post your message, use the list here, https://community.adobe.com/

p.s. i don't think the adobe website, and forums in particular, are easy to navigate, so don't spend a lot of time searching that forum list. do your best and we'll move the post (like this one has already been moved) if it helps you get responses.

<"moved from cc desktop"> 

[johnrellis]

See this post for an updated workaround:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-ai-masks-require-updating-and-or-disa...

These symptoms can occur when LR can't write the .lrcat-data file for some reason, either because LR has corrupted it or there is a permissions issue. LR stores computed masks in that file. Try these steps:

1. In LR, do Edit > Catalog Settings > General > Show. That will open Windows File Explorer on the current catalog folder.

2. Exit LR.

3. Move the file <catalog>.lrcat-data to the Desktop.

4. Start LR.

5. In Library, select all photos and do Photo > Develop Settings > Update AI Settings. That will recompute all the AI masks, which could take a while. But it won't update Generative Removes, so you'll have to go to each photo with Remove, click on Remove, and then Update.

[johnrellis]

See this post for an updated workaround:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-ai-masks-require-updating-and-or-disa...

These symptoms can occur when LR can't write the .lrcat-data file for some reason, either because LR has corrupted it or there is a permissions issue. LR stores computed masks in that file. Creating a new catalog would have created a new .lrcat-data file. 

For reference by future readers, it isn't necessary to create a new catalog. Instead, do these steps:

1. In LR, do Edit > Catalog Settings > General > Show. That will open Mac Finder / Windows File Explorer on the current catalog folder.

2. Exit LR.

3. Move the file <catalog>.lrcat-data to the Desktop (but sure it's the .lrcat-data file and not .lrcat).

4. Start LR.

5. In Library, select all photos and do Photo > Develop Settings > Update AI Settings. That will recompute all the AI masks, which could take a while. But it won't update Generative Removes, so you'll have to go to each photo with Remove, click on Remove, and then Update.

[terencew23591293]

I'm now finding that the generative AI tool is not working at all.  After trying multiple times with multiple images I give up...  It seems to be a waste of time trying.   

[czlowiekadrian]

I have the same problem. It stop working.

[JohanElzenga]

Check the opacity settings of the brush. It seems the update sometimes sets it to (close to) zero. Set it to 100.

[lucaGhedini]

I have the same problem. 
30+ hours of works wasted. the idea to remove the file does not work. it seems the the problem aris also if you simply wait enough. i.e. leave LCR open -> go to lunch -> all work is gone! 
even worse: if you just "update " as suggested in the ai panel the results produced are not the same...
The same promlem on operation with the mask. 
 (i'm using the last version of LRC on m2 Mac with osx 14.x)

[lucaGhedini]

just an experiment (on mac)

1. close LCR
2. select Catalogname.lrcat-data
3. show packge content
4. remove "LOCK"

now seems it's work

[lucaGhedini]

i have the sme problems. 

just an experiment (on mac)

1. close LCR
2. select Catalogname.lrcat-data
3. show packge content
4. remove "LOCK"

now seems it's work... 

[WG Photo]

Thank you for this!  I just started editing wedding photos and was 80 photos in when I decided to update Lightroom Classic to the latest version of 14.  This was the first time I had this issue and what you suggested fixed this issue for me.  

HUGE THANK YOU!!!!! ^_^

[samixolydian]

I'm having the same issue. It's a MAJOR workflow problem, come on Adobe... what are we paying all this money for? The solution on this thread doesn't fix it. 

[JohanElzenga]

@samixolydian I'm trying to identify this problem, because the fix does indeed not work for everybody. I have several images that also have this issue, and letting Lightroom Classic rebuild the .lrcat-data did not solve it for me either. And most of my images do not have this issue, so there is no general write or permissions problem with the lrcat-data.

So far I have found that I get this problem if the image has multiple Generative Remove patches, and at least one AI mask (sky mask, object mask). An object-detected Generated Remove and an AI mask might also do it. Can you confirm (or deny) that this is the case with your problem images too?

[samixolydian]

Yes, confirmed - that’s exactly right


~Sam

------------------------------------

Personal Information removed by forum moderator.

[Tricia5DE5]

I'm also having the same issue. Finally finished a gallery and was in awe of the technology...only to find out that it didn't save and now I have to go back and remember which ones I used regenerative AI on. Super helpful.

Following in hopes of figuring this out before editing the next gallery...