Lightroom Classic Missing Some Syncs from LR Mobile

[ZaneShepherd]

I have experienced instances with four albums now where some actions done to pics in LR Mobile on my iPad are not fully synced back to Lightroom Classic.  Here's the workflow and what has happened:

1) Pics initially imported from D850 to Lightroom Classic.

2) Collections created in LR Classic and set to sync to Lightroom.

3) Albums with all pics appear on iPad in LR as they should (as well as iPhone, cloud etc.).

4) Albums are reviewed on iPad with certain pics flagged and/or star rated.

5) LR iPad, LR iPhone, LR desktop (not Classic, the other one) and lightroom.adobe.com are all perfectly in sync right down to the pick, ratings, etc.

5) The problem is that some of the flags and ratings changes properly sync back to Classic and some do not.  I can't really see a pattern.  Edits however done in LR mobile appear to sync but I only tested a few.

This is a huge problem because now Classic is out of sync with the client's selection made on the iPad.  I do this a lot and have never had this problem until a week or so ago.

Is this a new known issue?  How can it be fixed/re-synced?

[ZaneShepherd]

@sunnyraini thanks so much for chiming in!  Yes, this is what we need.  The more people sharing their experiences may help us and Adobe see what the patterns are.  Just curious, if you were to go to LR on your iPhone or desktop (not LrC but LR), are they all in sync with your iPad?  My experience is that the LR part of the ecosystem is always in sync.  Also, I would be curious if you had tried flagging/rating at the LrC level and determined if they did/didn't successfully sync back down to the iPad.  Historically, my problems had all been with flagging, starring and edits on the iPad not syncing up to LrC but with all LrC edits making it to the iPad.  Recently, I had my first instances of LrC changes not syncing to the iPad.

I've stopped my LR/LrC workflow at this point because it's too time consuming if things get out of sync.  Can someone from Adobe please chime in and let us know if this problem has been acknowledged or is the position still that it is not a problem with the ecosystem?

[steinwaywhw]

Hi all, I'm having the exact same issue recently (March/April 2022). 

For me, I import photos into LrC, and use LR Web for ratings/flags. These ratings and flags do not consistently sync back to LrC. I also edited a couple of those non-syncing images in LR desktop, while the edits are synced back to LrC, the ratings and flags still do not sync back to LrC. 

For an inconsistent photo, I tried adjust the ratings/flags in LrC, and it will sync to LR Web and overrides my ratings in LR Web.

For Adobe: since many people are reporting this, I want to say that "I can't reproduce the issue" doesn't mean the issue does not exist. I do understand that this is hard to investigate, though. So maybe try the followings. 

1. Find a very large catelog, use a very large album. 

2. Try doing something in LR and LRC "concurrently", like rating a large batch of images in LR Web and then quickly jump to LRC and edit some photos. This is not how I use or experience the problem, but concurrenty often triggers problems so maybe this can help trigger it.

[Studio Dark]

Same issue August 2022, import photos to LrC, editon the iPad, flagand re-sync, but every single time photos are missing when filtering by flag. Spent countless hours with Adobe online, allowed remote access and found when they cannot work out the problem, theyre keen to leave and then give me a new task that releases them from the online conversation.

Adobe, PLEASE contribute to this problem that so many people are having

[erict3159582]

Hi everyone,

Same issue here. There was an adobe employee, @Rikk Flohr: Photography , trying to reproduce the error. I do believe that the approach he listed varies greatly from the real world usage as he rated a bunch of images all at once while LrC was running.

Here are my steps to reproduce the behaviour:

1. Import images to LrC, my Galleries had roughly 1.000 images or above
2. Create a synched collection
3. Start culling on iPad. To do so, rate or flag each image ONE BY ONE, I did NOT do batch ratings. While culling I had filters active in LR (do not show images flagged as discarded). While culling LrC was NOT running (for me that is the whole point of the iPad app).
4. Result: some ratings ware synched, others werent. 

As far as I can tell the problem lies within LrC. I come to this conclusion because the ratings are apprently synched to lightroom.adobe.com.

Hope that helps.

Best,

Eric

[ZaneShepherd]

Eric,

Thanks very much for the post.  Your experience is consistent with the issue as I've experienced it.  Hopefully more users will continue to report this.  I've not seen anything else from Adobe on the status of this issue.

Thanks again!

Zane

[AdrienDadi]

Having the exact same problem. I have nothing new to add to the topic as the problem occurs just like described.

• 80% of the work done on iPad is synchronised on LrC. 20% is not.
• It affects pictures randomly without clear pattern.

Just like you, it is killing my workflow and make me loose a lot of time. Also, I cannot trust that the export I will send to my customer actually has the full scope of the work done on it since I have evidence of missing adjustement on some pictures.

Can't find a way around and have to redo all manually.

Hope this topic reach the right person on Adobe side.. 

[ZaneShepherd]

Thanks @AdrienDadi for chiming in.  I just keep hoping that the more that do will prompt Adobe to help us!  Most experiences are consistent.  I would gladly work with Adobe tech support for troubleshooting if asked!

We have this fantastic ecosystem here of great products that are designed to work together.  Picking/cropping/culling/rating can be done so quickly on the iPad with the rest of the processing being done in LrC when synced.  It is a great workflow.  Please Adobe, help us!

[Linas D.]

I've been having this issue for the last couple years, spent countless hours with Adobe support, but nothing helped. 

There is clearly a bug in Lightroom Classic somewhere. I never have sync issues between Ipad and Cloud.

[johnm8047991]

Same issue here.  Flagged photos on iPad.

They sync correctly to  lightroom.adobe.com

But often they don't sync to Classic (Windows)

It's happened before and somehow I managed to fix it but couldn't remember how.

Just happened again - tried all the usual - forcing a resync, logging out/in, reinstalling (including deleting any LR folders I could find).  No luck.

[ZaneShepherd]

Hi Linas - Sorry you've been having the same problems as many of us.  I can only hope that at some point Adobe will acknowledge this issue and do something about it!  I have discontinued making any edits on any of the other platforms other than in LrC.  Very unfortunate.

[johnm8047991]

Turns out I did fix this with the nuclear option (uninstalling, deleting all Lightroom folders, reinstalling).  Syncing was paused when I started the app up and didn't notice - now al is good.  So in summary:

Forcing a re-sync (Preferences -> Lightroom Sync -> [ALT key] -> Rebuild Sync Data) doesn't work

Logging out/in - doesn't work

I've a feeling the nuclear option is overkill - next time I'll try to figure out exactly what's needed - I'm pretty sure it's just one folder that needs deleting.

[Linas D.]

I've changed my computer, tried new catalog...This issue is always there. And you never know when this is going to happen. There is clearly a bug in the software.

The only solution I've found so far is rebuilding sync data. But at the moment I have 180k photos synced to the cloud and rebuilding sync data would probably take around 3 days:)

[SINIKKAFOTO]

I have same issues as you do.

I bought iPad Pro just for culling pictures (flagging) and editing photos on the way. And this problem is driving me crazy! Already regretting for using so much money for iPad when Lightroom sync isn't even working. And as said, there is no pattern, the error just happens to show up very randomly.

Unfortunately I have nothing new to add here, just wanted to pop up and keep this conversation alive.

[DdeGannes]

What is not syncing? This is the Lightroom Classic forum, is the sync from your iPad not syncing to LrC?  If so state what version of LrC are you using on your Computer?

You need LrC at least version 10.4 for sync to work.

[DanZeller]

October 2022

Bought an iPad Pro about a month ago to edit photos on. Experiencing exactly what everyone in this thread is experiencing. Pretty frustrating that this appeaers to be a common issue given all the responses here, renders using Adobe's cloud ecosystem useless, and it is hardly being acknowleged by Adobe. I'll enter my computer and software versions below:

Computer:

MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019)

Processor 2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9

Memory 32 GB 2667 MHz DDR4

Graphics AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 4 GB

Running LrC 11.5

If anyone from Adobe would like to work with me to diagnose what is causing this, I'd be happy to help. In the meantime I'll try downgrading to former versions of LrC and see if theres a release free from this bug. 

[Studio Dark]

If you get anywhere with this, please post the response, the issue still hasn’t gone away and Adobe still haven’t resolved it. Initially I thought it may have be because I was close to my 100GB cloud storage allocation, I now have 1TB and have filled around 5% of that but the issue persists.

[ZaneShepherd]

Jessica - Thanks for the post.  Adobe, we're begging for help here!  I know absolutely from an industry insider that Adobe is aware of this and it's on the known issues list.  Given that this impacts the entire ecosystem, why can't we get help here????

[Linas D.]

I think this issue started 2-3 years ago with one of the Lightroom updates. I've contacted them about this too many times, but they haven't been able to find the issue yet. 

My solution to them was to implement a new function to rebuild sync data just for a single album and not the entire catalog. I sometimes have were one album is partially stuck but the other is fully syncing.

This would almost fix the issue. At least for me. But I somehow doubt they will do something like that.

[ZaneShepherd]

Dan - Thanks for the great info.  Welcome to our frustrated group!  We just need to keep posting I'm told.  This is a major flaw in the whole system and is impeding our workflow significantly.  Up until about 18 months or so ago, I would create a collection after uploading to LrC and then do all my picks and crops on the iPad and then finish in LrC.  I could absolutley fly through 2K images in no time!  Unfortunatley, like everyone else, I had to change my workflow and it added a few hours back to my whole process.  I'm a sports photographer and I shoot among other things, high school football.  Ugh.  So frustrating!!!!!

[Jeffrey Mayfield]

Just confirming this is still a problem for me. Have a relatively new PC (intel i7 - 48GB Ram) and ipad pro. This combo was reliable for a while, but once this problem showed up, it has never gone away. It has slowed down productivity significantly as I can no longer reliably cull images on the ipad (the faster way to cull). 

Really hoping Adobe does something about this soon.

[ZaneShepherd]

Thanks Jeffrey.  Yes, welcome to our club.  And yes we hope Adobe will recognize this issue and fix it.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Greetings all,

Rest assured that we are watching this thread but, as of this moment, we still do not have a reproducible case. Referring to my original post in this thread: https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/lightroom-classic-missing-some-syncs-fr... , my tests on the current versions (11.5/7.5.x) still result in the same 'cannot reproduce' behavior. 

As I posted previously: we would love to have bonafide steps to recreate this issue. 

[ZaneShepherd]

Rick,

With all due respect, how is it that all of us continue to have this problem?  Several people have also volunteered to work with Adobe on testing.  I myself will be happy to work with Adobe and recreate the problem.  Please let me know how we can arrange that.  

Zane

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

The absolute best thing you can do is give us step-by-step instructions for reproduction. They need to be detailed and repeatable.   I count ~20 persons on this thread and am hoping someone can provide the additional clues needed to identify where things are failing. 

I am happy to continue testing various scenarios.

[ZaneShepherd]

I will attempt to do that.  I have project that I haven't processed yet that I will use for test.  I think the issue is edits done in LR Mobile (iPad in my case) not syncing back to LrC, not the other way around.  When I first import to LrC, I will then create a collection and sync the folder to LR Mobile.  That has never failed to my knowledge.  All my flags, crops, ratings and edits are then synced fine to LR Mobile.  It's when I start the process (flags, ratings, edits, etc.) in LR Mobile that there seems to be a 20+% failure rate of them changes successfully syncing back to LrC.  I guess my question though is let's say I give you the exact steps and the results.  You then try to duplicate it and you can't (or haven't been able to thus far).  What does that gain us?  If I give you specific date/time information and my Adobe ID are you able to look behind the scenes at some logs or something and see the activity?  It really would require me doing this action and then being able to tell you down to an image that something didn't sync back to LrC.  For instance, if I make 100 flags, crops and edits and 20 don't sync and I tell you that on image _ZP360987 I flagged as a pick, gave 5 stars and cropped but that did not sync back to LrC and gave you date and time, would that help?  What other info would you need?  If you can map out exactly what you need, I will do that and I'm sure others reading this would do the same.