P: Folder Favorite Setting Cannot Be Changed

[Joe Hohner]

After installing the latest release of Lightroom Classic 7.4 I'm unable to unmark my favorite folders.  In other words, folders that were marked as favorites before the latest release can no longer be unmarked.  I can, however, select a folder that was not a favorite before release 7.4 and mark it and also unmark it as a favorite.  I use this feature a fair amount so I'm pretty sure this issue started after the latest release but I cannot be sure.  Thoughts?  Seems like one of those pesky software bugs to me. I'm an experienced user so I do not think this is some type of user error.  The catalog is my master catalog and has about 600,000 images.  I did not have any favorites marked in my sub catalogs before the release.  They work fine but, again, the problem seems limited to the folders that were marked as favorites before the release.

[Update: All of the reports here except one can be explained by the confusing design of LR's "favorite groups".  See Robert Somrak's post and John Ellis' post. Thus, this topic is marked as an Idea, rather than Not A Problem, to capture the concept that the UI design is very confusing.

Patrick Philippot identified a bug where right-clicking an unselected folder creates two folder groups. It has been forked into this bug report.

There's another topic expressing similar confusion. I'm not going to merge the two, since that will hide all the useful replies.

- John Ellis, 3/10/20]

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

OS?
Does it only happen to folders with subfolders or in a visible parent folder?

Does the folder appear in the Favorites in the search bar after marking it as no longer favorite (but still has the starred icon)?

[Bob Somrak]

The OS is Mac 10.13.6
Its random when it will quit working. IThe last one it quit working on was parent/child folders but I will keep track when it stops again and update you .

It still appears in the drop down after Unmarking in folders panel as the last time as I had to use the drop down to I unmark it.

[DuanePDX]

I'm using Classic version 7.4 running on Windows 7.

[DuanePDX]

When I unmark a favorite the star remains on the folder.  Right click to see "Mark Favorite".  Pick that.  Right click again and see "Unmark Favorite".  The star remains attached to the folder.  For a brief moment today it started working but is no longer working.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Also let me know if the 7.5 update has improved behavior...

[Bob Somrak]

Rikk

I just tried this again and the marking/unmarking is broken when using the folder panel but seems to work ok when using the filmstrip dropdown.  It is a random problem as I posted above.  This is Lr 7.5 and osx 10.13.6

[Samoreen]

Hi Rikk,

Version 7.5 didn't fix the problem. This bug appears to be random but it is not. It is easily reproducible as I explained 3 weeks ago in the thread mentioned above :

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/folder-favorite-setting-cannot-be-changed

Depending on how one uses this feature, the problem may seem to appear randomly. Actually, the problem shows up when the right-clicked folder is marked as a favorite while it is not the currently selected folder.

I have given all details just in time and this could have been easily fixed before releasing version 7.5. There are some people on this forum (most of them software engineers or developers) who are spending time investigating problems, giving accurate technical details allowing to fix long lasting issues. Sometimes, I have the feeling that nobody cares at Adobe.

[Samoreen]

Not fixed in version 7.5.

[Samoreen]

Bump!

[bhousto90]

As per this documentation the unmark favourite folders is working correctly:
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/create-folders.html#unmark-favorite-folders-group

Problem is we only see one * indicator favourites marker but it can have two uses.
When you mark folders as a group there isn't a different indicator and it leads to confusion when marking/unmarking one of these same folders when you think it is just marked as a individual folder favourite.

When marked as a group, then all of the selected folders get the star indicator, but the mark/unmark options in the right click menu will still remain active as you can still mark each of these individual folders in the group as individual favourites.
You do not get any additional indication whether it is marked as a group vs individual favourite folder or both (it just says it is part of your favourites)

The difference is only visible when you view the 'favourite sources' list from the Filmstrip menu, then you can see if a folder is listed more than once.


This should be a feature request to add a 2nd mark for group favourites like ** or *G

[Samoreen]

Sorry Bruce, but I disagree.

Re-read my example. If folder A is selected and if I right-click folder B (which is not selected) A and B are marked as favorites. I never wanted A to be added to a non wanted favorites group. Now if I right-click A (which is still selected), the available command is "Mark Favorite". This doesn't make sense since it is already marked as a favorite.

The unmarking process is not more logical. Now select both A and B, right-click B and select "Unmark favorites".  A is no longer a favorite and B is still one that you can no longer unmark from the Folders pane. You have to do this from the Grid View drop up menu.

[Bob Somrak]

Bruce,

I think you have identified the issue but the problem is the documentation says "SELECTED" folders are put in a group.  As Patrick says, if you select a folder and then right click another folder WITHOUT actually selecting it than it will consider the selected and unselected folder as a group.  This may be by design but I consider it a poor design.  You should have to PURPOSELY  SELECT multiple photos to put them in a group.  The present design makes it TO EASY to create a group by accident which it think is causing the confusion.  

[bhousto90]

Ok I followed your steps and found the following:
When you have a selected folder [A] and then right click on a 2nd folder [B] (that is in a highlighted but unselected state) and mark as favourite it adds Folder B as a individual favourite (as you wanted) but also additionally marks  A & B as a group (which is your unexpected result).

This also explains what happens when you try the unmarking them. B is marked twice, A is marked once.

So at this time the workaround is to right click & mark only the selected folders to get expected results. (This is how I was doing my earlier testing)

Hopefully someone from Adobe will read this additional info and acknowledge the double marking (as group) as a bug. This would keep the behaviour consistent with how library thumbnail flagging/rating works... even if your mouse is not on a selected thumbnail and you right click to change rating etc. it only applies the change to the one you right clicked on.

[AviMathur]

Hello Bruce,

Thank you for your critical observation, we have logged this as bug.
Thanks for reporting, Keep up the good work.

Thanks,
Akshay

[Samoreen]

> This would keep the behaviour consistent with how library thumbnail flagging/rating works... even if your mouse is not on a selected thumbnail and you right click to change rating etc. it only applies the change to the one you right clicked on.

Which brings us back to my comments in these threads :

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/folder-favorite-setting-cannot-be-changed

http...

There's a frequent confusion in the Lightroom UI between selected folder and right-clicked folder that explains other long lasting bugs.

[Elvir]

I have the same problem on a Mac. Patrick Philippot described it perfectly. Adobe, please fix it. Thank you.

[Elvir]

I have the same problem on a Mac. Patrick Philippot described it perfectly. Adobe, please fix it. Thank you.

[Samoreen]

Not fixed in LR 8.

[Samoreen]

Not fixed in LR 8.

[Samoreen]

Please remove the "Not a problem" tag.

[Samoreen]

I insist. Please unmark this issue as "not a problem". It seems that with version 8 the behavior of this feature has become even more erratic making it totally unusable.

[DuanePDX]

It seems to me that not being able to fix this problem should be an embarrassment for Adobe.  Surely they must have somebody who knows how to test and fix software problems.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

This stupid bug is really messing with my workflow. Please please please Adobe, I thought the sales pitch for the 'pay monthly for our software model', is so you can continue to support us???

Meanwhile, Capture1 is looking better and better.

[DuanePDX]

Problem still present in the latest version.  Can they not test this and then fix it?

[johnrellis]

I changed the status of this bug report from "Not a problem" to "No status".