Cant see photos but still taking up storage

[xdJimothy]

Hi guys im sorry if this is long / doesnt make sense at times but ill try my best to explain this. Back when i was in college we were given adobe accounts and i used that on my iphone to take photos on the Lightroom app. after my account ran out i was still able to use lightroom to take photos and edit them. A few months ago i ran into an issue where if i was connected to the internet when i was on the gallery page a white page would appear but nothing would load on it and every time i would exit out of it it would just come back. The whole time using lightroom it had been taking up space on my phone. quite a lot, its currently taking up 40GB, since it was taking so much storage on my phone i figured it was stored locally and would be able to switch accounts and upload them all to the cloud so my phone would have free space. So earlier today i logged out of that account, signed into my main adobe account and purchased a 1TB cloud plan to be able to upload all of the photos. However, none of the photos i had taken were on the new account (obviously) but anyway I logged back into my college account, (the same account that had all of the pictures saved to) and they were all gone. Despite this Lightroom still takes up 40GB so i figure they are still on my phone but they are unaccessable. I then plugged my phone into my computer to be able to somehow access the files.  I went through File Sharing and went to the lightroom tab where there is a folder that is 36gb. it does seem to be 2 months old which i dont know why but anyway when i try to save the folder to my computer it comes up with an error code (-4) So anyway the photos must still be downloaded to my phone but are completely unaccessable and i really dont want to lose them as its years of photos.

[Charlie.D]

Hello @xdJimothy 

Using iTunes file sharing to copy files out of the Lightroom app cache is exactly what I recommend you do to recover images from all Lightroom accounts you have signed into on that device.  Do not remove the app, as this will delete the cached image files as well as the app itself.

I tried copying my own LR iOS app cache and did not see the same error you mentioned.  I did some web searching about what error 4 means, and there could be a number of causes.  You may need to reach out to Apple Support if your own troubleshooting doesn't solve the problem. 

This Apple page mentions the following for error 4:

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204770#security 

• If you see errors 2, 4, 6 or 1611, check your third-party security software. Then check your USB connection.
• If you still see an error, contact Apple Support.

Are you able to make a backup of your device without seeing this error?

Are your iOS and Mac OS (or Windows iTunes app) all up-to-date?