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Participant
February 5, 2021
Question

Lightroom photos lost after uninstall

  • February 5, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 2829 views

Hi everyone! I need some help! My Lightroom app was glitching so I decided to uninstall and reinstall the it. However, after doing so I noticed ALOT of my photos were gone (more so all my recent ones) and there were also pictures on there that weren't there before (before uninstall I had about 1.2K, after reinstall there was over 2K photos). My presets are still there, thank heavens but I'm concerned that I've lost all my most recently edited photos. Any ideas or fixes?

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1 reply

Inspiring
February 5, 2021

Hi Sujey

I see a new subscription was started today.  If you started the subscription after you deleted and reinstalled the app, this won't help recover lost images.  If one deletes Lightroom when using the free version of the app files in Lightroom are deleted too, because only the paid version of the app provides cloud backup.

 

If this is what happened, do you have a recent back up of your device from a time when Lightroom still had your images?  If so, restore that backup onto your device and then try the help here: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/recover-lightroom-mobile-photos-itunes-file-sharing.html 

Sujey5C32Author
Participant
February 5, 2021

Hello!


Thank you for the quick reply. I used to have a subscription and then cancelled it, I renewed it today to avoid future hiccups thinking this might have been the issue as to why images weren't saved after the re-install. So the only way for images to be saved is to pay for the subscription for the cloud backup correct? Otherwise if the app is deleted, all photos go with it? Also, any idea why when reinstalling, there were pictures uploaded on the app  from my camera roll that I never uploaded? And why the ones that I had uploaded that managed to still be there, weren't the edited versions, just the originals?

Inspiring
February 6, 2021

Hello again

Any photos one imports into Lightroom while the app is unpaid and not syncing exist only in Lightroom on that device.  If that non-synced app is deleted, the files inside are deleted.  By subscribing, you ensure the files imported into Lightroom are synced to Lightroom's cloud storage and can be accessed in the future.  Lightroom cloud storage will keep your files for a while even if you cancel your subscription -- for how long, I do not know.

 

It sounds like you deleted Lightroom with images inside it while the app was in a free state.  Reinstalling the app cannot restore images that were not synced with a paid subscription.  Hopefully you can re-import those images from your camera roll into Lightroom again. If you have an old backup of your device from a time when Lightroom still had all the images imported, the help page link I shared previously shows how to recover images.