Photos coming into the camera roll darker or lighter than taken

Report · Nov 26, 2019

I can't remember after which update this started happening, but now when I take photos in Lightroom iOS (iPhone 11Pro), almost always the photo ends up coming in way darker or sometimes blown out.

I have checked that there are no auto-settings being applied. This is driving me crazy!

Please see the attached examples. One is a screenshot of the preview of the photo right after snapping it, and the next is a screenshot of viewing the photo within the "LR Camera Photos."

Report · Nov 27, 2019

Hi there,

Sorry that your images are getting darker in appearance once imported into Lightroom mobile on your iPhone 11 Pro.

Yes, the difference is clear and it is something not usual. Which version of Lightroom are you using?

Generally, this happens when Lightroom renders your image and make the correction based on the camera profile. The images were probably raw images. And you probably had some in-camera settings that were impacting the original image. The lighter image was the JPEG preview that is part of the raw image. Lightroom displays that JPEG preview while it builds its own preview of the raw image data. Lightroom does not read in-camera settings such as brightness, saturation, sharpness, etc.

Thanks,

Akash

Report · Nov 28, 2019

Hello Akash

as this is all happening within the iPhone and Lightroom app ios, there are no RAW in-camera settings.

i understand what you are describing and that applies to when I use my dslr and the main Lightroom desktop app, but with the iPhone it's not the same.

Report · Nov 28, 2019

I've been having the same problem. All my photos that I'm having trouble with were taken with the iPhone 11 XS Max in Sept 2019 using either Camera+ 2 app or iPhone Camera app.

There may be more affected, but these are the ones I'm working with right now.

I posted about it at https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-for-mobile-apple-tv/photo-import-problems-since-ios-13/m-p/...

Report · Nov 28, 2019

Akash,

I've experienced the same problem and the photos I'm most concerned with right now are the several thousand I took during a trip in September 2019 when I was still using the iPhone XS Max. I used both the iPhone Camera app (High Efficiency) and Camera+ 2 app (TIFF format).

Ever since I upgraded to an iPhone 11 Pro Max and upgraded to iOS 13, I've been having problems importing photos from my Camera Roll into the Lightroom mobile app (v 5.0.0).

The photos are okay on my phone, but when I import them into the mobile LR app, many appear either underexposed or overexposed and those altered images are what I get if I upload/import into Lightroom Classic (desktop), which is where I manage and edit my photos.

This has totally clogged up my workflow and it's costing me a lot of extra time. My current workaround is Airdropping the photos to my laptop, and them importing them into Lightroom Classic. The quality is maintained when I take this approach.

I called Adobe support at least a month ago and the phone rep said that they were aware of the issue and that the Lightroom app is fine -- it's Apple that needs to make changes to the iOS. But they couldn't say when that would be (they hoped before the end of the year). Does that sound right?

Several iOS updates have come out since then and I'm on the latest 13.2.3, but I haven't seen the issue resolved.

Report · Dec 03, 2019

Hello

This is not a new behavior in Lightroom, or iOS, or even this year's new phones. Lightroom QA logged this behavior as a bug several times, and each time the feedback from developers was that the Lightroom is simply writing the raw image data directly as the sensor provides it. Lightroom DNGs look different from capture review mode in the screenshot above or when compared to JPGs due to processing iOS does for the JPGs its APIs render for Lightroom (that review mode image is actually a JPG that gets rendered and displayed in capture review and is not the actual raw DNG image captured).

When capturing in Lightroom's DNG format, one can use exposure compensation to increase or decrease exposure. I personally prefer to let DNGs capture at autoexposure, and then modify the exposure when needed in Edit more. Auto usually gets me closer to desired appearance. I prefer this overall to JPG capture, which simply lacks the greater image data DNGs have that allow more flexibility when editing.

The LR engineering team will continue to explore options for future releases.

Report · Dec 04, 2019

Thanks. I don't fully understand the technical issues involved, however, I appreciate that it's a known bug.

A few days ago I realized I could just download the original photos I took from my iCloud account to my laptop, and then import them into Lightroom Classic, circumventing the mobile app.

As this feels like a more efficient workflow than using the app as I had been, I'm just going to stick with it going forward.