Restoring photos

[Adél Ben.]

Hi everyone, today I accidentally deleted my Lightroom app from my phone. I have downloaded it again, and I signed in to the same account, but now all my photos are gone, because I haven't saved them on my device and I don't have an SD card. Can they be restored somehow? (Sorry, if it's a dumb question, I just know very little about technical things like this) 

I hope someone can help me, thank you already, Adél

[Michael Boreham]

Deleting the app should not cause any loss of photos which should be secure on Adobe Cloud. I have deliberately deleted the app as a troubleshooting measure with no problem.

Assume you have a paid up subscription?

Is your wifi/mobile data working properly?

Had the photos finished uploading before you deleted the app? You may not know excatly but had they been there for while, or had you only just added them?

How long have you left the phone with the Lightroom app open....things may not happen straight away. You might need to stop the phone turning off by changing the auto lock time in Display and Brighness setting,

Are you sure you signed in with the same Adobe ID?

Do the settings in the app on the phone look sensible, esp Local Storage, and Cloud Storage and Sync ?

How much Cloud Storage is used in the Cloud Storage and Sync setting? Do you know what it was before you deleted the app?

You can see the photos that are in the Adobe Cloud by going to lightroom.adobe.com and signing in with your Adobe ID, but if you are using the wrong ID you won't see them of course.

[Michael Boreham]

Deleting the app should not cause any loss of photos which should be secure on Adobe Cloud. I have deliberately deleted the app as a troubleshooting measure with no problem.

Assume you have a paid up subscription?

Is your wifi/mobile data working properly?

Had the photos finished uploading before you deleted the app? You may not know excatly but had they been there for while, or had you only just added them?

How long have you left the phone with the Lightroom app open....things may not happen straight away. You might need to stop the phone turning off by changing the auto lock time in Display and Brighness setting,

Are you sure you signed in with the same Adobe ID?

Do the settings in the app on the phone look sensible, esp Local Storage, and Cloud Storage and Sync ?

How much Cloud Storage is used in the Cloud Storage and Sync setting? Do you know what it was before you deleted the app?

You can see the photos that are in the Adobe Cloud by going to lightroom.adobe.com and signing in with your Adobe ID, but if you are using the wrong ID you won't see them of course.

[Adél Ben.]

I have no idea about the Cloud storage, honestly I haven't really checked it before, I should have paid more attention to the settings etc. I'm sure that I have signed into the same account, my WiFi is working fine, and I know how I deleted the app. I didn't take or add any picture right before the deleting. I had just the free trial version.

It seems to me that only the pictures you add to the app for the purpose of editing are saved on Cloud, I have tried it out. I have taken a picture with Lightroom camera, and added one then deleted the app, downloaded it again, and only the added picture "remained". Unfortunately almost all of my photos were taken with Lightroom camera...so. I have called our aquitance who is a Computer Science teacher (not sure how is it called in English) and he said that it's kind of impossible to restore the pics. Still, I'm very grateful for your reply, thank you very much

[JohanElzenga · Accepted solution]

If you used the free trial version, then I believe you did not have an Adobe account and so no cloud sync. That means that your photos were only stored locally, and deleting an app will delete its local files as well.

[Michael Boreham]

Do you think there is any chance that buying a sub now with same ID might show that the photos are there? Adobe must want people to convert their free trials, although probably not expecting them to delete the app. Might be that free trial photos are kept in the cloud for 30 days. A proper trial would include syncing between devices which would need them to be in the cloud. If the photos are important it might be worth asking Adobe.

If they were only stored locally, maybe they are in an iCloud automatic backup. 

[JohanElzenga]

No, I don't think there is any chance of that. If you look at the info in the App Store, then you will see that 'Creative Cloud Storage' is a Premium feature, not a free feature. The photos weren't synced to the cloud, so they are not in the cloud, not even as 'deleted photos' that could perhaps be restored. Getting a cloud sync subscription now does not change that, I'm afraid.

iCloud backups are not incremental backups. They are more like clones. You can restore a device from a backup, but you can only restore from the latest backup, not from some earlier backup. So your only chance would be if there has not been any iCloud backup at all since you deleted the app.

[Michael Boreham]

Not sure that is right about iCloud backups being like clones. This link is quite old but is what I thought happened. May have changed.

How to restore an iCloud backup older than most recent

Here is a recent link confirming you can restore older iCloud backups.

https://www.imore.com/how-restore-your-iphone-or-ipad-backup#icloud 

[JohanElzenga]

I didn't know that you could also restore from older backups, but that might be your only chance. No guarantees, but maybe worth trying.