Lightroom Classic, Big Troubles; What Happened? What I Had To Do To Figure Out What Happened? What Lessons Were Learned

This was one of the images I made in between the time of my last catalog backup and when my
Lightroom catalog became corrupted.  After restoring it with an older, backup catalog, I had
to find all the images I had made, synchronize the folders and reimport them otherwise the files
would have been on my hard drive but LR would not known they were there. (click to enlarge)
Fujifilm X100VI; 1/35th sec. @ f/8; ISO 2500

I use Lightroom Classic (LR) just about every day.  Whether it is to import a series of photographs I made that day, editing image files I have already imported or going back through my catalog and finding images from years ago, it is a vital part of my photographic life that I count on continuously.  But all was not rosy with LR the other day.  It broke, crashed repeatedly, just stopped working and I didn’t know why.  Here is the story of what happened, how I fixed it and the lessons I learned.

The other morning, after using LR for a couple of hours (and everyday previously for weeks with no issues), I walked away from my MacBook Pro M5 for five minutes and when I returned there was a notice on my monitor that LR had unexpectedly quit.  Crashed.  Shut down. The notice asked if I wanted to send a report to Adobe.  Hmmm.  I tried opening LR, the splash screen anppered and after about 2 seconds, it crashed again.  I tried a couple of more times but it just would not remain open. What happened but more importantly, what to do to fix this?

The experts seem to always tell us the first thing to do with technology is to turn things off then back on.  So I restarted my computer, tried to start LR, but the same thing happened.  Two seconds and gone! Next step?  I then uninstalled and reinstalled LR Classic from Adobe’s Creative Cloud page (I felt it best to use Adobe’s method rather than my computer’s to maximize removing any and all files that might be corrupt and causing this) but the instant crashing continued.  

Just for reference, there had been no changes that day to LR nor my operating system, no power surges nor dropouts.  Everything was the same as in the previous days using the program without any issues. Also, my other programs ran fine.  So I started to wonder if this was a problem that was confined to my particular machine or was it a LR issue that affected hundreds if not thousands of others?  To better address this issue, I decided to consult an AI chatbot.  I’m glad I did.  Very helpful.  Indeed.

I prompted the chatbot with all the information I had as well as what steps I had already taken.  The initial reply was this type of problem was not isolated to my computer as it had been widely reported but the likely cause of my issue was a problem that was local to my machine.  The culprit?  One or more LR files being corrupt. I asked for more information and a troubleshooting protocol.  So, I started the suggested troubleshooting procedure.  

In order of likelihood, the chatbot listed three potential causes.  

1.) a corrupt file within preferences, 

2.) a corrupt catalog, or 

3.) third party plug-in conflicts. 

Since I installed the free On1NoNoise AI plug-in (it was a free limited offer and I wanted to compare it to what I normally use) about two weeks before, the easiest thing to do first was remove it.  So I uninstalled it.  It wasn’t the most likely cause, but I was going to remove it anyway.  I rebooted the computer and tried it again.  Not the cause.  Time to move to the next potential cause.

The chatbot suggested the most likely cause was a corrupt preference file.  It said to reset my preferences.  I  reset the file.  I opened LR and it crashed again.  Not the cause.  Time to go to plan C.

The next suggestion was to create a new catalog (Option/Alt. & launch LR) and see if LR crashes with the new catalog.  It didn’t!  Woo Hoo! That was it.  My catalog was corrupted.  (Why am I celebrating? 🥴)  At least I now knew.  Now, what to do to get everything fixed, restored and back up and running as if nothing happened?

I then went to my Backups Folder inside the main Lightroom Folder and unzipped my last catalog backup. Once unzipped, I then double-clicked the LRCAT file to open LR and the program opened perfectly!  Hooray!  Now I'm making progress.  But, as I quickly discovered, there was much more to do.

LR was again working properly—except—I had not backed up my catalog since July 7 (this instance occurred on July 27th).  My normal procedure is to make a backup at least once each week.  Typically, I'll make a backup after I import a significant number of new files or do a lot of editing. However, I neglected to do so and it came back to bite me.  Ouch!

What that means is the images I had made, imported and edited after July 7th were not recognized by this backup catalog.  It doesn’t know any of that happened.  I need now to have this catalog recognize all the images I imported and editing I had done since then.  

I had been out to photograph five times to more than a dozen locations and made 153 exposures.  My LR catalog and file system is set up by geographical area so I needed to track down those locations and image files, then synchronize each folder.  That would allow me to import (add without moving or copying) all of the photos made during that period into the catalog.  

Luckily for me, no actual image files were lost.  However, would all of my edits and ratings be lost?  No, because in Catalog Preferences I have had the box checked to “write metadata to XMP sidecar files.”  The metadata is then also stored there, not just in the catalog file itself.  All of my edits were also preserved.  If I hadn’t done that, LR would have only stored that info in the catalog file.  With it corrupt, all the edits and ratings would have been lost.  A lot of work to lose.

The other issue I needed to address, of course, was the chatbot had me reset all the preferences so all of my preferences were lost.  All of them.  No way to get them back so I had to spend a bit of time going through the various preference choices recreating them.  I couldn’t remember all of them but as I work in LR, I’m sure a situation will arise and I can change any preferences I missed as needed.  

One other thing that popped up.  I couldn't locate the new catalog files. The ones I just created. Where were they?  I asked the AI chatbot and it pointed me to the Backups folder.  When I found them I noticed the new set of files had almost an identical names as the old, corrupt catalog files.  to eliminate any confusion or mistakes, I needed to change the name of the new catalog. So, in LR, I did that.  I could now easily distinguish the new files from the corrupt ones.  

I then created a subfolder in the Lightroom folder named Old Corrupt Catalog and moved the old catalog file and all of its components into that folder.  They are now isolated and out of the way. Afterwards I moved the new catalog file and all of its components from the Backups folder to the Lightroom folder as that is where LR would normally put it.  To then open LR (with the new location of the files), I didn’t directly launch the app, I double-clicked the LRCAT file. LR opened and now knows the new location of the new catalog and all of its support files.

That entire process restored LR, preferences and everything to exactly back where it was before the catalog file became corrupt.  Whew!  but it could have been worse.  I’m thankful it wasn’t.

A couple of  lessons I learned? 

1.) Don’t delete your preferences first.  If this file is not the cause, you’ve still lost them. 

2.) Don't skip any instances of backing up your catalog file. Keep two to three old copies ‘just in case.’ I keep two old copies and when I create a third, I delete the oldest one.

3.) Continue to save the metadata in the sidecar files as that saves your metadata and edits and potentially saves you a lot of time and angst.

Everything is now done.  Everything works perfectly. What a mess and four hours of time wasted—well, not wasted as I learned a lot—but four hours that could have been spent more productively.  I have no idea what could’ve happened and  how that catalog got corrupted just sitting there by itself.

It was a mess for sure but time and a thoughtful and methodical approach (and help from AI) resolved it for me. I hope this never happens to you.  I thought it would never happen to me. But it did.

UPDATE (07/30/2026): Yesterday (after I had written my experience here), Anthony Morganti’s YouTube channel just released a video on this very topic.  It is worth watching.  You can see it here. Something that Anthony should also have included is the option to open a catalog backup instead of creating an entirely new catalog which would have saved his collections, copy files, flags, stars, ratings, etc.  He responded to a comment someone had made that he had forgotten to mention that. 

Join me over at my website, https://www.dennismook.com.  

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook  

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