An update Adobe released earlier this week for its iOS Lightroom app contained a bug that deleted user photos and preferences from the device.
If that wasn't bad enough, Adobe has since confirmed that the lost photos and preferences cannot be recovered.
The alarming bug gained more attention when users started visiting forums to express their fear about the effects of the version 5.4 update.
The bug that was first reported by PetaPixel means that anyone without a backup who downloaded the update has lost their Lightroom images for good.
Adobe offers a free version of Lightroom with a cloud storage cap. However, the forum's comments also affected some paying customers, some of whom appear to have lost thousands of images.
"All of my photos and presets are gone," one wrote. "When will this be fixed? Even purchased presets are gone! How do I get my photos and preferences back? "Another said they lost more than 8,000 photos.
Adobe representative Rik Flohr confirmed the software bug in a forum post and said the company wanted to "sincerely apologize" to everyone involved.
Florhr added that Adobe fixed the problem with the release of version 5.4.1, but added that the update would "not restore missing photos or preferences."
Here is his full answer:
"We understand that some customers who have upgraded to Lightroom 5.4.0 on iPhone and iPad may be missing photos and presets that have not synced to the Lightroom cloud. A new version of Lightroom Mobile (5.4.1) for iOS and iPadOS has been released that prevents this issue from affecting additional customers. Installing version 5.4.1 will not restore any missing photos or preferences for customers affected by the issue introduced in 5.4.0. We know that some customers have photos and presets that cannot be restored. We sincerely apologize to all customers affected by this issue. "Oddly enough, this is the second time this month that a giant tech company has messed things up for photographers. Canon recently launched its new "camera cloud platform" and shut down soon after discovering that some photo and video files were lost.
Digital Trends reached out to Adobe for more information on this issue. We'll update this piece as soon as we hear about it. In the meantime, make sure to back up your photos regularly, whether you're using Lightroom or not.
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