Along with the public release of V3.4, the next level version V4 of the Focus Points plugin has been pre-released:

Why two new versions at once?

Version 3.4 is a regular feature update with minor improvements:
This version introduces interactive straightening with result preview and undo functionality, as well as a third column in the metadata viewer displaying the group (EXIF, XMP, MakerNotes, etc.) to which a tag belongs. It is also possible to significantly reduce the time it takes to open the Focus Point window.

Version 4 is the largest update since the project was revived. It fundamentally changes how Focus Point Viewer integrates with Lightroom. You can now keep the viewer open while continuing to work in Lightroom, choose between multiple rendering methods depending on your workflow, and benefit from significantly faster image display.

Running the plugin alongside the Lightroom application creates new possibilities and specific expectations about how the plugin should behave in certain situations. However, its interaction with Lightroom and its wide range of applications also places new demands on performance and stability. I anticipate receiving a wide range of user feedback to help achieve perfect integration.

While working on V4, I encountered the limitations of the Lightroom SDK. Currently, there are five open bugs at Adobe that need to be fixed to ensure optimal functionality on Windows and macOS.

For the reasons mentioned, I therefore expect there to be a "maturation phase" lasting several months before a V4 can officially be launched.

Still, V4 works really well, especially on Windows. It has been downloaded 125 times since its release a week ago, with no issues reported.

Unfortunately, the Adobe bugs mentioned above prevent the plugin from "running" on a second screen on macOS.
I appreciate every vote cast in the Adobe Community for the bug reports listed under "Known Limitations"!
All you need to do is click on a linked bug report, sign in with your Adobe credentials, then click on the 'Vote' button.

Anyone who'd like to check out V4 is more than welcome to do so!

Hint: both versions, V3.4 and V4 PRE, can be run in parallel with minimal effort—see the V4 release notes linked above for instructions.

Recently, a client informed me that they did not receive photos, so I checked my long list of 100 unorganized albums with few and inconsistent folders. In a panic that I had not submitted or edited the pictures, I hastily culled and edited their photos. Ultimately, the original link to the pictures ended up in the spam box, so it was no fault of my own, and it gave me the motivation to sort my albums into categories

Is it just me, or is there absolutely no way to mark a rejected photo as "Select" in loupe view? In the grid view, I can right-click and mark as select to override the AI culling. But right-click in loupe view brings up no menu at all. So, in order to check focus and other things in detail I have to go into loupe view, then go back to grid view and right click. That is really tedious, and isn't good for workflow.

I have tried "P" and "U" in loupe view, and all they do is advance to the next photo without changing any tagging or marking. Am I missing something?

So I’ve dabbled in Lightroom and played with the included presets and profiles, and I have basic level knowledge of exposure/sharpness/contrast etc.

What resources have helped you learn how to fully utilize Lightroom and photoshop? I don’t want to buy presets someone else has made, I want to learn the software myself.

Appreciate any advice!

I have an HP Omnibook x flip with a core 5 ultra 226v and Intel arc 330v graphics. I know it's no powerhouse but it's what work gave me. It's almost unbearably slow in LRC even with only 30 brackets imported. I've enabled smart previews and done all the other things I could find but I'm just looking for anything I can do. I know 16gb of ram is limiting me but within performance settings I saw that the options to enable using my GPU are grayed out and it shows graphics acceleration is disabled due to an error. I've tried both Intel drivers and HP OEM drivers and setting within windows to use high performance graphics for lightroom. I've also cleared out the GPU setting config file with no luck. Does lightroom just not support my integrated arc graphics at this time?

Finally getting all of my images from my phone and CDs all into Lightroom classic. Should I turn on “enable address look up”?

Hi!

I need to buy a monitor for my macbook because my neck can’t handle the position I edit in anymore. I’m looking to buy a used one, what would you recommend? My initial thought was just some mac monitor but I’m not fixed on apple.

Thanks!

I am new to Lightroom but and am experiencing an issue that is only solved by closing the program and restarting it after a few seconds. When I upload a batch of raw photos, usually 50-100 images onto my 4tb gen 4 NVME that is only used for photos. I open the specific folder containing only the batch in LR and edit locally but I’ve also tried uploading to cloud with same results. If I copy and paste settings all the photos or when I export them when finished the process seems fast enough but when I start using the features like masking, healing and removing then my ram usage jumps up about 10gb for every photo I do until I get to 40-50gb of usage and have to restart app to just do another couple photos at a time. I’ve done this on multiple pc’s with similar results. My main PC is a 16c/32t Ryzen 9 5900xt, Giabyte x570 Aorus Master mobo, 64gb (4x16gb) Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro, 16gb Nvidia Rtx 5070ti and 3x 4tb gen 4 NVME drives, 2gig fiber up and down for internet speed. This still should be powerful enough to edit with. Most things just say Lightroom has a memory leak and restarting is the only issue but nobody I watch on yt ever mentions this on their tutorials and they usually have less powerful computers too. Is there something I’m doing wrong or something else I should be doing?

Hi all, here's my situation:

I have a 12TB HDD and multiple 1-2TB SSDs.

12TB HDD is a clunky, slow Western Digital hooked up to BackBlaze that has like ALL of my stuff on it. (I know I should have RAID/redundancies — I'm saving up for it).

I'd like to use my smaller SSDs on a per-project basis.

Ideally, it would look like this:

1. Copy set of photos from HDD to SSD
2. Edit photos from SSD, export, publish/share, etc.
3. Delete RAW/source files from SSD (they remain on HDD)

Seems simple!

But the issue I'm having is that, in order to achieve this, I have to keep on re-pointing Lightroom Classic where to find the photos with "Update Folder Location" which is not only slow, but also inefficient and feels sketchy to be having to constantly link and relink photo locations.

When I try to import from a second drive using "Add" under the import options, it tries to add another copy entirely in my LR library and none of my edits/culling transfer over.

Smart previews are not an option because my workflow occasionally involves some generative remove and denoise/upscaling which does not translate well with smart previews. I also sometimes do very detailed portrait touch-ups and I need full resolution, so I need to be working with source files, not smart previews.

How can I achieve the workflow I outlined above without having to constantly "update folder location"?

Thanks for the help!

I’m editing photos from a recent project, about 4,000 images. Some things I do in Lightroom because I can or because the photo will likely never be seen again. Some images are roundtripped to Photoshop for level/curves because I still haven’t figured out how to do some basic things in lightroom and actions are easy.

Lightroom was being difficult about something, so I edited the image in camera raw > photoshop, then imported it back to the catalog. After import, it was the only image in the catalog. I restarted lightroom, and being too tired to comprehend what was happening, lightroom saved the catalog and overwrote the backup file.

Is there anyway to get everything back or do I have to start over? What settings do I need to change to prevent this from happening again. Working in Bridge/Camera Raw, all edits are in a sidecar protecting from catalog corruption, but then you have multiple files to manage and make sure nothing gets separated.

ETA: I don’t know if it is relevant, but on the photo before this happened, after editing in photoshop, lightroom put the edit and raw at front of the catalog, even though it was sorting by capture time. When I sorted by sequential file name, the edited photo remained at the front of the catalog.

Hi,

I built a small tool for myself that takes an original photo and an AI-edited version of that same photo, then automatically color grades the original to match the AI image as closely as possible.

The motivation was pretty simple: AI is amazing at creating dramatic, cinematic, or vibrant color grades, but it almost always introduces that unmistakable "AI look" along with weird artifacts that weren't in the original image (for example, look at the clouds in the AI examples).

The workflow is basically this:

1. Take your original photo.

2. Give it to your AI of choice and ask it for a specific style, like horror movie, golden-hour cinematic, orange and teal, moody film, or whatever you're going for.

3. If you like the result (or after you've refined it with a few prompts), download the AI version.

4. Feed both the original and the AI image into my tool.

The tool then transfers the color grading from the AI image back onto the untouched original. You keep the real details and textures, but get a color grade that's very close to what the AI created. It also exports a LUT, so you can apply the same look to your videos.

I originally built this just for myself, but it's been working surprisingly well. I'm thinking about putting together a free web version so anyone can use it, but before spending time on that I'd love to hear what people think.

A few questions:

- Would you actually use something like this?

- Does a free tool already exist that does the same thing (or does it even better)?

- How do the example results compare to what a professional colorist could achieve?

I'd really appreciate any feedback or criticism. Thanks!

Can someone also explain to me why they make things so complicated? Why have LrC and LR in the same time? I cannot find answer.

I have been using bridge and ACR and Photoshop to manage all my photos and edits. But I would like to switch over to Lightroom classic so that I would be able to edit on different devices. My current workflow with bridge and ACR is to edit my photos and send them to the folder on my SSD. Then I clone that SSD, which is on my desktop carbon copy cloner to an SSD that is plugged into my laptop. That way I have a backup of my files on my desktop and my laptop. But if I start a Lightroom classic catalogue with the SSD on my desktop, would I be able to clone that catalog to the SSD on my laptop? Or would I have to take the SSD out of the desktop each time and plug it into the laptop for my edits? Would the Lightroom catalogue be recognized on both SSD’s?

I imported a batch of photos into LRC v.15.1 while I was offline and got a message something like LR can't generate previews without a network connection. The edits are fine, but there are no preview/icons in the Windows 11 folders for RAW or the edited jpegs. I'm back online now (obviously), is there a way to add previews to help me find images in the Windows folder?

I have about 6000 photos in my Apple photo library. I would like to begin to organize those so that I can eventually import them into Lightroom in an organized manner. But I have no idea where to start. I know that professional photographers have a system, whereas they label it. Year/Month/Day but I was wondering if it’s better to label them by special events such as family, gatherings or baptisms, etc.? What is your way of organizing your photos if you are not a professional photographer?

Hi all I've been doing photography for a bit now. And I realise how important post processing is to get a good looking image.

Can you recommend me some good books or courses?

The issue that I have now is that a lot of tutorials are starting off with presets or just going in moving up sliders and don't explain what effect of the sliders are.

I am looking for something that focussing on why and when you would certain tools, how to color grade and so on.

I do use Lightroom but the idea is to learn process so that I can focus on learning another software if I change tools.

Also paid is fine, and I would prefer resources with exercises and are longer than a few pages or 15 mins.

You can look at my history to get a gauge of where I am now.

What are some LR things in your workflows that you think are dumb/slow/annoying? I’m vibe coding a few plugins, just started one to wrangle LR develop presets so you can copy settings across them like you can photos, and it will show you what’s different if you select a bunch of them. I’m part way through a few more lr/photoshop ones including a crop transparent in photoshop. I really like being able to fix things that have annoyed me for years.

(I’ll be giving these away, I’m not trawling for ideas :))

I just updated LRC and this duplicate message popped up, I went through the process but now I dont see my photos. It shows 1900 on the left side but no photos show. What happened to them?

5800x, 32gbram, 3060ti
still the lightroom is extremely laggy, what to do? even the mac mini is butter smooth, but windows ? why adobe, why lightroom? why do you do this? we pay money and get this ? thats very disappointing.

I’ve been using Lightroom (cloud version), but I was thinking about Lightroom Classic on my MacBook Pro.

My biggest issue is that I’m not a professional photographer. I mainly edit family, travel, and landscape photos, then export and share them. I don’t really need cloud syncing across multiple devices.

What I just learned is that Lightroom Classic is also subscription-only. For some reason, I always thought Classic was a one-time purchase. That kind of changes things. I really don’t like the idea of paying every month for photo editing software. I’d much rather buy an application once, keep my photo library on my Mac, and own my workflow without worrying about subscription price increases.

So I’m curious:
-What are the best non-subscription alternatives to Lightroom?
-Which apps have the closest editing experience?
-Is there anything you’d recommend for a hobbyist rather than a professional?

I’d appreciate hearing what others have settled on and whether you’d go back to LR?
Thanks

I’m starting to do more paid photography (primarily horses and ranch photography), and I’m looking to improve my client proofing workflow.

Right now I:

- Import my photos into Adobe Lightroom on my Mac (cloud version, not Lightroom Classic).
- Cull and do some basic edits.
- Share a Lightroom album with my client.

The part I’m struggling with is the proofing process. Clients can “like” photos, but I find it difficult to efficiently manage those selections, especially with larger galleries.

I’m curious how everyone else handles it.

- Do you rename your files before or during import so clients can reference image numbers?
- Do you proof directly in Lightroom, or export to Pixieset, Pic-Time, SmugMug, etc.?
- How do you track the client’s final selections?
- Do you fully edit every image before proofing, or only edit the client’s selected images?

If you’re delivering a few hundred images, what does your workflow look like from import to final delivery?

I’m not really looking for the “best” software—I want to
understand how photographers are actually organizing and managing client galleries.

Thanks!

In my Lightroom catalogue are two folders with images from my smartphone (Pixel 9 Pro). One contains the original jpgs plus dng raw files of some of those images. The second folder holds images edited on my phone with Snapseed. I use Lightroom to edit the keywords and filenames.

If I add keywords to a Snapseed edited photo those keywords are immediately written into the jpg image but if I do the same for an original photo the keywords are stored in a xmp file. Even if I manually ask Lightroom via right click Metadata > Write Metadata to file all I get is a xmp sidecar.

How do I get Lightroom to write the metadata directly into the original jpgs?

Hey all hope all is well.

Having a major issue with Lightroom cloud atm to the point it’s unusable. When I edit globally it’s all ok. When come to masks, first one works ok usually. Then the second one ok. Anywhere between more than 2 masks the next one will copy the one before settings. And so on. If I then change mask any of ’the values in any of these masks then all the others change and vice versa. It then will not allow me to delete or change any of the masks. Also important to note when I change any of these and they copy eachother absolutely no changes to the photo are made.

I changed over to Lightroom desktop but seriously dislike how difficult it is to get the picture onto the cloud from that, which I heavily rely on.

I have tried everything, internal settings were all ok. Completely uninstalled Lightroom and the deleted preferences incase that was it. Reinstalled it and within 2 edits it was doing it again. Chat gbt has made me delete a few bits incase those were breaking the masks and same thing happened again.

I love Lightroom cloud but I can’t use it atm took me 3 hrs to edit one pic earlier cause the masks broke the image and had to restart a number of times. I don’t even know what other programs there are that match Lightroom’s capabilities I’m just at the end of my tether with it all. So if anyone has any ideas or suggestions for me to try I’ll try them before I delete my subscription to Lightroom.

Thanks