Lightroom 5 crashes on iMac Big Sur.

[stephenrgreen]

Lightroom Version Number

Lightroom 5

Operating System

1. macOS 11 Big Sur

I have Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 (fully updated) operating on iMac Big Sur ver. 11.4 (fully updated)

I had an error appear saying my Catalog (I think this is correct) was corrupted & needed optimising then it crashed & does so continuously on startup !!

Is there anyway I can recover my photos?

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Lightroom 5 is ancient software, even if it is 'fully updated'. The current version is Lightroom Classic 10.2! You can't expect to be able update MacOS to the very latest version and still run outdated software without any problems.

You could try downloading a trial version of Lightroom Classic, to see if that catalog can still be upgraded. But if that succeeds, you will need to take a subscription to the 'Photography plan' to keep working with Lightroom Classic.

 

[clee01l]

All bets are off on LR5 running on MacOS 11. As Johan has pointed out this is an ancient version of Lightroom It was discontinued and not tested long before MacOS (any version after OS X) came out. Modern Operating Systems can't expect to run obsolete apps.

You should have a recent backup catalog file that was not damages by the filesystem trying to perform some operation of the file while Lightroom was running. I would suggest that solution that Johan offered but opening the most recent uncorrupted backup of you master catalog file. I think when Lightroom 5 tells you the file is corrupt, it will also be corrupt for v10.
Your best bet is the recent backup file. If you have been tardy in making regular backups, then there are some people at Adobe that voluntarily work at repairing corrupt catalogs

The short solution is to forget about trying to run LR5 on MacOS 11. LR5 is coming top on its 8th birthday June 9th.

 

[stephenrgreen]

Lightroom 5 is ancient software, even if it is 'fully updated'. The current version is Lightroom Classic 10.2! You can't expect to be able update MacOS to the very latest version and still run outdated software without any problems.

You could try downloading a trial version of Lightroom Classic, to see if that catalog can still be upgraded. But if that succeeds, you will need to take a subscription to the 'Photography plan' to keep working with Lightroom Classic.

Thank you for the advice - I'll look to download the trial version & load an uncorrupted backup, as cCetus suggests later in the thread.