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Random Photos being Selected

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Mickey

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Premium Classic Member
Premium Cloud Member
Joined
Jul 22, 2012
Messages
74
Location
Cheshire, CT
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Lightroom Version Number
Lightroom Classic version: 10.3 [ 202105281559-8dc50eb4 ]
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
I've been seeing some weird behavior in LRC for the past few months. When I scroll through photos without making any selections, random photos end up getting selected (lighted gray) and as I continue scrolling some get unselected and others get selected without me doing anything. If I move the cursor over a selected photo is goes to darker gray (unselected) but then shows as selected again as the cursor moves on. Sometimes there's a line that divides the photo into half selected and half not selected. It's been very strange and it makes me nervous to do any culling or editing as I don't know what will be affected ( and I have a lot of culling and editing to do as I've been very neglectful during Covid). I thought it was a bug with one of the versions but it keeps happening with at least the last two, possibly three versions. I tried turning the graphics accelerator on and off and doesn't seem to make any difference. Any ideas?

Sample screenshot
Lightroom Catalog-v10 - Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic - Library-2021-07-09 13_16_59.jpeg


Laptop is a Dell XPS 15 9570 and I'm running LRC 10.3 on Windows 10 home edition with 32 GB memory.
 
Do you use a mouse? Try using a different one. If you aren't using a mouse, plug one in and see if your problem abates.
 
Good thought, Hall. I don't use a mouse unless I'm doing heavy editing, I use the built-in trackpad instead. I just tried a wireless mouse and have the same problem. Trying now to hunt up a wired mouse to try.
 
OK, same things happen with a wired mouse.

I did a little more experimenting and can describe some other weird related behavior.

- if only one picture was selected and I then go to Loupe view and advance through some photos, they are all selected when I go back to Grid.
- If I then mouse over without clicking they get unselected one by one but if I then scroll up or down to see more and then scroll back, they are selected again, meaning they are a light gray.
- the photo that I did select and is shown in the preview window has a white border around it but when viewing in Grid mode and it is not the light gray, just has the white border, until you mouse over it then it turns light gray but it doesn't stay that way if you scroll around. It does continually show in the preview window.

Would uninstalling and reinstalling do any good?

I don't see how this could matter, but I would typically use LRC on my desktop and it recently died. Won't boot at all and problem appears to be a power supply. Computer is 10 years old and I decided not to bother fixing it and may not even replace it as my laptop is pretty good and I can hook up an external monitor when I need to once I get a docking station. I don't recall seeing this issue on that desktop but can't check it now.
 
Do you have "Click lock" turned on in Mouse Properties? That might explain what you're seeing.
2021-07-09 18_05_21-Window.png
 
If resetting your preferences file doesn't do it, Turn off you graphics acceleration and see if that makes any difference. Your screen shot looks like it got stuck part way through painting the screen.
 
I had a similar problem when using a laptop, so I disabled the trackpad and use only a wired mouse. I do not use a wireless mouse because I hate the random behaviour as the battery fades and use a gaming mouse because it is so precise and responsive. I did not have the problem with different laptops, so assumed it was something to do with the sensitivity of the specific trackpad. Maybe there are trackpad options to be tweaked.
 
Update - resetting the preferences seems to have done the trick, partially at least. I no longer have the problem with photos being randomly selected or deselected as a scroll over them. It didn't seem to make any difference whether the graphics accelerator was on or off.

But now I'm seeing issues with the Sync icon and turn down triangles (or whatever they are called) in the side panels. Folders, Collections and Keywords - as I go through a listing the arrows disappear and stay disappeared. In Collections even the shoebox container icon disappears. The "help" text telling me that if I click the syncing with Lightroom with be turned on or off still shows even if the icon disappears.

Using a wired mouse is a last resort for me as I often am not at a desk or table so resting the mouse is a problem. Plus most mice need a mousepad, at least at my granite countertop, and mousepads don't work well when I'm not at a flat surface. All this may force me to do more with Lightroom rather than Classic. I haven't seen any trackpad tweaks that might affect this but I'll keep looking. I may try my Wacom tablet instead to see if that matters.
 
Now that I'm really trying to get caught up on all my neglected LR tasks, these issues are getting really frustrating. To summarize the issues:
1. Photos seem to be randomly highlighted in the lightest gray that makes it look like they are selected but the bottom bar still shows only 1 photo selected.
2. Turn down arrows disappear when scrolling through a list. Doesn't matter if the list is collapsed or expanded. Most of the time they don't come back unless I exist LIghtroom, then they disappear again as soon as a scroll.
3. New issue I found yesterday, sometimes if I bring a photo to Develop module it never appears in the large window in the center of the screen. Instead a small window appears partially overlaying the preview window. Screen print is below.

All of these things occur even after I reset the Preferences folding, turned the graphics acc. off and even tried a smaller exported catalog. I left LR for 15-30 minutes to make sure the screen was finished loading and still had the problems. I tried moving my catalog out of Dropbox to see if that would make a difference and it doesn't. I've also tried different settings on my trackpad with no luck. Switched to a mouse and that made no difference, even a borrowed wired mouse.

Any other ideas? Am I the only one who has this issue? Could it be a problem with my computer (which is less than 3 years old and plenty powerful)?

Develop issue.png
 
True, I haven't tried that because I have the graphics processor turned off. But, I will try it now as I have nothing to lose.
 
Graphics drivers are used for all painting of the display, whether or not the GPU (graphics processor) is enabled. The graphics problems you're describing are occurring in places where LR doesn't use the GPU and look like the sorts of problems you get when there's a problem with the driver.
 
Just updated the video driver direct from NVidia's website and did a clean install of the newest driver. My prior driver was from April 2021 so not very old. No difference in behavior. Also no difference if it's on or off. Went back to a wired mouse and still no change. Also tried running LrC as administrator.
 
It was the Studio Driver. Since then I have tried every driver issued in the past two years and still have the issue with the disappearing disclosure triangles in Library view, as well as the problem on the Develop screen shown above. For these driver changes to older drivers they were downloaded from the Dell website but the first updated driver was from NVidia. Always doing a clean install and then a reboot. I've also been using a test catalog that has about 200 photos in it rather than my whole catalog.

I really don't remember when I first started seeing this problem as I usually used Lightroom Classic on my old desktop that has now died but it's been some months. I've really been neglecting my photos the last couple of years. I'm now trying to get back to it as I have lots of work to do from a number of trips plus typical personal photos, mostly my reef tank and grandchildren. Long winded way of saying it's starting to make me crazy.

One other thing that's been obvious since doing all this rebooting. Even though test catalog only has 200 photos in it, it takes several minutes for LrC to load and the blue circle to go away. When it seems ready if I try to do anything, the blue circle comes back and Lightroom says "Not Responding". Takes another couple minutes then it's fine. Could this also be a symptom of whatever the issue is?

Tomorrow I'm going to load LrC on my husband's old computer and see if I have the same problems.

John - Thanks for continuing to try to help and I hope you have some more ideas.
 
I just tried one last thing before giving up for today. I set up a clean User Account in Windows, then gave it access to my User folder in Windows and opened the test catalog. Low and behold, no issues.

Now what do I do? I am the only user of this laptop and I really don't want to have to spend all the time getting It set up and everything moved over to a new account. Anyone have any ideas for how to do that easily? Or fix whatever is wrong with my user account?

Guess I should have tested the User Account first before spending all afternoon loading, unloading and rebooting to try new drivers. I just didn't think it could be the User Account when I have no issues with anything else.
 
Last edited:
If resetting your preferences did not solve the problem, then create a new empty catalog for your primary user. Import some of your photos to see if the problem is with the master catalog or the primary user.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Now what do I do? I am the only user of this laptop and I really don't want to have to spend all the time getting It set up and everything moved over to a new account.
Are your two accounts set up the same way? For example, the new one might be an "Administrator" account and the original one not? Just clutching at straws really, but maybe caused by some kind of privilege difference?
 
I'm using a Dell XPS 9700 with Nvidia GeForce 2060, with full acceleration turned on, and I see occasional wonkiness with LRC UI as well. Each time I update the graphics studio driver I cross my fingers, but no love yet. It does not happen frequently enough to cause me to spend time finding a solution.
 
The two accounts are both Administrator accounts (I already had it set up from early on but just never used it).

I did previously try creating a new catalog and added a few keywords in hierarchy and still had the problem, even with no photos imported yet.
 
The two accounts are both Administrator accounts (I already had it set up from early on but just never used it).

I did previously try creating a new catalog and added a few keywords in hierarchy and still had the problem, even with no photos imported yet.
Did you try running LrC in safe mode using the original user account? It might be worth trying that, to see if it's a corrupted user account or a conflict with some other 3rd-party process/driver/app that is causing the LrC issue.
 
Jim - Thanks for the suggestion. I hadn't tried that until just now. It was very interesting. The typical delay I have in starting LrC didn't happen in Safe Mode. BUT the disclosure triangles still disappeared whenever I scroll over them wherever they exist. I'll have to do more investigation into what else might be causing the delay when opening since it didn't happen in Safe Mode.

More research and testing today.
 
Update - I've been working with some Microsoft/Windows gurus on another forum and I set up a new user account and that seems okay so far for Lightroom. However, I'm not sure how I'm going to get everything else set up the way it was without doing things one by one or losing a bunch of things. At this point I've spent days on this and I'm starting to think it might be easier to live with the problems in LrC except I can't do much development. Very frustrating. I'm not even sure my cloud back-up is working with the new user account and neither is Dropbox. The thought of checking everything one by one is depressing.

If I uninstall Lightroom will I still have my presets, plug-ins, panel marks, etc. or will they get deleted too? I was thinking about trying to uninstall and reinstall and see if that did anything for these issues.
 
If I uninstall Lightroom will I still have my presets, plug-ins, panel marks, etc. or will they get deleted too? I was thinking about trying to uninstall and reinstall and see if that did anything for these issues.
No, they aren't deleted when you do an uninstall.
 
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