Suggestions for article "How do I reset Lightroom's Preferences"

[John R Ellis]

Lightroom Version Number

LR 11.3.1

Operating System

1. Other (please note in thread)

Two suggestions for the very popular Lightroom Queen article, How do I reset Lightroom's Preferences:

- Document that you can hold down Opt and click Reset All Preferences And Relaunch in Preferences > General.

- In the section on manually resetting preferences, emphasize that all the Lightroom Classic and Lightroom 6 (and earlier) .plist / .agprefs files should be deleted or moved. If you just delete the Lightroom Classic CC 7 file, LR will read preferences from the earlier-version files. Over the years, I've seen many long-time users report deleting just the most recent file. I think it's the more experienced techie types that want to dig around in the bits and delete files rather than using the keyboard shortcuts. Users often use the manual method of resetting so they can restore their old preferences if resetting doesn't help solve their problem.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Thanks John. Great suggestions, we’ll get them sorted. You know you can just email us!

 

[John R Ellis]

I wasn't sure where you preferred such feedback.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Either is great, appreciate your feedback, thank you John.

 

[John R Ellis]

I updated the original post with a better explanation of why the manual method is important and not just for techies.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Great. We’ll update the blog tomorrow too :thumbsup:

 

[John R Ellis]

Another step that should be included:

Delete the Raw Defaults file:

Mac: /Users/user/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/Defaults/RawDefaults.xmp
Windows: C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\Defaults\RawDefaults.xmp

This where LR stores the settings in Preferences > Presets > Raw Defaults.

Note that resetting preferences using Shift Alt/Opt on startup or Alt/Opt in Preferences > General does not reset the Raw Defaults. I filed a bug report on this:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/ligh...esn-t-reset-raw-defaults/td-p/12997552#M35001

but the current engineering team will probably declare the current behavior "as designed" (which they use synonymously with "as coded").

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Are you finding potential bugs in the raw defaults? I haven’t come across any yet, but I’m happy to be corrected.

 

[John R Ellis]

Are you finding potential bugs in the raw defaults?

Not yet. I found this by doing a reset to get a clean start in a test environment, and I got very confused about what was happening with imported photos until I realized that raw defaults didn't get reset.

Sometimes when we're helping someone, "reset preferences" helps not because of a corrupt preferences file but because the person had tried lots of things that haven't been disclosed in the forum exchanges, and resetting gets back to a known state.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Ah ok. I wonder whether we should do a separate "how to factory reset" blog post then, to include clearing out the whole Lightroom and CameraRaw application settings too. I usually just suggest a clean user account for a completely factory reset environment, because even non-LR things like fonts have been known to cause weirdness.

 

[John R Ellis]

A factory-reset post would be good. But I think the reset-preferences article should call out that raw defaults aren't reset by by the reset-preferences commands: Not because of the possibility that raw defaults might get corrupted (I doubt they can, given the simplicity of RawDefaults.xmp), but because the "weird behavior" being troubleshot could be due to the user confused about what raw defaults do and the difference between them and import develop presets.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

I think the reset-preferences article should call out that raw defaults aren't reset by by the reset-preferences commands:

I've added that, just check it makes sense

 

[John R Ellis]

Looks excellent -- as usual, more useful and authoritative than the Adobe help page.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Appreciate the suggestion, thanks John