Lightroom Classic CC 7.3.1 has just been released. It’s a double dot release to fix some of the biggest bugs in 7.3, including:
- Some presets did not convert to the new format if they contained specific characters
- Presets sorted in the wrong order
- Applying a preset applied the Adobe Standard profile or converted from B&W to Color or vice versa
- The translation of Adobe Portrait and Adobe Landscape was incorrect in some languages
- Black & White Mix was missing from copy settings and synchronize settings dialogs
There are still bugs outstanding, most notably around presets and profiles, and these are still a work in progress.
Backup Corruption
In my last newsletter, I warned of a problem in Lightroom Classic 7.0-7.3 that was causing corrupted backups in some situations, and recommended doing a file system copy of your Lightroom Catalog rather than relying on Lightroom’s Catalog Backup tool.
This issue has been fixed in 7.3.1, so I’d strongly recommend doing a backup after updating. To do so, go to Edit menu (Windows) / Lightroom menu (Mac) > Catalog Settings > General tab and change the pop-up to When Lightroom next exits. Quit Lightroom to trigger the backup.
As a result of this emergency fix, automatically zipping backup catalogs on Mac is temporarily disabled, but that should be back in a future update.
Disable the Large Preset Preview
There have been lots of requests to disable the new large preset preview functionality. While not available yet, the requests have been heard loud and clear, and a preference setting is currently in development. If you’re struggling with performance issues caused by the new preset preview and you’d like access to a developer build with this new preference setting, leave a note in the comments below and I’ll forward your details to Adobe for consideration.
How do I update?
To update, go to Help menu > Updates or click the Update button in the CC app. The update servers take a while to push the updates around the world, to avoid crashing the servers. You can also open the Creative Cloud app, click the … icon (top right) and select Check for Updates to give it a nudge.
Rolf says
I was thinking about migrating to Lightroom Classic CC but reading about all these problems has just convinced me to stay on standalone 6.14. I’ll check back in a year…or three.
Victoria Bampton says
Just keep an eye on the blog posts. If there are serious new issues, I update the post a few days after release to warn of those issues. I have been talking to product management about the number of bugs in recent releases, and I’m hopeful that things will improve in the coming months.
Larry says
I’m ready to give up and roll back to 7.2.
Victoria Bampton says
Nothing wrong with doing that Larry. That’s why they made it so much easier to roll back and forward.
Lawrence Bickford says
I use LR for all my photographic needs, including the occasional panorama. When I use that feature, I always look at all three projections to see which I like best. The differences are subtle, but I like having the choice. However, I ran the pano feature yesterday (using the latest LR to stitch 3 verticals into a horizontal) and the difference among the three projections is crazy! One is a bit stretched out horizontally, while another is so scrunched horizontally as to be almost square. None of the three seems accurate. I haven’t tried this on another set, so maybe it’s just these three images, but I’m wondering if this is a known problem.
Victoria Bampton says
It’s probably just those three images, but it would be worth reporting. Here’s instructions on how to report it to Adobe: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/send-bug-report-feature-request-adobe/
Peter K. says
Two quick questions. I understand the presets are now in camera raw. The older ones have a tilde in front of the name. 1. OK to delete the older presets with the tilde?
2. If I add older presets (I have a number of them, just do not want to add all at one time) how best to add them to 7.3.1?
Victoria Bampton says
Hi Peter. You can delete them, but personally I’d hold on to them for the minute, as they still seem to be working out the kinks. For older ones, you can import a folder at a time (or individually) from the Import Presets command on the Presets panel + button.
Peter K. says
Thanks Victoria..
John Reed says
This… (“There are still bugs outstanding, most notably around presets and profiles, and these are still a work in progress.”) is an understatement. There is a HUGE issue with LR freezing anytime a memory card or external storage drive is used and removed. This requires forcing LR to close and then restart and Adobe is being very slow to address this one. Numerous posts, including my own, on the LR forum site for weeks now.
Victoria Bampton says
Yeah, I’ve seen an open bug on it crashing when external storage ejects or goes to sleep, but the fix wasn’t ready in time for 7.3.1. To set expectations, I’ve never seen a x.x.2 release, so it’ll probably wait until the 7.4 scheduled release. https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom-classic-7-3-crash-on-eject-sd-card
Genevieve says
I’ve been having horrible performance issues importing RAW files. Since Lightroom 7, my laptop sounds like it’s taking off no matter how I import & render previews (1:1 Previews vs Minimum). It never used to take this much CPU power to import but now I’m worried it’s creating unnecessary wear & tear to my laptop.
I just updated and rendering 1:1 still makes my fans go crazy.
My workflow used to be Import, Convert to DNG, Render 1:1 -> Go through deleting blurry/unusable photos -> Edit -> Export
Now I have to go through and preview every file before I import -> Pray my laptop doesn’t burst into flames -> go through photos again to pick the best -> Edit -> Export.
I mean…this shouldn’t be that hard right?
Victoria Bampton says
In Preferences > Performance, try turning off the Generate Previews in Parallel. With that checkbox checked, Lightroom’s trying to better utilize the computer’s power to improve speed of preview generation, but it’s asking the computer to work a bit harder in the process. The computer should automatically decrease performance if it starts to overheat, rather than letting any damage occur, so the fans spinning up isn’t a bad thing other than the noise.
Alan Sandercock says
I’ve just updated to Classic CC7.3.1 and just for the record I’m still not seeing a Profile Entry below the Treatment entry in the Basic section of the right hand menu. It seem to me that this is fairly basic interface issue to not be getting right. Before I upgrade to CC (taking out subscription) from LR 5.7 I would need to see this issue fixed.
Victoria Bampton says
You don’t currently have a subscription? If not, that would explain it. A few people have managed to accidentally upgrade their perpeptual licensed version to Lightroom Classic, and the profile pop up not showing in the Basic panel is one of the symptoms of that licensing problem.
Cornelia says
Hi Victoria,
I am confused as to the real storage location of LR develop presets: if I ask my preference settings to show me the folder, it is as expected on Win10 C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Adobe. This folder actually contains ~~*.lrtemplate Files.
But when I tried to cleanse a bit and remove rarely used presets, they did not vanish.
If I ask one preset in Develop Module by right-clicking “show in explorer” where it is, it leads me to C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\Settings\
full of *.xmp files, no ~ in the begin.
This explains why I still have all the rarely used presets visible, even after Restart of LR.
So I gather they have not yet rectified the Preference-Settings Button “Show Lightroom presets folder”?
Thanks, Cornelia
Victoria Bampton says
Don’t worry, everyone’s confused!! The button in preferences takes you to the location of most of LR’s presets (metadata, filter, etc.) but no longer takes you to the right location for Develop presets. As you’ve noted, the new format presets are .xmp and stored in CameraRaw folders. They really need to add an extra button to take you to the Camera Raw settings folder, in addition to the current one.
John Dickson says
My workflow for the last year or so:
1. Import photos on laptop.
2. Throw out bad ones, rename, convert to DNG, keyword, etc; don’t use the Develop module.
3. Periodically export all new photos as a catalog (with negatives) onto a portable hard drive.
4. Import the catalog onto my desktop computer from the portable drive; do the real work there.
Now, with 7.3.1, the import fails with an “unknown error.” The images arrive but, for example, all the keywords are gone. Exporting without negatives results in a catalog that will not import at all. My workaround at this time is to save all metadata to the image files on the laptop, transfer the image files to the desktop in the location where I want them, then import/add them to my desktop catalog. So far, it seems that everything entered on the laptop successfully transfers to the desktop.
There seem to be several reports on the web of catalog export/import problems like this, with solutions difficult to identify. This needs to be fixed.
Victoria Bampton says
Oh that doesn’t sound good John. Yes, sounds buggy to me. If you have a catalog where it can be reproduced every time, I’m sure that would be useful to the engineers. Here’s instructions on how to report it to Adobe: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/send-bug-report-feature-request-adobe/
Mildred Alpern says
I keep getting a pop up to update, but am reluctant to do so after reading all these unresolved issues with Lightroom Classic CC. I do have the issue of the cropping tool reverting to the last picture cropped for a second before it reverts to the current image.
Victoria Bampton says
Go to Help menu > System Info and it’ll tell you which version you’re currently using. If it’s 7.3, I’d suggest updating. If it’s earlier, maybe hold off until 7.4.
AartLouw says
My previous version of Lr is still intact. For some reason, I have the ” 2015.14 release”.
Would you advise me to rather quit the 7.3.1-release.?
Victoria Bampton says
If you’re not having significant problems Aart, then I’d stick with 7.3.1.
Andy Oleksy says
I did not experience crashes or problems with presets after updated to LR 7.3 earlier this month, but I did have performance issues, the most annoying of which being that LR would beach-ball for several minutes after being launched, although not consistently (i.e., sometimes it would launch just fine). Another thing that bugged me is that it would take several seconds for the adjustments to be reflected on my primary monitor, even though they seemed to show up almost instantly on my secondary monitor.
I was excited to see that Adobe released a 7.3.1 update with bug fixes, and installed it right away. Boy was that a mistake! Not only did the update not solve these two issues, but it managed to corrupt my catalog! When I first launched it, it said that the catalog needed repairs. So I clicked OK, and had it attempt to do the repairs, only to be presented with a dialog box telling me that the repairs could not be performed and that the catalog is corrupted. Fortunately I had a recent backup (manual) and was able to get that one to work. But the beach balls and slow updates on the primary monitor persisted, even with a new test catalog I created for troubleshooting. And this morning, upon waking my Mac, I was greeted with a dialog telling me that LR had quit unexpectedly!
I’m going to be going back to LR 7.2 as soon as I get home tonight. The question I have concerns the presets. I keep reading that 7.3 uses a different preset format (xmp). Are my old format presets still there, or are they lost forever? I have some backups, but I created a bunch of new ones not too long ago and those were not backed up.
Very disappointed with Adobe. If I knew my latest catalogs would work with LR 6, I would get that so I could still access the work I’ve done to this point, and get Capture One for everything I do going forward. Dropping Photoshop is the next logical step after that. I use it mostly for panoramas, perspective adjustments and retouching, and rarely do any compositing or even simple stuff with layers. I’m sure there are other tools that do a half decent job for these types of tasks. Yes, this will cost me in the short run, but I don’t cherish the idea of paying rent to Adobe for a closet in crack house!
Victoria Bampton says
Eugh, that does sound frustrating. Make sure you report it to Adobe so they can figure out what’s going on. Your old format presets will still be in their previous location. Here’s instructions on how to report it to Adobe, so they can troubleshoot with you (or replicate the bug!): https://www.lightroomqueen.com/send-bug-report-feature-request-adobe/
Ross says
Updated to 7.3.1 hoping it would fix the constant freezing (LR is useless to me now) and thought it did at first, but now it’s back to freezing for no reason. What is going on? This is pathetic. I can no longer use LR and I’m paying for it!
Victoria Bampton says
Eugh, that does sound frustrating! Here’s instructions on how to report it to Adobe: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/send-bug-report-feature-request-adobe/
Paul Dunstan says
Hi. I experience “freezing” and have to quit LR to avoid the issue. I have found if I disable the “eject media” upon import is a workaround to stop this however if I remove my SD card at anytime after import the same occurs. Anyone else have a solution?
Victoria Bampton says
That sounds like this issue… https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom-classic-7-3-crash-on-eject-sd-card
Melanee says
I ran the update yesterday (4/24/18) Lightroom keeps crashing – I had no problems before this update. I am confident it is not my laptop. What can I do?
Victoria Bampton says
Were you on 7.3 before Melanee? Or something earlier? What are you doing when it crashes?
Rose says
Sounds more confusing Classic CC and then Classic. 🙂
salsaguy says
I LOVE the big previews window, but of course I can fully understand not everyone has a fully loaded speced out machine. When I bought my new laptop last year I speced it out specifically for Lr editing use so I got a Dell XPS15, core i7 -7700, 2.8 GHz speed, with a 1 TB SSD drive, 16 GB RAM, 4 GB ram on dedicated vid card, Windows 10 Pro x64 bit, so I wont have issues but yes I agree it would be good to have an OPTION choice in the settings area to be able to turn that feature on/off to ensure you dont bog down your system. It sure helps though as the Navigator window is just too small for most previews.
Glenn Williams says
HI, thanks for the info.
Ive been trying to get onto a Lr classic and CC prerelease for ages. im on lots of others, but can never find where to send a request for lightroom
i use classic, CC and web all day everyday so would be very happy to help
Stephan says
There are still a LOT of bugs introduced with 7.2 that are not addressed with this release.
How on earth are we supposed to take Adobe seriously with the current state of affairs Victoria?
Editing photo is my 9 to 5 full time job.
Victoria Bampton says
This is an emergency hot fix release to fix the worst of the bugs – fixing them all would have taken longer, and they didn’t want to delay this release.
Honestly, I think they bit off more than they could chew in 7.3, in their eagerness to prove just how hard they’re working on improving Lightroom.
salsaguy says
agree 100%. sometimes LESS is more.
jeffrey millman says
I’ve been staying with 6 until the dust settled with 7 and I just updated to 7.3.1 where do i find my presets that I developed in LR 6?
Victoria Bampton says
They should still be in the Presets panel, where they were before.
Duane says
I don’t see the update yet?
salsaguy says
You may need to log out/log back in to your Adobe account for it to show sometimes. Otherwise refresh website link…are you doing it from your creative cloud app or inside or Lr?
Don says
What is the actual build number?
Victoria Bampton says
Lightroom Classic version: 7.3.1 [ 1167660 ]
Don says
Thanks, wanted to confirm if the same as the RC builds