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Protect Your Photos Before Adobe Deletes Them

The catastrophic bug is a good reminder to use more than one backup system

By Charlie Sorrel Charlie Sorrel Senior Tech Reporter Charlie Sorrel has been writing about technology, and its effects on society and the planet, for 13 years. lifewire's editorial guidelines Published on August 24, 2020 01:09PM EDT Tweet Share Email Tweet Share Email Software & Apps Mobile Phones Internet & Security Computers & Tablets Smart Life Home Theater & Entertainment Software & Apps Social Media Streaming Gaming

Key Takeaways

An Adobe Lightroom bug deleted all non-synced photos and presets from users’ computers.You should always keep local backups of important data, even when it’s backed up in the cloud.Backup apps often don’t have access to cloud data. Adobe What would you do if your photo library disappeared overnight? That's exactly what happened to some Adobe Lightroom users recently, after a software update deleted their photos and editing presets. Any images not already synced to Adobe’s Creative Cloud are now irretrievable. Now is a great time to think about how you can prevent data loss like this in the future. Adobe fixed its photo editing and storage app immediately, but the lost images remain gone unless individual users had their own personal backup. Your photos contain the memories and history of your family, friends, and your whole life. Losing them is one of the biggest data-loss nightmares for most people. “After the automatic update to Lightroom mobile 5.4 on my iPad Pro (active subscription), my whole library is lost,” wrote Lightroom user Christoph Willerscheidt in the Photoshop Forum.

Cloud-Only Dangers

This incident shows the vulnerability of our data. In this case, it was the photos that weren’t uploaded to the cloud that were lost, but we typically trust our photos, videos, and documents to the cloud and the cloud alone. That could be a mistake. Cloud services like Dropbox, Adobe, and iCloud are usually very safe places for your data. After all, their entire purpose is to keep it safe for you. But cloud storage has a few specific dangers you should consider, such as ransomware. Last month, fitness gadget company Garmin lost access to all customer data in a ransomware attack. Garmin paid to have this data decrypted, but that may not always happen. It’s a good reminder that cloud data is outside your control, for good and for bad. The other problem with cloud storage is you have no easy way to back it up, even if you do make regular local backups. “[Backup] applications typically do not have access to ‘cloud’ storage unless they're using an interface (and credentials) specific to the service,” Mike Bombich, author of Mac backup software Carbon Copy Cloner told Lifewire via email. “Generally speaking, we can't back up the data that people have that's only in the cloud; users have to rely on the cloud provider to back up that data.”

Backup Backup Backup

In the specific case of this Lightroom glitch, a second regular backup would have saved the day. Only photos not yet uploaded to Adobe’s servers were lost. Which is another way of saying those photos were only stored locally, on an iPad, a laptop, or similar, then deleted by the glitch. With the current version of Lightroom, canonical copies of your photos are kept in the cloud, with versions only downloaded to the Mac, PC, or mobile device as needed (Lightroom Classic uses your Mac or PC as the home-base for your library, so it was unaffected by this bug). Lightroom’s data also gets backed up to Apple’s iCloud, which saved one user: “I lost my pictures like everyone else,” wrote Lightroom user Alejandro Arellano on the Photoshop forum. “I was furious, very angry, but thanks to my iCloud backup […] I was able to restore EVERYTHING.” So, how do you protect yourself? The first thing is to make sure you always have a local version of your photos. You want every image, at full resolution (not just mini previews), on your computer or an external drive (you’ll want to back that up, too). With the Lightroom Mac and PC apps, you can enable local storage with a checkbox in the app’s settings. In Apple’s Photos app, you choose “Download Originals to this Mac” in settings. With Google Photos, things are a little more complicated. Its Backup and Sync app is mainly meant for backing local photos up to the cloud, not the other way around. You can download a dump of your photos, though. “The main thing people should do to protect their photos is to make sure there are at least 2 backups, with one of them being a permanent backup solution that you own at your residence,” Lightroom trainer and photographer Matt Kloskowski told Lifewire via email. “If you're a mobile-only photographer, and the cloud is your only backup, you're putting all of the photos you traveled for, and all of the memories you've made, in someone else's hands.” Was this page helpful? Thanks for letting us know! Get the Latest Tech News Delivered Every Day Subscribe Tell us why! Other Not enough details Hard to understand Submit More from Lifewire What Is Microsoft Azure? How to Access iCloud Photos From Any Apple, Windows, or Android Device How to Back up Your Mac to an External Hard Drive With Time Machine How to Transfer Messages from iPhone to iPhone The 8 Best Commercial Backup Software Programs of 2022 How to Recover Deleted Text Messages on Any Phone How to Turn on Photo Stream and iCloud Photo Sharing How to Recover Permanently Deleted Photos From iCloud How to Back Up iPhone 5 Your Best Year Ever: College Tech Tips How to Free Up Space on Android Phones What Is iCloud? And How Do I Use It? How to Back Up Your Photoshop Elements Organizer Catalog How to Delete Photos From iCloud (While Keeping Them on Your iPhone) World Backup Day 2023 How to Back Up Your Photos or iPhoto Library Newsletter Sign Up Newsletter Sign Up Newsletter Sign Up Newsletter Sign Up Newsletter Sign Up By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. Cookies Settings Accept All Cookies