Sometimes, being an early adopter really doesn’t pay off – and being a pioneer just leaves you with arrows in your hat. Many Lightroom users who upgraded to version 5.4.0 for iOS (iPhone) and iPadOS have been left fuming after discovering that images and editing presets that had not yet been synced to the cloud had disappeared – and couldn’t be retrieved. Adobe spokesperson Rikk Flohr responded as follows:

‘We are aware that some customers who updated to Lightroom 5.4.0 on iPhone and iPad may be missing photos and presets that were not synced to the Lightroom cloud.A new version of Lightroom Mobile (5.4.1) for iOS and iPad OS has now been released that prevents this issue from affecting additional customers. Installing version 5.4.1 will not restore missing photos or presets for customers affected by the problem introduced in 5.4.0.We know that some customers have photos and presets that are not recoverable. We sincerely apologize to any customers who have been affected by this issue.”

Clearly none of the happy-looking people in this Adobe PR image were affected…

Mohamad Alif Egnur’s lament on the feedback.photoshop.com site (“Community Powered Support for Photoshop Family”) was typical. “Yesterday when I use the Lightroom Mobile, it was okay. I still have my presets and pictures saved in the apps but today, after I updated the apps on Apps Store, all of my pictures and presets were gone. I really need this to be fix as soon as possible. Please help me as I really need all those pictures and presets.” Adobe had yet to reply with a solution for retrieving the lost data at the time of going to press.