What's wrong with my Lightroom?

[R1Joel]

Was developing some photos earlier. I decided to check 'system info' in the help section. It freaked out after that and went 'Not Responding' several times before it came back to life but the photo was all weird. I can now import photos and they show up fine, but as soon as I press develop it freaks out again, goes 'not responding' several times and when the photo finally comes up it's all wrong again. I have deleted all photos and re-imported, I have restarted the program, I have restarted the computer. Still the same thing happens.
This is only a trail version of Lightroom. I couldn't afford to buy it straight after buying a camera, I was hoping when the trial was up I could afford it. Now I am not sure. I love the program but I don't know what's happening?
I have a screenshot of what the photos look like when I press 'Develop'.


What is going on?
Thanks

[fillum]

You could try a reset...From the menu:-

Edit --> Preferences --> Presets (tab)

there is a button to restore the Develop settings to default - I'd try that first

There are also buttons to reset various groups of presets if above doesn't work...


Good luck...

[R1Joel]

No luck unfortunately. When I press the restore button nothing seems to happen. If I uninstall Lightroom, can I install it again and still have the 28 days left on my trial?

[fillum]

There are a few more things you could try, but I think probably the quickest solution is as you suggest - uninstall /re-install. I'm only guessing, but I think the number of days remaining on the trial will remain the same. In any case, LR is unusable at the moment so you might as well try to uninstall/re-install. If you find you can't use the trial after re-installing you could contact Adobe support and explain the situation.

[R1Joel]

I'll give it a shot tomorrow. Thankyou for your replies. Hope it works, if not I guess I'll have to use Picasa for a while.

[Trobdang]

I agree with fillum, uninstall/reinstall sometimes other programes in your computer could change the way it behaves......

[Hawthy]

Also, think about subscribing to Adobe Photoshop CC. It includes Lightroom and is only $9.99 per month.

[arthurking83]

I haven't reinstalled LR again .. but to me it looks like it's just showing highlight details.
Click somewhere in the centre of the histogram to reset it.

that is, if you click on the arrows in the histogram(top right or left corner) doesn't is display either highlight or shadow details?

if you click somewhere in the graph area it resets the view back to your normal image.

Note how one of your arrows(shadow on the LHS) is white .. and the other(highlights on the RHS) is greyed out.
I reckon that this may be why the display issue.

There's usually a keyboard shortcut for this that sort'a makes sense in most editing software .. which is Crtl+H(for highlights) and Ctrl+S(for shadows).

Can't seem to find a similar keyboard shortcut in LR(and I don't have it installed to check) .. but found out that pressing J on the keyboard displays clipping!

Try that too.

[R1Joel]

Thanks for the replies. Tried everything. No luck. Uninstalled and re-installed, same thing. Uninstalled Creative Commons, deleted my catalogue and uninstalled Lightroom again, same problem. Great. I am very disappointed. Guess I will have to find something else. Apart from Photoshop what else is there?

[John King]

Capture One ...

I own 2 licences each for CS5 and CS6 premium. When they cease to be useful for my cameras, I will almost certainly migrate to C1.

I do not like the way that Adobe conducts its business ...

[MrQ]

It does look like it's displaying shadow or highlight clipping. Press "J" and see if that helps ("J" toggles the show clipping on and off).

It also looks a bit like when you hold "ALT" and adjust some stuff - try tapping "ALT" a couple of times in case it's stuck.

Might also be a video driver issue - make sure you have the latest.

Last thing I can think of is that it might be an issue with the Nikon RAW (NEF) codec. Try converting the image to a DNG (Adobe's RAW format) and see if that helps. Select the photo in the Library module and then from the "Library" menu choose "Convert Photos to DNG".

[fillum]

When you re-installed LR did you try some files that hadn't been processed previously? Also have any matching ".xmp" files been generated? (I think should be in the same folder as the NEF files, but you might want to run a quick search).

Try holding down the ALT + SHIFT keys together (but press ALT first) when you start Lightroom - this will bring up a dialog box that allows you to reset preferences. (You might need to right-click on the LR desktop icon and select "Open" from the context menu to start it).

When a file is loaded did you try the "Reset" button (in Develop module) to see if it had any effect. Did you try the "Before" image (hit back-slash "\") to see what that shows?

Maybe also have a look in the History stack and see if it shows anything odd or unexpected...

[Hawthy]

I note that you have a Nikon D7200. It would have come packaged with some fairly useful free software. I don't often use it but Nikon's View NX 2, which came bundled with my D5100, is good for simple adjustments. Nikon also has Capture NX-D, which is similar. Otherwise, you can download GIMP, which is similar to Photoshop but entirely free.

Just use your favourite search engine and you will find the downloads - all free!

[Cage]

I have Adobe CS with both Photoshop and Lightroom.

I don't use Lightroom much but Photoshop regularly goes on holidays.

[R1Joel]

No luck. Tried the above suggestions and nothing has worked. If I press backslash it shows the original image fine, but goes back to the wrong image when I press develop again.

- - - Updated - - -

I am just about ready to give up on photography. Lightroom is broken, I've already used the PS trial, Capture One wont install, can't find the Nikon software and Picasa is adding some Instagram style filter to all my photos.

[John King]

No luck. Tried the above suggestions and nothing has worked. If I press backslash it shows the original image fine, but goes back to the wrong image when I press develop again.

- - - Updated - - -

I am just about ready to give up on photography. Lightroom is broken, I've already used the PS trial, Capture One wont install, can't find the Nikon software and Picasa is adding some Instagram style filter to all my photos.

Never give up, Joel ...

Try FastStone Viewer. It's free (although I donated a bit to the author after using for many years). It's pretty straight forward. It supports most RAW files. In spite of the name, it is a fairly full featured editor for both RAW and JPEG (and TIFF).

Available here: http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDownload.htm

[Cage]

ViewNX 2 download page ......

http://downloadcenter.nikonimglib.co.../ViewNX_2.html

[arthurking83]

If you have a D7200, I don't think ViewNX2 is any good to you.
You need to download the latest versions of Nikon's CNX-D or ViewNX-i

Note that I've personally had many major issues trying to run both those programs on my PC(but I still persist with NX-D tho)

FastStone's FSViewer is also a great program to have handy just for quickly viewing your images.

[MrQ]

So even converting to DNG made no difference?

[R1Joel]

Yep no luck. My laptop broke yesterday, I was up for a new one anyway. Just to be sure it wasn't a camera issue I installed LR on my parents computer and took a new photo. Everything works fine, so I am hoping when I get a new laptop I wont have anymore issues. My old one wasn't really up to the task of handling 30mb RAW files, it was very slow.
Thanks for all the replies and help everyone.