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Ask Tim Grey eNewsletter

September 4, 2026

Providing Answers to Photographers for Over 24 Years!

 

Coming Soon: Photoshop Virtual Summit

We're just over one week away from kicking off the "Photoshop Virtual Summit", which is just over two weeks away. The theme of this summit is "Project Photoshop", meaning instructors (including me) will guide you through techniques with sample images, and then provide VIP Pass holders with the images used for the class so you can follow along. My classes will be on "Smart Selections: Select Subject, Sky, and Beyond" and "Make Your Photos Pop". The full event runs September 14-18, and you can watch all classes with a free pass. I also highly recommend considering a VIP Pass, which provides lifetime access to recordings of all classes, class notes from all instructors, the sample files noted above, and much more. You can get all the details about "Photoshop Virtual Summit: Project Photoshop" on the event page here:


https://timgrey.krtra.com/t/cX0GTP27ZvdT

 

Today's Question

What type of problems will I run into if I uninstall and then re-install Lightroom Classic? I will back up my catalog prior to the uninstall step.  

Tim's Quick Answer:

If you choose the "Keep" option for preferences during the uninstall step, you won't lose anything with this process. In particular, uninstalling and reinstalling Lightroom Classic won't have any impact on your catalogs or photos.

More Detail:

When you uninstall Lightroom Classic using the Creative Cloud application (which is the recommended approach) you'll be asked if you want to keep or remove the preferences for Lightroom Classic. As long as you choose the "Keep" option you won't cause any issues with Lightroom Classic.


If you're having issues where you suspect that preferences files are corrupted, which is the reason you want to uninstall and reinstall, you can choose the "Remove" option instead of "Keep". That means you'll lose the settings for Preferences and Catalog Settings, causing those to revert to the default settings when you reinstall Lightroom Classic.


While losing your settings for Preferences and Catalog Settings can be a bit of an inconvenience, that just means you need to go through those two dialogs and update the settings based on your own preferences.


But again, this process won't affect your catalog files or your photo storage, so the only potential issue would be having Preferences and Catalog Settings revert to their default settings.

 
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Tim Grey

GreyLearning