Help › Troubleshooting LrGeniusAI — Common Errors & Fixes

Troubleshooting

Tips and solutions for common issues when running LrGeniusAI.

GUI Error Reporting

LrGeniusAI surfaces errors directly in Lightroom rather than hiding them in log files. If something fails during a batch task, a Task Completion Dialog shows which photos succeeded, which failed, and why. For more persistent errors, check the log file via Plug-in Manager → Show logfile or Copy logs to desktop.

Common Issues

1. Installer & Security Warnings (SmartScreen / Gatekeeper)

Since LrGeniusAI installers are not currently code-signed, your OS may block them.

  • Symptom: “Windows protected your PC” or “LrGeniusAI.pkg cannot be opened because it is from an unidentified developer”.
  • Resolution: Refer to the Getting Started guide for OS-specific bypass steps. This is a one-time requirement during installation.

2. Plugin/Backend Version Mismatch

Using a newer plugin with an older backend (or vice versa) causes API errors.

  • Symptom: Errors like “Failed to initialize database”, “API request failed”, or unexpected 500 errors immediately after an update.
  • Resolution: Make sure both the plugin (.lrdevplugin) and the backend server are updated to the same release version. Download both from the same GitHub release. If you updated the plugin only, re-run the backend installer from the same release.

3. Missing or Not Downloading OpenCLIP Model

The backend downloads the SigLIP2 embedding model on first use (several GB). If this fails, semantic search won’t work.

  • Symptom: “OpenCLIP model is missing” warning in Lightroom, or indexing fails immediately even though the backend is running.
  • Resolution:
    1. Check your internet connection on the machine running the backend.
    2. Make sure the backend process has write permission to its cache directory (typically ~/.cache/huggingface or the configured data path).
    3. Wait for the download to complete — the /status endpoint shows is_model_cached. Progress is visible in the backend terminal.
    4. If the warning persists after a successful download, restart the backend and try again.
    5. If the backend server and Lightroom are on different machines, the model must be downloaded on the server machine, not your Lightroom machine.

4. OpenCLIP “Missing” Even After Installation

  • Symptom: The plugin reports the CLIP model is missing, but it was previously working or you can see the model files on disk.

  • Resolution: This can happen if the backend was updated and the model cache path changed, or if the model files were partially downloaded. Delete the model cache folder and let the backend re-download:

    • macOS/Linux: ~/.cache/huggingface/hub/
    • Windows: %USERPROFILE%\.cache\huggingface\hub\

    After deleting, restart the backend. It will re-download the model on next use.

5. Invalid or Missing API Keys

If you are using cloud providers (Gemini, ChatGPT), authentication failures block all analysis.

  • Symptom: “Unauthorized”, 401/403 HTTP errors, or “Gemini API not configured” despite entering a key.
  • Resolution:
    1. Double-check the key in Plug-in Manager → API Keys. Copy-paste directly from the provider dashboard to avoid whitespace.
    2. Ensure the key has not expired and has sufficient billing quota attached.
    3. For Gemini: make sure the Gemini API is enabled in your Google Cloud project.
    4. After saving a new key, restart the backend (the backend reads keys from configuration at startup).

6. Ollama Not Responding / Not Invoked

  • Symptom: Analysis runs but Ollama shows no activity (ollama ps is empty), or connection errors to localhost:11434.
  • Resolution:
    1. Make sure Ollama is running before starting the task. Start it with ollama serve if needed.
    2. Verify the Ollama Base URL in Plug-in Manager matches where Ollama is listening (default: http://localhost:11434).
    3. Make sure at least one vision-capable model is pulled: ollama pull qwen3-vl:4b-instruct-q4_K_M.
    4. If Ollama runs on a different machine, use its network address instead of localhost.
    5. Check that no firewall or VPN is blocking the connection between the backend and Ollama.

7. LM Studio Not Responding

  • Symptom: Errors connecting to LM Studio, or model list shows no LM Studio models.
  • Resolution:
    1. Open LM Studio and confirm the local server is running (green status in the “Local Server” tab).
    2. Ensure a vision model is loaded (or enable “on-demand model loading”).
    3. Verify the LM Studio Base URL in Plug-in Manager (default: http://localhost:1234).
    4. On Apple Silicon, the MLX variants of models perform significantly better than GGUF builds — try the MLX version if performance is poor.

8. Local Model Timeout

Local AI models can take significantly longer than cloud APIs, especially without a dedicated GPU.

  • Symptom: Lightroom displays a timeout error during image analysis.
  • Resolution:
    1. Ensure the model is fully loaded into memory before starting the batch (run a test prompt in Ollama/LM Studio first).
    2. Process smaller batches (10–20 photos at a time) to avoid cumulative timeouts.
    3. Switch to a smaller model (4B instead of 12B) if your hardware can’t sustain the load.

9. No Metadata Generated

  • Symptom: Analysis completes without errors but no keywords/title/caption appear in Lightroom.
  • Resolution:
    1. In the Analyze & Index dialog, confirm Generate AI metadata is enabled.
    2. If Regenerate all data is disabled, photos that already have metadata in the backend won’t be re-generated. Enable regeneration to force a fresh run.
    3. Check that Apply to Lightroom catalog (or equivalent write option) is enabled — without it, metadata is generated on the backend but never written to Lightroom.
    4. After generation, you can always use Retrieve Metadata from Backend to pull generated data back into Lightroom manually.

10. Search Returns No Results

  • Symptom: Advanced Search runs but the results collection is empty or sparse.
  • Resolution:
    1. Make sure photos were indexed with Create search embeddings enabled.
    2. Set the Lightroom collection sort order to Custom Order — without this, best matches are not sorted to the top.
    3. Try a broader or more descriptive query.
    4. Confirm the backend is running and returning a valid response (check Plugin Manager → Status).

11. macOS Filesystem Permission Warning After Update

  • Symptom: Lightroom shows a filesystem permissions warning on startup after installing or updating LrGeniusAI.

  • Resolution: Run Adobe’s permission repair script: Adobe: Fix Lightroom user account permissions (macOS)

    This is a known macOS quirk when a third-party plugin installer writes to certain directories. Running Adobe’s script resolves it without any data loss.

12. AI Edit Produces 500 Internal Server Error

  • Symptom: AI Edit fails with “HTTP status: 500” from the backend.
  • Resolution:
    1. Check the backend terminal log for the full error message.
    2. Common cause: the selected model returned a response that doesn’t match the expected edit schema. Try a different (more capable) model — gemini-2.5-flash or gpt-5-mini are reliable choices.
    3. If you are using a local model, the 4B models sometimes produce malformed JSON. Try the 8B variant or switch to a cloud model.
    4. If the error mentions “schema validation”, it usually means the model returned prose instead of structured JSON. Custom system prompts that break the format can cause this — reset to the default system prompt and try again.

13. Database Initialization Failed After Update

  • Symptom: “Failed to initialize database at the selected path” error when starting the backend or when Lightroom connects.
  • Resolution:
    1. Ensure the plugin and backend are the same version (see Version Mismatch).
    2. Check that the backend has write access to the configured data directory.
    3. If the path was changed in a previous version, verify the new path in Plug-in Manager → Backend Server.
    4. As a last resort, create a DB backup first (Plug-in Manager → Download DB backup), then let the backend re-initialize with a fresh database.

14. Windows: Restart/Update Endpoint Not Working

  • Symptom: “Check for Updates” or backend restart from within Lightroom fails on Windows.
  • Resolution: This is a known issue on Windows with the /restart endpoint. Restart the backend manually:
    1. Close Lightroom or stop the backend process.
    2. Run lrgenius-server/lrgenius-server.cmd again.

Collecting Logs for Bug Reports

If you need to report a bug on GitHub, include the following:

  1. Plugin log: Plug-in Manager → Copy logs to desktop (or Show logfile)
  2. Backend log: The terminal output of geniusai-server, or the log files in the backend’s working directory
  3. Environment: OS version, Lightroom Classic version, LrGeniusAI version (plugin + backend)
  4. Steps to reproduce: What you did before the error occurred

Submit bugs at: https://github.com/LrGenius/LrGeniusAI/issues

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