Private local recovery for Adobe Lightroom Classic catalogs

Get your catalog back out of `.lrcat`.

Your Lightroom catalog holds years of your work — how photos are organised, what they’re tagged and rated, which edits were applied. If a subscription lapses or a machine dies, that library can feel locked away. Lightroom Catalogue Rescue reads your .lrcat locally, read-only, without Lightroom installed — and gets your curation out as CSV, JSON, HTML and portable XMP sidecars you can take to any other app.

Buy Lightroom Catalogue Rescue — £59 See what it recovers

Your original .lrcat is never changed — read-only, hash-checked
Runs on your computer — nothing uploaded, no account
Buy once — no subscription to read your own library

One of High Caliber’s local, read-only recovery tools.

Designed for Lightroom Classic 9 catalogs; other Lightroom Classic versions usually open — run the free preview on your file to confirm. On your own computer. £59 one-time.

.lrcat opened

Folders · keywords · ratings

Portable XMP sidecars

CSV · JSON · HTML exports

What it does — 30 seconds

A quick look at Lightroom Catalogue Rescue.

What the tool actually does: read your Lightroom catalog locally — without Lightroom — recover folders, keywords and ratings to portable files, and leave the catalog untouched. Captions on, no sound needed.

Lightroom Catalogue Rescue — by High Caliber. This is an animated overview of what the tool does — an illustration, not a screen recording of the app. Your catalog is only ever read, never changed.

The problem

The subscription ends. The years of curation shouldn’t.

A Lightroom catalog is where a photographer’s decisions live: the folder tree, the keywords, the star ratings, the pick/reject flags, the collections. When a subscription lapses, a machine dies, or you simply want your data out of one vendor’s app, all of that can feel trapped inside a single .lrcat file. Lightroom Catalogue Rescue exists so it isn’t: open the catalog locally, read it, and get your curation into open, portable formats you own.

Reads onlyThe catalog is opened in SQLite read-only mode (no create flag, connection set query_only) and the file is SHA-256 hashed before and after every run — it refuses to return a result if the bytes changed.

Local by designIt runs entirely on your computer. Your catalog is never uploaded and no account is needed — the recovery engine contains no networking code at all, enforced in the build. The app’s only online action is checking your licence key with Lemon Squeezy.

Real parsing, no Lightroom installA .lrcat is an unencrypted SQLite database — so it reads Lightroom’s actual tables directly, on machines where Lightroom never ran.

What it actually recovers

Your curation out in open formats you own — and a best-effort attempt at lost previews.

A .lrcat file is an unencrypted SQLite 3 database — an open, documented format. Lightroom Catalogue Rescue parses Lightroom Classic’s real tables and gets your library out. Everything below is what the tool does today, with the one best-effort path labelled as such.

Recover the library data The folder tree, the photo list (filenames, formats, capture times), star ratings, colour labels and pick/reject flags, keywords/tags with counts, collections and their membership, and develop-settings metadata — exported to CSV, JSON and a friendly HTML “here is your library” page.

Write portable XMP sidecars One XMP sidecar per photo that carries your curation (PHOTO.ext.xmp) — the standard sidecar convention, so your ratings, labels and keywords move straight into darktable, Capture One or digiKam. Your curation stops being locked to one vendor.

Smart-Preview extraction — best-effort, not a promise Where the original RAW/JPEG files are gone but the catalog’s Smart Previews survive in the sibling *.lrdata bundle, the tool reads the documented bundle layout and writes out the ~2560px preview images it finds there. This is best-effort and should not be your reason to buy. Run the free preview and your own catalog will show you exactly what comes back.

Designed for Lightroom Classic 9 catalogs. The parser probes which tables and columns exist before querying, so catalogs from other Lightroom Classic versions usually open too and degrade gracefully — a missing optional section simply reads as empty, never a crash. LrC 9 is the only version we have tested it on, so if your catalog came from another version — an older Lightroom 4/5/6 one included — run the free preview on your own file to confirm before you buy. Every run writes a recovery report of exactly what was and wasn’t found.

Your files stay yours

Comfort and control, built into how it works.

These aren’t marketing lines — they’re how the tool is built.

Read-only on your originalThe catalog is opened in SQLite read-only mode and the source is SHA-256 hashed before and after every run — a hard safety stop if the bytes change. No -wal/-shm sidecar files are created.

Nothing uploadedRecovery runs entirely on your own computer, and your catalog never leaves it. The recovery engine contains no networking code at all — enforced in the build. The only things the app sends are your licence key and a device identifier (a one-way hash, not your name and not your file names), to Lemon Squeezy, to confirm your purchase.

No lock-in, no crackingExports are open formats you can take anywhere — CSV, JSON, HTML and standard XMP sidecars. A .lrcat is an open, unencrypted file; the tool simply reads files you own and performs no cracking or DRM bypass.

Scope & compatibility

What it recovers — and what it doesn’t.

We separate what the tool does from what it doesn’t, so there are no surprises.

Recovers today

Adobe Lightroom Classic .lrcat catalogs (designed for LrC 9; other Lightroom Classic versions usually open — check yours with the free preview) Folder tree · photo list · capture times · file formats Star ratings · colour labels · pick/reject flags · keywords · collections Virtual copies, with the copy name Lightroom showed for them Smart-collection rules, decoded to plain English where possible (the raw rule text is preserved in the JSON report) Develop-history step names Named face regions, written as standard MWG-RS regions in the XMP sidecars Develop-settings metadata (edit fingerprint, crop, a recognised subset of settings) Export → CSV · JSON · HTML + per-photo XMP sidecars Smart-Preview image extraction from the sibling *.lrdata bundle — best-effort: it reads the documented bundle layout on a best-effort basis

Not recovered

Your original RAW/JPEG files — a catalog stores metadata about photos, not the pixels; originals live on disk where Lightroom pointed to them A photo’s rendered edit — the recorded develop settings are recovered, not applied or re-rendered (Lightroom’s pipeline is proprietary) Every develop parameter — a recognised subset plus the raw settings blob, not a re-implementation of the editing engine Live smart collections — the rules are decoded and listed, not re-evaluated as a running search Replayable edit history — you get the recorded step names, not the edits themselves

Plainly: this recovers the library — your organisation, tags, ratings and edit metadata — and, where the originals are gone and the bundle is intact, makes a best-effort attempt at the Smart-Preview images. It does not re-render your edits or reproduce RAW files it never contained. Adobe ships a free lrcat-data tool and the catalog is open SQLite, so we earn our place on batch recovery, portable XMP sidecars and an honest recovery report, and we say so rather than pretend otherwise.

Why now

There’s no countdown. There’s just a catalog you’d hate to lose.

A Lightroom catalog can be years of curation in one file If the subscription lapses or the drive fails, that library is what’s at risk

The risk isn’t a ticking clock on this page — it’s the ordinary day a subscription lapses, a machine won’t boot, or you simply decide you want your data out of one vendor’s app. The sensible move is to get your curation into open, portable formats while the catalog is healthy. We’d rather you export early and never need us than lose the library.

See it work on your own files first

Check what’s recoverable before you pay a penny.

Download Lightroom Catalogue Rescue and open one of your own .lrcat catalogs. Without a licence it runs a free preview: it reads the catalog and shows you what is in it — folders, photos, keywords, ratings and collections — on screen, and confirms your original was opened read-only and left unchanged. Saving that out to files is what the licence unlocks — everything you can see on screen stays free.

One limit worth knowing before you decide: the free preview reads the catalog only. It does not open the sibling *.lrdata bundle, so it cannot tell you whether your Smart Previews survived — that check comes with a licence.

So you can find out whether it handles your files before deciding — and if it doesn’t do what this page says for your files, there’s a 14-day refund.

Download the free preview Buy a licence — £59 Windows 10 and 11 (64-bit) · macOS 10.15 or later on Intel and Apple silicon · code-signed, and notarised by Apple on the Mac

Pricing

£59 one-time. Yours to keep.

Lightroom Catalogue Rescue is a one-time purchase, in keeping with every High Caliber recovery tool — pay once, yours to keep, no subscription, ever, for reading your own library. Licence for one person on up to three computers — for example your Mac and your PC, or work and home. Email support@highcaliberapplications.com to move it.

Lightroom Catalogue Rescue

£59 one-time · three computers

Recover your folders, keywords, ratings, flags, collections, virtual copies and develop metadata from your own .lrcat catalogs — exported to CSV, JSON, HTML and portable XMP sidecars. Buy once, yours forever — and you’ll be able to preview what’s inside a catalog before paying.

Buy Lightroom Catalogue Rescue — £59

14-day money-back guarantee: if it doesn’t do what this page says for your files, email support@highcaliberapplications.com within 14 days and we’ll refund you in full. Prefer to check first? Run the free preview on your own file before you buy.

FAQ

Straight answers.

Can I buy and download it now?

Yes. Lightroom Catalogue Rescue is on sale at £59 as a one-time purchase, and the Windows and Mac apps are both available to download straight away — one purchase covers both. Run the free preview on your own catalog first if you’d rather see what it finds before paying.

Will it change my original .lrcat file?

No. It opens your catalog in SQLite read-only mode and additionally hashes the source (SHA-256) before and after every run, refusing to return a result if the bytes changed — a hard safety stop. It creates no -wal/-shm files, and exports are written to a separate location you choose.

Does it need Lightroom installed?

No — that’s the point. A .lrcat is an unencrypted SQLite database, so the tool reads Lightroom Classic’s actual tables directly, on machines where Lightroom never ran and can’t run.

Can I move my ratings and keywords to darktable, Capture One or digiKam?

Yes. It writes one standard XMP sidecar per photo (PHOTO.ext.xmp) carrying your curation — ratings, colour labels, keywords — so it moves straight into darktable, Capture One, digiKam and other apps that read XMP sidecars. Your curation stops being locked to one vendor.

My original photos are gone — can I get anything back?

Sometimes — and we would rather under-promise here. If the catalog’s Smart Previews survive (the sibling *.lrdata bundle), the tool reads the documented bundle layout and extracts the ~2560px lossy preview images Lightroom generated. Treat it as a best-effort bonus, not the reason to buy. It can’t reconstruct a full-resolution RAW that isn’t there, and it tells you so.

Does it re-create my edits?

No. It recovers the recorded develop-settings metadata (an edit fingerprint, crop, and a recognised subset such as process version and white balance, plus the raw settings blob) — it does not apply or re-render your edits, because Lightroom’s develop pipeline is proprietary. What you get is the recorded settings, not a developed image.

Is this an Adobe product?

No. It’s independent and not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Adobe Inc. “Adobe Lightroom” and “Lightroom Classic” are trademarks of their owner, used here only to describe the file format this tool reads.

Independent — not affiliated with Adobe. Lightroom Catalogue Rescue is an independent recovery tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or connected to Adobe Inc. “Adobe Lightroom” and “Lightroom Classic” are trademarks of Adobe Inc., referenced here solely to describe the file format this tool reads (nominative use). A .lrcat catalog is an open, unencrypted SQLite file; the tool works only with files you already own and have the right to access — it performs no password cracking, DRM removal, or circumvention of technical protection. All product and file-format names are the property of their respective owners.

Get your catalog back out of .lrcat.