The Photographer's Guide to Luminar 4. Jeff Carlson
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a dialog confirming that the folder will be deleted, without the possibility of undo. Click Delete (macOS) or Yes (Windows) if that’s your choice. Sure enough, that folder and any images within it are sent to the Trash or Recycle Bin.
To be honest, I don’t know why Luminar treats subfolders differently. My guess is that everything within a source folder is read by the library because it’s looking through the hierarchy of any folders within the source folder, and it’s less efficient to create exceptions for subfolders that you wouldn’t want to be included. (This is another reminder that I’m not a programmer.) Still, deleting the images and their edits in a subfolder seems like an extreme step. Perhaps Skylum will address this in a future update.
Handle Offline Volumes
The advantage of choosing source folders from anywhere is that they don’t have to be physically stored on your computer. It’s common to store large photo libraries on external drives or network-attached storage (NAS) devices.
When those locations aren’t available, such as when you take your laptop on a trip and the storage stays in your home or office, Luminar shows a warning badge on the inaccessible files and displays the names in gray (Figure 2-14).
FIGURE 2-14: Offline volumes are gone, but not forgotten.
In this situation, you can still view the image thumbnails and a low-resolution version when you switch to the detail view. Ratings, flags, and color labels can also be applied, but you’re not able to edit the photo until the source volume is reattached to the computer.
Locate Missing Edited Files
One downside to Luminar not organizing photos with a heavy hand is that sometimes files move without it being able to track them. Here’s an example, entirely hypothetical and certainly nothing I’ve personally done on accident (except that one time I did):
You connect a removable drive, make edits to some photos stored there, then quit Luminar and disconnect the drive. Later, you realize you need that drive for something else, and copy those images to a new location.
What does Luminar do the next time you launch it? The images appear in a new Lost Edits shortcut (Figure 2-15). The originals aren’t available, so you can’t perform any other edits. That leaves you with two options:
•Point Luminar to a new location by selecting one photo and choosing Image > Locate Image. Navigate to the folder in which the file resides and click Choose Folder. If any other lost images are there, they’ll all be updated.
•Delete one or more lost images from the Library by selecting them and choosing Image > Delete. The image and all of its edits are removed from the Library. If you’re viewing the lost edits in the Gallery mode, you can also click the Delete Lost Edits button.
FIGURE 2-15: The Lost Edits shortcut reveals images that have been edited but are no longer available.
Luminar File Management and Cloud Services
I don’t want to get too far into the weeds about file management—after all, the whole point of a library is that the software is handling it for you—but it’s helpful to know how Luminar structures files on disk.
The app creates a central catalog in the Pictures folder (in a directory called Luminar Catalog), which keeps track of where image files are located on disk and which edits have been applied to them. The files themselves don’t move from their original locations, and aren’t touched even during editing: all adjustments are stored in the catalog. When you export a photo, the edits are incorporated into the version that’s created (such as a JPEG). Unlike some applications, Luminar doesn’t create sidecar files (.XMP).
Why is this important? It means you can specify any folder as a source, including those created by cloud services such as Dropbox or Google Drive. Many photographers use those services to easily share photos among machines or to access images from mobile devices. While companies like Adobe and Apple charge extra for additional cloud storage, you can use disk space that you’re likely already paying for. (I’ve had a Dropbox account for years.)
Because photo adjustments are stored in the catalog, not applied to the image files, you won’t run the risk of edits getting out of sync as the cloud folders are updated.
That said, don’t put the Luminar Catalog folder into a cloud drive or an external volume. It’s best to keep it in the Pictures folder where Luminar expects to find it.
Work with Raw+JPEG Pairs
When your camera is set to record every shot as Raw+JPEG, it creates two separate files: an unprocessed raw file and a processed JPEG file.
Sometimes photographers do this for redundancy, or if they need the speed of turning around JPEGs, but with the flexibility of editing the raw file later. I like to shoot in Raw+JPEG mode because I can transfer the JPEGs from my camera to my mobile phone for quick review or to share on social media.
Luminar gives you a few options for how the image pairs appear. Choose View > Raw + JPEG Pairs and pick one: Show Raw Only, Show JPEG Only, or Show Separately.
This choice impacts editing because even though a pair is shown as just one image when viewing only the raw or JPEG version, you’re still working with two separate files. Check the filename at the top of the Edit panel, or at the bottom-left corner in the Single Image mode. Whichever version is visbile is the one that’s edited; those edits do not apply to the other member of the pair (Figure 2-16).
FIGURE 2-16: When working with Raw+JPEG pairs, look to these two locations to see which image file you’re editing.
To apply the same edits to both files, make adjustments to one and then choose View > Raw + JPEG Pairs > Show Separately, select both versions, and then choose Image > Adjustments > Sync Adjustments.
Add New Photos to the Library
Now that you know how to add existing photos on your hard disk to your Luminar library, it’s time to move forward. You’re back from a photo shoot and you want to unload the camera’s memory card into Luminar. Copy images from a memory card or connected camera using the following steps:
1 1. With the memory card inserted or your camera connected to the computer, choose File > Import Images to a Folder. Or, you can select a folder in the Folders list of the Library panel, right-click it, and choose Import Images to this Folder.
2 2. Select the card as the source. In Windows, click the Browse button and specify the card’s drive; on macOS, navigate to the card using the Locations sidebar item.
3 3. From the Import To pop-up menu, pick the folder on your disk where the images will reside (Figure 2-17).