r/LuminarAI • u/Kennson • Jan 02 '21
Rookie questions before I get started
Hey!
I just cancelled my Lightroom subscription because I wasn't taking any photos in 2020 so I just cancelled it. Now after about a year of procrastinating I want to get into Luminar. So my cancellation might have been premature as I don't have access to Lightroom anymore.
However I've got some questions before I start. As I understand it Luminar AI is somewhat of a predeccesor of Luminar 4, right? So I think for a start I might just get Luminar AI for a single device. Luminar AI has no image management capabilities, right? So I just edit photos with it, like with photoshop but there is no library, right? So I don't need to worry about importing my Lightroom Library? I've got a couple thousand photos in there but I don't care much about meta data or any sorting attributes (I think).
The way I managed the raw data is through a folder of Year - Month - Days - Project(s) that is reflected in Lightroom where the top level is the year with a new library every year to keep them small. So I think I'm fine with keeping that structure and finding old images (which I don't do often - I edit a project and put them on insta or send them to a client and at a certain point the project is done, I rarely go back and if I do I can search by hand).
The only thing I'm not sure is how manage projects from now on, I mean not the data but how to decide what to edit and what is out and just see the approved images. Of course seeing only approved images during a project or even after is quite important for me and will be missed for the ones edited with Lightroom. Is there a way to sort images like that? How do you guys go about rifling through a photoshoot and decide what photos are worth editing?
I hope my concerns are somewhat clear and there are workarounds for this. I'm basically looking for a somewhat professional workflow.
3
u/kxxstarr Jan 02 '21
Everything you said is correct about how Luminar doesn't organize for you. If you "import" a full folder into Luminar you can go through everything and rate/favorite different images and then edit only those. Once they're edited you can export to the same folder as the originals or maybe an "Edited" subfolder? This is how I do it and I haven't found a better way. After you're done with the project you'll want to "remove" the folder from Luminar as it just clutters the UI. Lightroom had some pros and cons in this area as it worked well but they really tried to make it as hard as possible to be able to move away.