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Luminar 4 cheat sheet: How to find your way around the Luminar 4 Library window

April 22, 2020 by Rod Lawton

The Luminar 4 Library window is where you do all of your image opening, importing and organizing. You select the Library view using the first of three buttons (6) at the top of the tools panel on the right. The second button (7) is for the Edit view. The third Info view (8) simply displays the camera’s EXIF (shooting) information.

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The Library view actually has two modes. This is the Gallery view (4) which shows your images as thumbnails. There’s also a Single Image view (5) which shows a selected photo full size with basic editing controls. There is a second cheat sheet for this.

It’s also possible to open and edit images individually from your computer (1) without importing the whole folder, just like the ‘old’ Luminar and a regular photo editor.

Key: Luminar 4 Library view annotations

If you click on the annotated screenshot above it will open in a new tab. This might make it easier to swap between the screenshot and the annotations.

1 ADD FOLDER/EDIT IMAGE 

Luminar stores your images in a catalog so you need to import them first. Once a folder is imported, Luminar will monitor and update it ‘live’.

2 THUMBNAIL SIZE 

You can change the size of the thumbnail images in the Gallery view. Here, it’s set to Small, a good compromise between easily identifying photos and getting more of them on the screen.

3 EXPORT IMAGE

You can export images as an email or SMS attachment or send them to Smugmug if you have an account. You can also send them directly to other photo editing applications.

4 GALLERY VIEW 

There are two viewing options in the Luminar library. Gallery View (the most useful) shows all the images in a selected Folder or Album as thumbnails and is best for filtering, finding and organizing photos.

5 SINGLE IMAGE VIEW 

If you double-click a thumbnail in the Gallery View, it opens in Single Image View. This is not the main editing window, just a way to view a large versions of a photo without leaving Gallery View.

6 LIBRARY WINDOW

The Library view, selected here, is where you import, view and organize the photos in your catalog.

7 EDIT WINDOW 

If you want to edit images in depth, you need to switch to Edit mode. There is a separate cheat sheet for this.

8 INFO 

This is the third viewing option, but in reality it does very little, simply displaying the EXIF (shooting) information for the current image.

9 SHORTCUTS 

These shortcuts are created automatically by Luminar to help you find your Favorite images, Recently Added images, images from specific dates and more.

10 ALBUMS 

These are ‘virtual’ collections of photos. A single photo can be in many different albums. You add images to Albums manually – Luminar does not yet offer ‘smart albums’ based on searches.

11 FOLDERS 

All the folders you import into the Luminar catalog are shown here. These are real ‘live’ folders. Any changes you make here will be reflected on your computer, and vice versa.

12 GALLERY THUMBNAILS

You can double-click a thumbnail to open the photo in Single Image view, click to select it and then swap to Edit mode, or multiple-select images for moving them between Folders and Albums.

Related

Filed Under: Featured, LuminarTagged With: Cataloguing software

Life after Photoshop is owned and run by photographer and journalist Rod Lawton. Rod has been a photography journalist for nearly 40 years, starting out in film (obviously) but then migrating to digital. He has worked as a freelance journalist, technique editor and channel editor, and is now Group Reviews Editor on Digital Camera World. Life after Photoshop is a personal project started in 2013.

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