Luminar Flex edits won't save in Mac Catalina
I can no longer save edits using the Luminar Flex extension in Photos on my Mac after being updated to Catalina 10.15.
I see the following message
Tried rebooting, but no change. Still can't save my edits.
Please help
Thanks
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It's a known "bug" I believe. It appears Skylum have not updated Luminar to be fully compatible with Catalina. It would be good to know when we might see the update?
Workaround - use Edit With and then, when you have edited the image, go Open in Photos. The image will be sent back to Photos and the the Luminar edit will sit alongside the original. I did it with a raw file using Flex and ended up with a tiff showing the Flex edits sitting beside the original unedited raw file in Photos. May not be ideal but it is a workaround. -
@Colin -- you should get a job on the "Support" desk here. Best bit of help I've seen in a long time, if ever. None of the usual "Please contact us at www.skylum.com/support and we'll be happy to help." evasive technique.
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You are using L3? I did it with Flex. But still confused - you are opening Apple Photos, going to the image and than selecting Edit With from Photos to launch Luminar. After editing in Luminar you are selecting Open in Photos from within L3? I just did it and it worked. To get the image back to Apple Photos you want, from within L3, File/Open In.
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I'm using L3 Flex. Did exactly as you instructed. Opened Apple Photos, chose 'Edit With' and selected 'Luminar Flex', applied the edits, then selected 'Open in Photos' from L3. The edited photo is not with the original as expected.
Wish it would work for me as it does for you as the extra steps to move the image from Recents is a bit of a pain !!
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But there is no "Recents" in Flex. And you should Open in Photos from Flex not L3. When you Open in Photos, Photos should open and at that point Flex can be closed. I note you are starting from an Album in Photos - try starting from the main Photos library. I somehow doubt that Photos will put the edit back into the same Album. Not when the edit is effectively a new image edited outside the usual parameters. When you think about it, what you are doing is editing an image in Flex and then transferring it into Photos as a new image, not an edited Photos original.
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I am using Flex (don't have need for the L3 library). Sorry for any confusion.
The Recents I refer to is the folder within Apple Photos.
Things work as you describe when working from the main Photos library (the images I'm working with are catalogued into Albums).
I'll bear the pain for now, but we do need a quick fix from Skylum.
Thanks again for your time and help Colin.
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Thought that might be it. It will never work from Albums as all Flex is doing is transferring an edited image to Photos and Photos will always see that as a new image/import.
Anna, that is a very shallow statement and it does not fill one with any confidence whatsoever. The developer beta of Catalina has been out for ages so your engineers have had ample time to keep abreast of the changes. Surely they must be so doing for Luminar 4. Therefore I and other users would expect an update within days rather than weeks. Perhaps you would like to qualify your statement with a timeframe? Or is it the case that Skylum are behind the curve...again! -
For saving photos in macOS 10.15 Catalina, the Photos extensions don't work for all the Skylum products I have, which isn't a surprise since they all have a similar interface (Luminar, Aurora HDR, Photolemur, etc). You'd think fixing that would be a top priority!
FYI Pixelmartor Pro has worked with Catalina since the earliest betas.
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Am running into the same problem using L3....don't have Flex, just not using the library function at this point. Round trip has been flawless until Catalina install. Unless I am not following directions properly, the workaround you described is not available to me. When I take the Apple Photos extension for L3, I can edit, but at that point have no other option but to save changes. Open in Photos is greyed out. Workaround for me looks like using the External Editor extension, then choosing Luminar 3. Photo can then be edited. In order to Open in Photos option, I have to first go back to Apple Photos and cancel out of the External Editor save and then execute Open in Photos, otherwise the photo never arrives. When I do this, the edited photo arrives right next to the original. If this looks like too many steps it is. I use External Editor extension also with Affinity Photo and Photoshop Elements for different edits, but when I save those apps, it sends me back to Apple Photos where I can save changes in that app....still too many steps. I reported the problem to support, but am posting here for any poor souls who encounter this problem with L3 extension and don't see an obvious work around.
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Unbelievable !! This is the comment I received from Support regards my request for a timescale to get this fixed...
"We are aware of the issues with Apple Photos Extension on MacOS Catalina. Our tech team is going to fix these issues in the next update, which will be released later this year."
Any other company would have had this fixed by now
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Correct David but to me a workaround is too tiresome. There are several I can use but it is frustrating that Skylum has got this wrong given past OS Mac changes have always worked well with Luminar. I now read that Adobe users are having problems so perhaps I (we?) are being a tad harsh on Skylum.
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Aha. Didn't see "Edit With" in the first few looks through an application I have used since before L 2018. Now see that "Edit With" is in the "Image" pulldown, which makes sense if I had thought about it. All works as described above. The only issue now is that I have an extra photo, which is a TIFF. If I want to preserve the capability of reverting to original, I have to keep an extra photo for every one I edit. I can then hide the photo so I don't show duplicates when viewing, etc. etc. etc. To me this is a catastrophic bug in the software that should not have to wait for later this year as David has already pointed out. Many thanks though to Colin for posting the work around.
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Thanks Jeremy. At least a tiff is not a lossy format :-)
I use Open In all the time as I just use Photos to keep my jpegs. Or I did but now rethinking as I am not sure I like the way Photos has gone. I hate Memories as I cannot understand the logic employed to create them. I also dislike the fact that I cannot add/remove images from a given Memory or indeed create my own memory. All I can seemingly do is delete them - is this the start of AI trying to take over I wonder? I will keep at it for a bit as I may be missing things and it is a damned fast database to be sure. Memories also see to lack any form of logic tat I can understand and again they cannot be tweaked/changed by the user.
If I do not use Photos the question becomes how I share my images across devices. Adobe has that cracked and it looks as though ON1 will this year. As such the future for Luminar does not look that bright to me, not as anything other than a plugin that is. But then I guess we all know the DAM is an unmitigated failure.
This problem with Catalina is not good and it has even hit using Affinity Photo as an extension (but not the individual Affinity extensions). These things happen but what concerns me and always has is Skylum's apparent disregard for the welfare of their paying users (of L3/Flex in this instance). They really have written off Flex and L3 it seems but I bet the problem is not in the L4 beta or if it is I bet they are working flat out to get it right for release. They never ever give straight answers to the question WHEN, which means they either do not have a plan, have no intention of doing it, or have no idea how to fix it just yet. All totally unacceptable given the length of time the Catalina beta has been available to developers. -
Hey Colin. I agree on the whole memories thing. What a waste of development time. This whole thing takes me back to my original quandary with Aperture. What do I do with over 30K photos that are all cataloged with people and locations. Maybe should have bitten the bullet and moved everything to Lightroom with a migration tool at the time that still didn't get me all the way there. BTW, see all sorts of blurbs about warnings not to move to Catalina if you are a Lightroom user.
My big extended family now uses shared albums a lot as well, so leaving Apple Photos, would cause me to dump that function. None of my kin btw could care less about sophisticated editing. They are fine with the tools in Apple Photos if they even edit at all. They just want to share.
The true professional photographers are grounded in Adobe for the most part. That leaves a small segment of amateur or semi-professional photographers who care about their photos and like boutique Apple friendly shops like Luminar, Aurora HD and Affinity Photo (also still use Photoshop Elements for quick work on old photos and to use its connection to my Pro-10 printer).
For me, there is no right answer. Moving my DAM and reconstructing my keywords/locations and associated workflows is inconceivable. Unless Apple somehow totally compromises my database, I will live with workarounds and continue to bemoan that my needs are being ignored with no regard to the fact that I am part of a small minority vs. the rest of the world.
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There is a post from Skylum elsewhere saying they will try and get a L3/Catalina compatibility update out by the year end. So no guarantees and that must be viewed alongside the fact the L4 is out in November! I still use Lr and would never consider leaving that for anything Skylum - and the dam in Luminar is hopeless. ON1 2020 beta 2 is out (public can test it) and it really does feel good and the DAM is excellent. They are also rolling out IOS compatible apps and sharing over the coming year.
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David, I have been able to use the External Editor for Photos extension (available in the App Store), choosing Affinity Photo, do my edits and then save. Selecting save changes in Apple Photos does the trick. Your changes are saved and you can revert to original if necessary i.e. no extra TIFF files. Same method works for Photoshop Elements. Doesn't work with Luminar.
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Am using Luminar 2018 via Photos. Same issue as above (unable to save edits as I have done in the past). Just followed advice above OPEN IN (LUMINAR 2018). Did my edit then OPEN IN PHOTOS. The image appeared magically in imports. So all good. May be useful for Luminar 2018 users. Thanks for advice above.
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This really is most disappointing. I have been a strong advocate of Luminar over the past few years and now I find I have been let down by a bug in my favourite software. Surely this bug should have been caught with a beta version of Catalina? I had hoped the workaround was going to solve the problem, but – as others have mentioned – you end up with a TIFF image.
Usually, I want them saved as raw images, so the workaround doesn't work. Today I am working with photos that are jpegs and need to be kept as jpegs. So the workaround fails.
The suggestion that the bug will not be fixed until new versions of Luminar are launched later this year really is poor. What are we supposed to do in the weeks before that update?
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