Which Library
Answered
Hi,
I am an armature photographer and over the years I have used iphotos, photoshop, lightroom and now Luminar (started with vrs 3 and now waiting for AI).
As you may guess I have used the various libraries and now find myself with photos across several libraries.
I am now in a position to get all my photos into 1 central library - however which should I use? I understand that whilst AI has a library it is not able to access Luminar 4 library.
I plan to stick with Luminar as my preferred editing software and would like any suggestions as to which library I should stick with.
Thanks and appreciate all your advice.
Paul
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Paul,
I believe you will need to think about what you want to get out of using a library. If all you want is to catalog photos in a folder, just about any of those applications will do -- except for Photoshop. However, if you want to use more details in your library, e.g., keywords, then you need to check out and see which application offers that. Although Luminar promised a DMA (digital management asset) since version 3, it has not delivered that yet. Yes, there is a library function, but it is very rudimentary. For some people, it works. For others, it is not enough. For example, I rely very heavily on keywords in my photos. Instead of using folders, I simply add keywords to photos. So, when I have to look for photos from a location or wildflowers or a person, I can do a search for that specific keyword. Lightroom allows me to do that; Luminar doesn't, unfortunately.
Hope that helps.
Egídio
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Paul,
Studio
Egidio is spot on with his comments. I too use Lightroom for my catalog. It’s robust, allows for keywords, geo tags, facial recognition, etc AND it works! There’s nothing more frustrating than putting time and effort into building a catalog and not having it provide the lookup capabilities you need. Lightroom allows you to search by camera, by text attribute, by lens and a whole host of other ways.
Don’t get me wrong I use Luminar and Aurora both but my workflow always starts with importing the images into
Lightroom.—Dave
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Paul,
There are alternatives to Lightroom that don't require a subscription. One example is ACDSee. It has an exceptional Library/DAM feature that should give you everything you need and more. Use Luminar for your editing and the basic version of ACDSee for organization and NO subscription to worry about.
Dave D
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