Читать книгу The Photographer's Guide to Luminar 4 - Jeff Carlson - Страница 42

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.