Chapter 8: Opening Photos for Quick Edit

The Quick Edit command makes it easy to work with individual photos that don’t exist in your Luminar library.  This is similar to using previous versions of the Luminar standalone application.

When to Use the Quick Edit Command

When you want to edit a single image or several images, but not Add or Import them into your library, you can use the Quick Edit function in Luminar.  This is great in situations where someone wants you to develop a few of their photos or even when you have a photo you want to quickly process, but not have it remain in your Luminar Library after you are done editing it.

When you open an image in quick edit remains in its original location on your hard drive.  It is put into a special collection in your Library Panel under Shortcuts called Quick Edits. (The Quick Edits shortcut will not appear unless you have added a least one photo using the Quick Edit command.)  

  1. You can add a photo to Quick edit one of three ways.
    • Click the Open Button Menu to open Images for Quick Edit
    • File > Open Images for Quick Edit
    • Press Cmd+O (MacOS) or Ctrl+O (WIndows)
  2. Chapter 8: Opening Photos for Quick Edit

  3. A system dialog box appears.  Navigate to where the image(s) you want to edit is located.  
  4. Select the image you want to edit. (You can select multiple photos using modifier keys like Shift or Cmd/Ctrl.
  5. Click Open. The images appear on the Filmstrip side panel. If multiple images are selected the first image selected will be opened in the main window ready to edit.
  6. To select another image to edit you can scroll through the Filmstrip on the left or click on the Navigate Up button on the upper left area of the Toolbar to get back to the Gallery View (The G key will also switch your layout to the Gallery View.)  

Select the image you want to process and develop and export it as you would any other image in your Library.  Remember to File > Export to save your edited image for use in other applications.

Managing Images in the Quick Edit Collection

Images will stay in your Quick Edit shortcut collection until you remove them.  This is a collection that builds automatically You can use the Showing and Sort By menus at the top of the window to reduce the number of images shown or change their display order.

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  1. To remove an image from Quick Edit, first, select it
  2. Then press the Delete key to remove it from your library. This removes the images from your library but keeps them safely in their original location.

TIP: Images in the Quick Edit shortcut area can be treated like any other image in your Library.  They can be Tagged, Rated, and labeled as well as added to albums.  

If you decide you want to keep a Quick Edit image in your Library, you can simply drag it onto any of the folders in the Library Side Panel.  The original photo will be moved on your hard drive into the corresponding folder in your Library.  Even though the image is now part of your regular library, it will still show up under the Quick Edit shortcut until you remove it.


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