Chapter 11: Using Albums to Organize Images

Albums let you organize your images into groups without affecting their location on your hard drive. Albums are a useful way to sort your images into groups or categories, such a people, places, pets, and so on.

What are Albums?

Albums are virtual storage locations. Think of them as musical playlists for your photos. A song on your hard drive can live in a playlist based on the artist, the year it was released, and the genre of music it belongs to. So too can a photo, the same original image can be assigned to an album named after the person, where the picture was taken, and the event where it was shot.

How are Albums Different than Folders?

Unlike folders, when you move an image between album, or even into multiple albums, nothing changes to the structure of your hard drive. If you delete a photo from an album, it will still be in its original folder in Luminar and on your hard drive.

Creating an Album

To create an album, select a single image or group of images in your library. Click on the Add Album button (the small + button to the right of the word Albums) in the Library panel. A new Album is created named “Untitled,” and, the selected images are placed in that album. When you first create an album the name is highlighted, allowing you to easily rename that album.

You can also create an Album from a group of images:

Select multiple images in your library
Choose Library > New Album (or press Cmd+N / Ctrl+N)

Renaming Albums

You can rename an Album at any time by right-clicking on it and selecting Rename from the pop-up menu.

Copying Images Between Albums

You can drag images from one album to another album. This puts the image in the new album without removing it from the first album. For example, you may have photos of people in your Paris Travel Album and you also want them included in your people Album

Removing Files from Albums

Removing an image from an album is easy. Since the file is still in its original folder and in your library, this is a fast operation.

Choose the album you want to work with
Select the images you want to discard (use the Shift key to select a range of images).
Press the Delete key.

The images are removed from that selected Album; however, they will still live in other Albums and their original folder. Removing an image from an album does not affect the original file on your hard drive.

Warning: If you select Move to Trash on an image in an Album, all instances of that photo will be removed from any Album it has been assigned to, and the original file will be moved from its Folder and placed in Luminar’s trash folder.

Moving Images from the QuickEdit Collection to an Album

Over time your Quick Edit collection will grow. You can organize images you brought into you Quick Edit collection into existing Album or create a new album. These images are still considered temporary and do not reside in any of the Folders in Luminar. This is a great way to organize a bunch of images you want to edit, but not affect where they are located on your hard drive. When you remove an image from the Quick Edit collection, it will also be removed from any Albums you have added it to.

NOTE: If you drag a Quick Edit image from an Album into a Folder, that photo will be moved from its original location into the corresponding folder on your hard drive.

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