As a photographer, photo editing tools have become so entangled with your life. In an industry dominated by many professional photographers, only dazzling photographs can have odds of success. But creating dazzling photographs is not easy. It requires higher photo editing skills, expertise, years of experience, and it’s only possible with the right tools that offer powerful photo editing functionalities.
The best photo manipulation tool shall be able to help you transform the quality of your photos. Both Luminar and Adobe Lightroom are undeniably powerful image editors. They both offer non-destructive image editing for professional photographers and hobbyist photo editors. Today, these tools are used across the globe for organizing, manipulating and exporting photos. But which one is perfect for you? Let’s dive deep into the two most popular non-destructive image editors and compare them from multiple perspectives.
User Interface & Ease of Use
Luminar comes with a clean interface known for its easiness and convenience. The interface is neatly organized with toolbars, panels, with no complex controls. This can make the job a lot simpler.
In contrast to Luminar, Lightroom’s interface is a bit cluttered with too many program features that appeal specifically to professional photographers. It can take some time for newbies to get familiar with the interface. As of now, Lightroom does not allow further customization to move objects, tools and tabs around from one place to another.
Winner: Luminar
Advanced Photo Editing
Both Luminar and Lightroom share some of the most common editing features such as brushes and masks (both radial and gradient).
Luminar is powered with advanced photo manipulation tools and Artificial Intelligence (AI). As a matter of fact, it’s marketed while keeping AI as the highest selling point. With just a few clicks, you can add filters, change photo looks. You can perform some advanced photo adjustments like you would in Adobe Photoshop. Layer manipulation, separate adjustments, are among other features that it offers. You can also create a selective sidebar consisting of your favorite tools to easily accomplish it.
Lightroom lacks such layer tools support, as things stand. Instead, you can create presets for the adjustment sliders, and instantly apply effects to other photos. Presets will help you get a persistent look for your images, develop unique styles. Lightroom beautifully organizes essential editing tools on the right-hand side sidebar.
Winner: Luminar
Presets
Adobe Lightroom has a massive library of high-quality presets. You can instantly apply these presets to your images. Similarly, you can brighten your macro photography, add pop to street photography, give a film-like look to a simple image.
In contrast, Luminar offers only fewer presets. One of the reasons could be that the software is relatively new. Hopefully, we can expect many more presets in the upcoming Luminar versions.
Winner: Adobe Lightroom
Exporting Photos
When it comes to photo exporting, Luminar offers a few options. In contrast, Lightroom allows you to export the presets, application settings. You can further add watermarking, file naming patterns, output sharpening, metadata, post-processing, and so on. Lightroom’s export settings are very handy if you’re working for multiple clients at once. Each client can have different requirements, so it makes sense to export the photos to match their requirements. If you’re using a custom plugin, you’ll get many more options while exporting.
Winner: Adobe Lightroom
Spot Healing
The Spot Healing tool is available in only Lightroom, and not in Luminar. Again, it could be because Luminar is relatively newer or perhaps the developers have some other plans in mind. You can use Spot Healing to fix known issues with the look and feel of images of certain types. It also offers lens fixing, vignette and sharpening.
Winner: Adobe Lightroom
Regular Updates
Luminar is fresh and younger compared to Lightroom which has been in the industry for a while now. Luminar was first released in 2016 and it has been constantly adding new features, releasing new updates. Lightroom, in contrast, is a bit slow to introduce new features or make changes to the UI.
Winner: Luminar
Pricing
Adobe Lightroom costs you $9.99/ month that includes both the Desktop and Mobile versions. You get 1 TB of cloud storage to save your photos and media online. Your subscription also includes social media tools and a portfolio website.
In contrast, Luminar offers a one-time purchase option. You’ll NOT be charged on a monthly or annual basis. You can avail of a license for a single computer, two computers, both of which include standalone software and plugins. The Plus Bundle and Max Bundle include powerful artificial intelligence. Keep in mind, there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Winner: Luminar
Our Verdict
Both Luminar and Lightroom have their own strengths and weaknesses. At the end of the day, it all boils down to the user’s requirement.
If you’re kind of that photographer who deals with plenty of clients and make their living through photography, Lightroom is your best bet.
If you’re not a pro photographer and mostly use photo manipulation tools as part of your personal hobby, Luminar is worth considering. It’s best for those who edit a few photos every week or so. It includes plenty of handy tools to improve the quality and transform your images. Moreover, it’s a one-time purchase with no monthly/ annual commitments.
Bonus Tip: Save GBs of Storage Space Occupied by Duplicate Photos
It’s no secret that as you import new photos from your digital camera or smartphone, you encounter the problem of duplication. If you’re a professional photographer, it could waste a lot of precious storage and make it difficult to find the right photo when you need it the most. As a matter of fact, it can affect your performance, productivity and the perception of your clients about your brand.
Thankfully, it’s possible to fix the duplicates now. PictureEcho is an algorithm-based duplicate finder that helps you search your entire photo library for duplication.
PictureEcho offers two types of scans- Exact Match and Similar Match. Moreover, if you’re a Lightroom user, you’ll find a separate tab dedicated to Lightroom users. You can search through your Lightroom catalogs within minutes. But if you’re using Luminar, you can simply add multiple directories to scan at once. Once the scan is finished, PictureEcho will display the thumbnails of all duplicate files found besides basic details about each photo such as name, size, path, etc. You can use the predefined filters to automatically mark/ unmark photos of your choice, and accordingly, choose whether to delete them or move them to a separate directory.
Other features:
- Retain smaller/ bigger images in each group
- Mark low/ high-resolution images in each group
- Retain newest/ oldest images in each group
- Select your files by the parent directory
- Large in-house thumbnail previewing functionality
- 4 similarity levels to choose from
- Permanently delete duplicate photos or move them to a separate folder
