If you’re looking to understand how you can speed up your workflow with Luminar batch processing, then you’ve come to the right place.

Because in this article, I’m going to show you:

  • How batch processing works in Luminar
  • THREE ways to batch process your images
  • When it makes sense to batch process in Luminar (and when it doesn’t)

Sound good?

Let’s get started.

Luminar Batch Processing: How It Works

There are three simple ways of batch processing photos in Luminar.

First, you can use the Batch Processing tool to make quick changes to an entire set of pre-selected images.

Second, you can use the Copy Adjustments function to paste edits from one photo onto another photo.

And third, you can use the Sync Adjustments function to sync edits from one photo across a series of selected photos.

Now let’s take a look at each option in turn, starting with:

The Batch Processing Tool in Luminar: Step-By-Step

The Luminar Batch Processing tool is great for quick, simple edits.

It allows you to apply Luminar Looks (i.e., presets) to dozens of photos at once.

To batch process images, make sure you have your set of photos ready on your hard drive.

Then click on File:

Then Batch Processing:

(Alternatively, you can just hit Cntrl/Cmnd + B.)

This brings up the batch processing window, where you’ll be prompted to choose your photos.

You can either do this by browsing for images:

Or by dragging images/folders into the dialog box from your desktop.

Once you’ve added all the images you want to batch process, hit Continue:

And you’ll find yourself in the Batch Settings window.

Now it’s time to choose your batch setting. You have the option to:

  • Add a Look to all your images
  • Save all the images to a specified location
  • Rename all images using a prefix-base-suffix combination
  • Change the format of all images in the batch
  • Drop the quality of all the images in the batch
  • Change the color profile of all images
  • Batch resize all images
  • Sharpen all images

So start by selecting the Look (if any) that you’d like to apply to your batch of images:

If you’re not familiar with Luminar Looks, just know that they’re Luminar’s version of presets. They’re pretty great for making quick-but-powerful edits to your images, though I don’t recommend applying them blindly; first, get a sense of the Look you’re interested in, and only then apply it to a whole batch of images.

Then choose where you’d like the photos to end up once you’ve finished batch processing:

By the way, it’s important to recognize:

Once you’ve batch processed a set of images, those images will be exported. They won’t stick around in Luminar for you to play around with, they won’t end up in any of your Luminar catalogs.

Of course, you’ll still be able to access the original copies (Luminar is a non-destructive photo editor), but the batch process function is really about editing without actually using any Luminar tools. If you’d prefer to batch edit within Luminar, then look at my Sync Adjustments function instructions below.

Anyways, you can then rename your batch of images by choosing an optional prefix, your base text, a suffix, and letters:

(For instance, if you’re exporting images for a blog post about Paris, you might want to name them all in sequence, as Paris-Blog-1, Paris-Blog-2, Paris-Blog-3, etc.)

Next, head down to the Format option, where you can choose from a number of file formats, including JPEG, TIFF, and PNG.

I never really export anything except for JPEGs when doing this type of batch processing, and so I recommend you just leave it on JPEG (unless you have a very strong reason for doing otherwise).

You can also drop the quality of your images via the Quality slider, which can be useful if you’re trying to keep your files under a certain size. But lowering the quality too much will result in serious quality issues–such as banding and other compression artifacts–so I don’t recommend taking things below around 70.

For Color Profile, you’ll want to use sRGB. This is the standard for displaying images on the web and on monitors more generally, and it works great.

The exception would be if you’re printing your images, in which case you might want to go for one of the other options. This depends on the printer you’re using, so I’d recommend asking professional printers or consulting the printer manual before you do this.

You can then resize your images to fit any sizing requirements:

I often resize using the long edge (e.g., I want to keep the long edge of my photos under 1500 pixels), but this really has to do with your personal preferences and what you’re planning on using the images for.

By the way, you’ll definitely want to check Don’t Enlarge beneath the Resize option. Otherwise you might end up with images that are larger than their pixels allow, in which case they’ll just look really, really bad.

Finally, you can click the Advanced button:

Which will open the Sharpen settings:

If you’re substantially resizing your images, or you’re converting them from RAW to JPEG, then it’s pretty much always a good idea to sharpen.

Feel free to test out each of the Sharpen options separately. I often use Low or Medium, though if you’re printing you might want to use High.

Click Done to head back to the main Batch Settings window:

And…that’s it!

Go ahead and click Process, and Luminar will get to work batch editing your photos:

Oh, and if you plan on using those batch settings again in the future, you can always hit Save Settings to save them as a preset:

They’ll then appear under User Settings on the left side of the window:

Nice, right?

By the way…

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The Copy Adjustments Tool in Luminar: Step-By-Step

If you’re looking to quickly adjust your images in Luminar, but you want greater flexibility than the Batch Processing tool allows, then the Copy Adjustments tool is a good choice.

It allows you to make adjustments on one photo, then copy those over to any other photos within Luminar.

Here’s how it works:

First, make all your adjustments to an image in the Edit view. I don’t recommend doing any masking or other local adjustments, but you can make basic exposure, contrast, color, and white balance changes, among others.

Then right-click on the image thumbnail (or the image itself).

Select Adjustments, then Copy Adjustments:

(Though can also just tap Cntrl/Cmnd + C.)

Then select all the images you want to apply those settings to. Right-click, then select Adjustments, then Paste Adjustments:

(Or just tap Cntrl/Cmnd + V.)

And you’re done! Your images will all be changed as a batch to match the adjustments on the copied image. Note that Luminar will continue to save the adjustments that you copied, so you can use the Paste Adjustments option again and again–until you copy another set of adjustments, of course.

The Sync Adjustments Tool in Luminar: Step-By-Step

Here’s your final way to batch process in Luminar:

The Sync Adjustments tool.

It’s much like the Copy Adjustments tool I discussed above, except that you can use it to sync several photos. And, once you’ve selected your sequence of photos to sync, you can repeatedly hit the Sync Adjustments button to keep all the edits synced up as you continue to make adjustments.

This is how it works:

First, select a photo that you’d like to use as your main image. Make some edits.

Then use Shift or Cntrl/Cmnd to select all the additional images you’d like to sync.

Right click on any of the images, choose Adjustments, then Sync Adjustments:

(Or hit Cntrl/Cmnd + Shift + S.)

And all the images will change to reflect adjustments to the original image. At this point, you can continue to edit the original image, and–as long as your sequence of images stays selected–you can continue to right-click, hit Sync Adjustments, and watch things sync up once again.

When Should You Batch Process in Luminar?

Batch processing is a great way to save time while editing.

The Batch Processing tool is great for situations where you want to prepare a bunch of images for web display or photo sharing.

The Sync Adjustments and the Copy Adjustments tools are perfect for situations where you have a number of photos from the same photoshoot, but you don’t want to go through and make the same changes over and over again.

However, you should be careful to avoid local editing while batch processing. In other words, don’t selectively brighten a person’s face in one photo, then use a batch editing function–because you’ll end up with weird spots of brightness on all your other photos, even if your subject moved just slightly.

Make sense?

Note that you can always combine batch processing and local editing in a simple, two-step process:

First, edit exposure, contrast, and color using the Sync Adjustments or Copy Adjustments workflow discussed above.

Then go through each image individually, making small tweaks and adding local adjustments.

It’ll save you a lot of time!

Luminar Batch Processing: The Next Steps

Now that you’ve finished this article, you know three easy ways to batch process in Luminar 4.

That way, you can can speed up your editing workflow, and get through dozens of images in minutes!

But don’t stop there!

If you’re looking to keep take your photo editing to new heights, I recommend you sign up for my email list, where I send all sorts Luminar tips, tricks, and secrets that I don’t share on my blog.

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The 7-Step Luminar Workflow to Create Stunning Photos

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