Luminar AI works as a standalone program, but it also works well as a plugin, and I will oftentimes use it after editing photos from Lightroom or Photoshop. In this article, I will be sharing the different ways you can edit your photos as a plugin from Lightroom CC Classic.

Within Lightroom, there are several ways that you can bring a photo into Luminar AI. I have four of them listed below to help you determine which one works best with your workflow, and it might also shed some light on why things are not happening the way you might expect them to if you run into a snag along the way.

Export with Preset

File > Export with Preset > Luminar AI > Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments

• A good choice if you first want to first apply raw edits to your images in Lightroom
• Opens the file into Luminar as a flattened TIFF file with your Lightroom edits applied
• The file is brought back into Lightroom alongside your original image after making your edits in Luminar
• Adds “LuminarAI-edit” to the end of the filename (for example, after editing a file named photo.raf, the file would be called photo_LuminarAI-edit.tiff once the image is brought back into Lightroom)

This is my preferred method and is the method I will regularly teach. Lightroom is the “home base” for my entire photography catalog. It’s where I store and organize my images, and I prefer to use it when editing my raw files as well. The reason I prefer this method is that it allows me to first apply my raw image edits in Lightroom, then I can easily open a photo into Luminar AI to add some finishing touches. Then, when finished, the file is automatically brought back into Lightroom as a flattened TIFF file with all Luminar AI edits visible.

File > Export with Preset > Luminar AI > Open Source Files

• Works well if you want to edit the original file in Luminar AI with no edits from Lightroom applied to the image
• Opens the file into Luminar as the original file (raw, etc.)
• The file is brought back into Lightroom as a flattened TIFF file alongside your original image after making your edits in Luminar
• Adds “LuminarAI-edit” to the end of the filename (for example, after editing a file named photo.raf, the file would be called photo_LuminarAI-edit.tiff once the image is brought back into Lightroom)

This method is a good option if you want to use Lightroom as your catalog of images, but would prefer to edit a photo from start to finish within Luminar AI. For example, if you are editing a raw file, the original raw file will open into Luminar, regardless if there were any edits applied to the file in Lightroom. This allows you to use the full potential of Luminar AI while still working from Lightroom.

Transfer to Luminar AI

File > Plugin Extras > Transfer to Luminar AI

• Nearly identical to the previous method, “Open Source Files”
• The filename is not changed when the image is brought back to Lightroom
• Saves as a TIFF file once back in Lightroom

This method works nearly identically to the method above (File > Export with Preset > Luminar AI > Open Source Files). The only difference is that when you bring the photo back into Lightroom, the filename does not have “LuminarAI-edit.tiff” added after the filename. It is simply changed to a TIFF file. So a file named flower.raf would then be flower.tiff once brought back into Lightroom.

Using the “Edit in” menu item

Photo > Edit in > Luminar AI

• Creates a new TIFF file and places it alongside your original file in Lightroom
• Opens this new TIFF file into Luminar AI
• The photo is added as a “Single File Edit” in Luminar AI and is opened in its original folder location
• Does not bring the photo back into Lightroom

Most of the time, when editing your photo externally, you’ll go to the Photo > Edit In menu option. After all, this is how you bring your photos into Photoshop to do further editing.

However, with Luminar AI, I do not recommend this method, primarily because it does not work as intuitively as we would expect it to. When you use this menu command, by default Lightroom creates a TIFF file and places it alongside your original file. Then, Luminar AI will open up so you can edit the file. However, after doing so, there is no way to bring the image back into Lightroom after you’ve completed your edits. This is because the newly-created TIFF file has essentially been imported into the Luminar AI catalog as a “Single image edit”, so any edits you make within Luminar cannot be saved and brought back into Lightroom so you would need to complete your edits in Luminar and export it to save a finished file.

Also, another issue with this method is that it is not editing the original format of your image. So, if you prefer to edit the raw file in Luminar, you are not able to do that with this method. I suggest using the other methods listed above when you want to edit a photo in Luminar AI from Lightroom.