Quick intro to Luminar 2018's Batch Processing feature

Luminar 2018 offers a Batch Processing option when you start the software up, as can be seen on the screenshot above. So, what is 'batch processing' exactly? Well, we are going to have a very quick intro to help you decide if it is a feature you might use.

Now the name tells us something about its purpose - to process your images in batches. The key word here is 'processing'. Its not a bulk opening feature in the sense that you have a set of images you wish to preload and then work on them one by one. No, this is a way of using Luminar 2018 almost on 'auto'. Let me show what you see when you click on that button.

So, I hit the 'Batch processing' button, located some images I wanted to batch process and this is what I see once Luminar 2018 has loaded them all. Now you can click the 'Continue' button to go to the next stage or you can click the button on the left labelled 'Add More Images' in case you want to add other images from a different location to those already imported.

So, once you click the 'Continue' button you should see something like this:

Right away you can that you have lots of options to choose from. On the left we have a panel labelled 'Batch processing Presets' with Default settings listed first. These are 'Web JPEG' and 'For Email'. Under 'User' there is nothing but if you wish you can create your own mix of settings as a preset and it will show up in this panel under the 'User' heading. I chose 'Web JPEG.

To right of this panel is the main window with various options grouped under various headings. 

We have:

• Export Location
• Luminar Presets
• File Settings
• Image settings
• File Naming

These are all pretty obvious and I am not really going to cover them in any depth as you can probably work them for yourself. So, moving on....

So, in the screenshot above you can see I choose the location where I want to store my images once processed. I have then moved on to the Luminar presets section and chosen from the popup Aerial Inspired by DJI. These are presets that are inspired by the increasingly popular drone shots.

Having chosen my preset I then moved onto the next step.

So, Having decided on the 'Inspired by DJI' preset I then chose the 'Aerial Awesomer' Preset from that group.

Next, under 'File Settings' I increased the JPEG quality to 100 as the default is 87. I left the colour profile as sRGB.

Moving on to 'Image Settings', I changed the 'Long Edge' setting to 1920 as the images I have loaded are snapshots from some 4K video I shot at Clacton Airshow 2017. I left 'Sharpen' at 'None' and left the 'Don't Enlarge' box ticked. This makes sure you don't accidentally end up enlarging an image and ending up with a pixelated image.

In the 'File Naming' section I added a suffix of 'edit'. The software shows you an example of how your filename would look. You see how mine looked below.

Once you are done making your choices you then click the 'Process' button. The software will then start processing your batch of images, using the presets you have chosen.

Now it is important for me to emphasise that it is a good idea to try out the various presets to get a good idea of their effect as the end result will depend on the type of image you are editing and the actual preset effects. I recommend importing a single image from the group of images you wish to batch process and editing that in the main program to get an idea of the impact of your chosen preset. I'd also ensure the set of images you wish to batch process are similar to one another, with similar lighting etc.

Once you click that 'Process' button things start to move fast (or not so fast if your images are large, or your computer is not so fast!).

In the image above you can that the software is busy processing the first of my images. After a period of time it will complete the processing and you will see something like this:

As you can see, it has finished processing your batch of images. Click the 'OK' button and check out the end result. Now, as I pointed out earlier, it's important both to do a trial run with an image and the preset you wish to use. Otherwise you may end up with mixed results. Check out the screenshot below.

So having completed batch processing my set of images, I then looked them using Finder (on Mac) and right away you can see that there is a marked difference between the shots. This is because I didn't try out the preset on a single image first.

Remember that in the main program (i.e. choose 'Open Image' rather than 'Batch Processing') you can save your chosen settings to a user preset and use that later when running the 'Batch Processing' feature.

Well, that about raps it up. If you would like to check out more tips and walkthroughs please visit my Patreon page by clicking on the button below. 

Thanks and take care.

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