The first time you open Lumidex Studio it asks one question: start with an empty catalogue, or bring your Lightroom Classic library across. Here's what each choice does.
Lumidex Studio ships as a notarized direct download. After you drag it into Applications and open it, macOS Gatekeeper checks the signature once — that's normal and needs no special steps. If macOS refuses the first open, see Troubleshooting.
With no catalogue yet, the app shows the Welcome screen with two cards. Nothing is written to disk until you pick one, so there's no wrong choice — and you can do the other one later.
Creates a new, empty catalogue and takes you straight into the Library. From there, use (⇧⌘I) to bring in photos from your Mac or a connected drive. This is the right choice if you're not coming from Lightroom, or you want a clean library to experiment in.
Your catalogue is a single .lumcat file plus a matching thumbnail store. You choose where it lives; the app remembers it and reopens it on every launch. See File → Catalogue.
Opens the import wizard, which reads your Lightroom Classic .lrcat and brings across your photos with their ratings, flags, colour labels, keywords, collections and GPS — no re-organising, no re-keywording. If you built standard previews in Lightroom first, your grid fills in almost instantly instead of decoding every RAW from scratch.
This is the recommended path for existing Lightroom users. The full walkthrough — including what to do in Lightroom before you start, and which catalogue versions are supported — is on its own page:
The choice isn't permanent. If you Start Fresh now, you can still pull a Lightroom catalogue in at any time from . You can also create or open a different catalogue whenever you like from the menu.
New installs run as a time-limited free trial so you can migrate your library and try every module before deciding. Importing, organising and browsing all work during the trial. When it ends, your catalogue is never held hostage — you can always keep browsing and export your photos out. Full detail on the trial, buying, and moving between Macs is on the Licensing & activation page.