Import from Lightroom

Which catalogues are supported§

Lumidex Studio imports catalogues from Lightroom Classic 9.0 (2019) and later. Both current catalogue formats are handled automatically — you don't need to know which one you have:

• Pre-2024 — a standard .lrcat SQLite file.
• 2024 and later — a .lrcat file plus a .lrcat-data/ folder sitting alongside it. That folder holds Adobe's cloud-sync data; Lumidex Studio ignores it. You do not need to select, move, or delete it — just leave it where it is.

Before you start, in Lightroom Classic§

Two of these steps make the difference between a fast, complete import and a slow one — do them in Lightroom Classic before you open Lumidex Studio.

1. Build standard-sized previews

In Lightroom Classic: Library ▸ Previews ▸ Build Standard-Sized Previews. Lumidex Studio reuses these previews for its grid and loupe, so building them first means your photos appear instantly instead of being regenerated one by one from the originals (which is slow if your files live on a network drive).

2. Save metadata to files

In Lightroom Classic: Library ▸ Metadata ▸ Save Metadata to All Files. This writes your ratings, flags, colour labels and keywords out to standard XMP sidecars next to each photo, so nothing important stays locked inside the .lrcat. Lumidex Studio reads both the catalogue and these sidecars.

3. Export edited masters (optional)

Your develop edits do come across (see below), so this is now belt-and-braces only. If you have a handful of heavily-edited photos you can't afford to get even slightly wrong, exporting full-resolution JPEGs or TIFFs of them from Lightroom Classic is cheap insurance — but for most libraries it isn't necessary. Your originals are untouched by the import either way.

4. Note where your catalogue lives

The wizard will ask you to select your .lrcat file. By default it's in ~/Pictures/Lightroom/. You don't need to find the .lrdata previews folder yourself — the wizard locates it automatically next to the catalogue.

Running the import wizard§

On first launch, choose Migrate from Lightroom Classic on the welcome screen. You can also start it any time from File ▸ Import from Another Catalogue…. The wizard has four steps:

1. Select catalogueClick Choose… and pick your .lrcat file. The wizard checks it's a supported version before continuing.
2. Choose save locationPick where to save your new Lumidex Studio catalogue (a .lumcat file). Your Pictures folder is a good choice. Thumbnails are stored in a companion .lumthm file alongside it — keep the two together.
3. Verify photo locationsLumidex Studio lists every photo location it found in your catalogue. Any shown in orange couldn't be found on this Mac (for example, a drive that isn't mounted). Use Remap… to point it at the new location, or Ignore for now to skip that location for this import.
4. ImportThe import runs with a live progress count and estimated time remaining. A large catalogue (tens of thousands of photos) typically takes several minutes. You can press Run in Background to start using the app while it finishes, or Cancel Import to stop.

What comes across§

The wizard migrates, automatically:

• Every photo record — file path, capture date, camera, lens, ISO, aperture, shutter, focal length and GPS.
• Ratings, pick/reject flags and colour labels.
• Your full keyword tree and each photo's keywords.
• Collections and collection sets.
• Your develop edits — the finished look is preserved, and much of it becomes editable again. See What happens to your develop edits below.
• Your Lightroom Classic previews, copied into Lumidex Studio's own thumbnail store so the grid is fast from the first scroll.
• XMP sidecars found next to your photos, linked to each record.

When it finishes, you'll see a summary: how many photos, keywords and collections were imported. Photos that Lightroom Classic had never previewed are skipped for thumbnails during import and generated on demand the first time you browse to them.

What happens to your develop edits§

This is the question most photographers ask before moving an archive, and the honest answer is that it depends on the photo — Lumidex Studio does one of two things per image, automatically.

Photos you'd previewed in Lightroom Classic (the majority)

Their finished appearance is preserved exactly. Lumidex Studio uses Lightroom Classic's own rendered preview as the develop starting point, so the photo looks pixel-for-pixel as it did in Lightroom Classic — colour, tone, tone curve, HSL, split-toning, black & white conversions and spot healing all carry over, because you're seeing Adobe's actual result. Any new edits you make in Lumidex Studio compose on top of that look.

Two honest trade-offs come with this:

• The individual sliders read zero — the look isn't re-derived from the RAW, so it isn't broken back out into re-editable Basic/Tone/HSL values.
• Exporting or printing such a photo as migrated is at preview resolution (around 1440 px) until you re-edit it. Full-resolution parity would need Adobe's own rendering engine, which we don't have.

If you'd rather have real, editable sliders back for a migrated photo, select it and choose Photo ▸ Develop Settings ▸ Convert Baked Look to Editable Sliders. That re-reads the Lightroom Classic catalogue and translates its edits into editable Lumidex settings — Basic tone, white balance, crop/straighten, tone curve, HSL and spot removal in Develop, plus black & white and colour grading in the Grading module. It trades the exact baked look for editability, so expect a close match rather than a pixel-perfect one. The conversion can't currently be undone, so it's best used on the photos you actually plan to re-edit.

Photos Lightroom Classic had never previewed

There's no baked preview to use, so instead Lumidex Studio translates the edits into real, editable settings directly from the catalogue. Basic tone, white balance, crop and straighten, the tone curve, HSL and spot removal come across as live Develop sliders; black & white conversions and colour grading (split toning) come across in the Grading module, where our B&W mixer and colour wheels live.

If a Lightroom preview can't be used

Lumidex Studio checks that the look it shows for a migrated photo really is Lightroom Classic's own rendered preview. Sometimes it isn't: if you browsed a photo before Lightroom had built its preview, or imported over more than one session, the grid, loupe and Develop can end up showing the camera's original image instead of your edit, or a grid thumbnail that doesn't match the full-size view.

A quick check runs in the background after the app updates or opens, reading only the thumbnails (never your originals). If it finds affected photos it tells you how many and offers to fix them. You can also run it any time from Library ▸ Analyse Photos ▸ Repair Lightroom Previews….

• Grid thumbnails out of step are re-cut from the genuine Lightroom preview. This is quick and doesn't need your originals.
• Photos with no usable Lightroom preview have their look rebuilt from your Lightroom settings, the same translation described above: a close match, not pixel-identical. This reads your original files, so it can take a while for a large library on a network drive, and it asks for your .lrcat if it doesn't already know where it is.
• Photos you've already edited in Lumidex Studio are left alone, and photos whose original can't be found are skipped and listed, so you can reconnect the drive and run the repair again.

After the import§

Have a look around: scroll the grid, open a few photos in the loupe (Spacebar), check that ratings and keywords are where you expect, and open a collection or two. Once you're happy everything's there, the .lrdata previews folder is no longer needed by Lumidex Studio — you can archive or delete it if you want the space back — and you can cancel your Adobe plan whenever you're ready.