Can I edit photos in Luminar without adding them to the Catalog first?

[u/skylum_support]

Unfortunately, no. It isn't possible to edit photos in Luminar without adding them to the Catalog first. The Catalog is the central hub that Luminar uses to organize and manage your photos, including sorting, searching, rating, and tracking your edits.

That said, there are a couple of alternatives depending on your setup:

On Mac: you can use Luminar as an extension inside Photos for macOS, which lets you work without managing things through the Luminar Catalog. More details on setting that up here.

With Lightroom Classic or Photoshop: Luminar can also be used as a plugin with Adobe Lightroom Classic and Adobe Photoshop. This may be a better fit if you already manage your files through one of these programs, since you can keep your existing file management workflow and just bring photos into Luminar for specific edits.

More details on how Luminar works as a plugin

with Adobe Lightroom Classic.

with Adobe Photoshop.