Support

Questions, problems or ideas? Email jboone100@gmail.com. Please include your Mac model and macOS version if something isn’t working.

What Luxe needs

A Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or later) running macOS 26 or later. The first time it runs, Luxe downloads about 500 MB for visual search. When it first describes photos, it downloads about 3 GB for descriptions (1.7 GB if you choose the faster model). After that, everything runs on your Mac.

Adding photos

To bring photos in from your iPhone, a camera or a camera’s memory card, choose File › Import from Camera or iPhone…. Pick the device, choose where the photos go (organized by date like Lightroom), and click Import. The first time you insert a memory card, Luxe asks you to allow it to read the card; it remembers each card. Raw files (ARW, DNG and others) are copied as they are. If you delete photos from a Sony camera’s card after importing, the camera keeps listing them as “Unable to display” until you choose MENU › Setup › Recover Image DB in the camera (or format the card there).

Choose File › Add Folder… for folders and drives (for example, the folders Lightroom manages), or File › Add Photos Library. Luxe (like every app) can only read the System Photo Library: if your photos are in another library, open it in Photos, choose Settings › General › Use as System Photo Library, then quit and reopen Luxe. Luxe keeps watching them and picks up new and moved photos. Photos on a drive that isn’t connected keep their grades and come back when you reconnect it.

Albums

An album holds photos you group together: one occasion, like a trip or a birthday, or anything else, like a box of scanned family prints. With Settings › Library › Make albums automatically turned on, Luxe makes an album when new photos look like one occasion, and one for each trip. To make your own, click New Album (Library › New Album…) and choose the photos you’ve selected, Recently Added (the photos you just added), a range of dates, or the collection on screen. Or start it empty and fill it as you go: select photos anywhere in Luxe, Control-click, and choose Add to Album. Every album is ranked against itself, and you can review it to choose keepers and share it as a Moment. Deleting an album keeps its photos; if the album is made of one folder, you can remove that folder from Luxe at the same time.

Years

Each year under Years shows Luxe’s best 36 photos from it, with the photos you picked added in score order. To see more, click Best 36 at the top and choose Best 50, Best 100, Best 250 or All Photos. All Photos shows every photo from the year except rejected and utility photos, one frame per burst. It includes photos marked Not in Best. Your choice applies to every year.

Not in Best

To keep a photo but leave it out of Best of All Time, the Best of each year and the themed collections (People, Pets, Landscapes, Travel, Scans), select it and press N or click Not in Best. It stays in All Photos, your albums, trips and People. Click Put Back in Best (or pick it) to bring it back.

Rejected photos

Photos you reject leave every collection and wait in Rejected. To get rid of one for good (from Rejected, or anywhere else in Luxe), select it and click the trash button next to Show in Finder, or select several and choose Move to Trash: the file and its .xmp sidecar go to the Trash (a rejected burst takes all its rejected frames), and Luxe forgets the photo. You can still put it back from the Trash in Finder. Choose “Don’t ask again” to skip the question until you quit Luxe.

Slideshow music

A Moment’s slideshow can play music. When you share, Luxe picks a track that suits the photos (warm for family dinners, adventurous for trips, cinematic for landscapes, holiday music in December); you can choose another or No Music in the share sheet. Whoever shared a Moment, or a group admin, can change it later: in Luxe with the Slideshow Music menu on the album’s sharing line, or on the group site with the Moment’s ⋯ menu › Slideshow music… or the music button in its slideshow (which offers to add music when there’s none). Anyone watching can turn the music off with the music button (or the M key).

Shared albums

Shared, under Best of All Time in the sidebar, lists every album you’ve shared as a Moment and every album you’ve sent to Photos, with what’s changed since: new photos, rejected ones, changed captions. Update brings a Moment up to date (adding new photos opens Share). Update in Photos refreshes the album in Photos › Luxe › To Share and puts just the new photos in “New for …”; other apps can’t add to an iCloud shared album, so select all in “New for …” and choose Share › Shared Albums to add them.

Sending to Photos

To share an album through Photos (for example as a Shared Album), right-click it and choose Send to Photos, or choose Library › Send to Photos (⇧⌘P); with photos selected, it sends those. Luxe puts the album’s keepers (or all of it, before you’ve chosen) in Photos under Luxe › To Share and opens Photos at it. Select the photos there and choose Share › Shared Albums. Photos from folders are copied into your Photos library; if iCloud Photos is on, those copies count toward your iCloud storage. Sending the album again updates it without copying photos twice.

People & Pets

Luxe finds the faces of people, cats and dogs as it analyzes your photos and groups each person or pet across your library. Open People in the sidebar and name a group: Luxe then shows all of their photos, and finds them in new photos as you add them. If a group mixes people (or caught a duck), select just the photos of one person (⌘-click) and click Name Selected; the rest stay in the group. Control-click photos for Not in This Group or Not a Face. For an unnamed group of a wild animal or someone else’s pet, Control-click it in People and choose Not My Pet; for a stranger, a statue or a face on a poster, choose Not Someone I Know. Luxe stops grouping those and doesn’t list them as hidden. When it isn’t sure, it asks: choose “Is This…?” and answer Y or N. Pets are always asked about rather than grouped on a guess, because two cats can look more alike to a computer than one dog in two places. In a photo’s details, click a face to see that person’s photos, say who it is, or mark “Not a Face” (a statue, say). To tidy a group, switch it from Photos to Faces: its faces are shown least alike first, so you can select the ones that don’t belong and choose This Is…, Not in This Group or Not a Face. Search by name, like “Mom at the beach”. Once you’ve named people, Luxe’s descriptions use their names (“Nathan, Stefan and Sheryl at a Chinese restaurant”), and they update when you rename someone. When you share a Moment with descriptions as captions, names are left out unless you turn on “Include people’s and pets’ names”. Face recognition happens on your Mac and nothing about it leaves it.

Lightroom

Turn on Settings › Export › Write keywords to photo files. Luxe’s keywords appear under “Luxe” in Lightroom’s Keyword List: your albums and keepers, the people and pets you’ve named, and scenes and subjects. Your picks, keepers and rejects are written as stars. Luxe never changes ratings, captions or keywords you set yourself. In Lightroom Classic, select the photos and choose Metadata › Read Metadata from Files to see the changes.

Sharing

In Settings › Sharing, sign in with Apple or Google, then create a group and invite people with its link. Share any Smart Collection, Event, Collection or selection with File › Share as Moment. Members see it at your group’s own address, like boones.luxephotoai.com, in any browser, and can add their own photos. To take a Moment down, choose Stop Sharing… beside the album in Luxe, or Remove this Moment… in its ⋯ menu on the site; group admins can remove anyone’s.

If you change captions after sharing (you edit one, or Luxe writes a new description or adds a name), the line under the album’s title says how many changed. Click Update Captions to send them to the site; the photos aren’t uploaded again. To change how a Moment shows captions after sharing (none, Luxe’s descriptions, or descriptions with names), use the Captions menu on the same line, then Update Captions. Photos you add to a Moment get captions the way it has them.

To keep a copy of a photo from a Moment, open it on the site and click Download. On a phone, Download opens the share sheet: choose Save Image to put it in Photos. Downloads are the site’s copy (2,560 pixels on the long side), not the original.

Anyone in the group can write or change a photo’s caption on the site: open the photo and click Add a caption or Edit caption. The caption shows who wrote it. Luxe on the Mac of whoever shared the photo adopts it as their caption (in Luxe, search and Lightroom), and Update Captions won’t undo it; a caption they change afterwards in Luxe replaces it on the site.

To change the order of a Moment’s photos, open it on the site and choose Arrange photos… in its ⋯ menu (whoever shared it, or a group admin). Drag photos into place, or use Oldest First or Newest First; on a phone, touch and hold a photo, then drag. Click Done and everyone sees the new order, in the slideshow too. Photos added later go at the end.

Descriptions are off for your library until you turn on Settings › AI & Search › Describe top photos. Until then, Luxe describes photos only when you share them with captions: the Share sheet describes the ones without a description before uploading, and turning on captions for a Moment you already shared describes its photos, ready for Update Captions.

Reporting and blocking

On a group’s site, open a Moment’s ⋯ menu and choose Report this Moment…, or choose Report in the photo viewer for one photo. In Luxe, choose Settings › Sharing › Manage… and Report… beside a Moment. Reports come to us, not to the person who shared it, and we review them within 24 hours. To stop seeing someone’s Moments and photos, choose Block from the same ⋯ menu, or Block beside their name in Manage…. You can see and unblock the people you’ve blocked there, or in Settings › Sharing. Group admins can also remove members.

Luxe Pro

Everything in Luxe is free, and Luxe Free shares one Moment with your groups. You can keep adding photos to it, and so can the people in your groups. Removing it doesn’t free up another. Luxe Pro is a one-time purchase that shares as many Moments as you like: choose Settings › Sharing › Get Luxe Pro…. On another Mac, or after reinstalling, sign in to the same Luxe account and choose Restore Purchases. A purchase unlocks one Luxe account; if you delete that account, you can use the purchase with a new one.

Deleting your account

Choose Settings › Sharing › Delete Account. Everything you shared is deleted and you leave all your groups. Your library on your Mac isn’t affected. See Privacy for details.