Having spent the last decade editing videos on my Mac, I’ve recently embraced a new way of working. I didn’t envisage it happening, and I wasn’t sure it would work, but I’ve been proved wrong on both counts. The app that has made it all possible is LumaFusion by LumaTouch.
Anyone who knows a thing or two about video editing will know that both Da Vinci Resolve and Final Cut Pro now have full-fledged apps. The latter was seriously late to the game and has an eye-watering price of $299 that will put many people off, including die-hard Apple fans like myself.
Homescreen heroes
This is part of a regular series of articles exploring the apps that we couldn’t live without. Read them all here.
Resolve is free, which is a big advantage, but like Final Cut Pro, there is no mobile version. LumaFusion bucks the trend here, delivering apps for tablet and mobile platforms across Apple and Android. This means I can adopt the most flexible of workflows and work on my edits wherever I am and whatever device I use.
But what about the actual app? There’s no use being completely ubiquitous if the app fails to deliver the necessary tools and a high-quality user experience. One of the best things about LumFusion is that it has clearly been built with touch in mind. This is no desktop replica.
Every feature is engineered to make it as easy as possible to import footage, make edits, and export the results. This is no mean feat, and yet, on the whole, I had very few problems using it on my iPhone’s 6.1-inch screen. Sure, some of the workflows are not as streamlined as desktop alternatives, but LumaTouch has done a remarkable job of utilizing screen real estate.
One of the things I enjoy the most about LumaFusion is navigating around the timeline. It’s so intuitive! Finding specific points in a clip or an overall edit is a breeze. Clip lengths can be adjusted by dragging the start or end points, and whole clips can be moved by holding down on the clip and then dragging it to a new position. Timeline zooming is achieved using a simple pinch movement, which makes navigating complex edits super easy.
Each clip can be edited using cropping, size, position, and blending tools, all of which display in a separate panel, taking over the entire interface. This demonstrates the main reason that LumaFusion works on such a small screen: the app only displays the settings and tools that you need. Along with basic edits, you can add color effects and simple transitions.
You might be thinking, “This all sounds great, but I bet the media import process is an absolute chore.” I thought this would be the big downside to an otherwise excellent app. Getting the necessary media, including some with huge file sizes, could be problematic on my simple phone.
The great news is that LumaFusion enables media import from a wide range of sources, most of them cloud-based. I work a lot with Google Drive, so that’s my favorite, but it also supports Box, Dropbox, OneDrive, and, of course, files stored locally on your device. This level of support makes it incredibly easy to slot LumaFusion into any hobbyist or pro workflow.
For an additional fee, LumaFusion has teamed up with Storyblocks to offer a whole library of stock footage. The clips appear in the footage panel and load directly from the Storyblocks repository. Clips can be filtered by type, and there’s even search functionality included. I love this feature. Creating edits with a variety of different clips is no trouble at all with LumaFusion.
One of the newest features is the in-app purchase, Multicam Studio. This innovative little tool lets you connect multiple camera feeds to the app and create an edit while filming. This is achieved inside the Multicam Studio interface with simple cuts between cameras. The benefit is that directors can take control of the edit at the point of filming without going through an editor. This is also ideal for video content creators with multi-cam setups who want to streamline their workflow.
LumaFusion has it all, and at only $29.99, it is an absolute steal. Whether you’re editing a video for your client or putting together clips from your grandma’s birthday, you’ll find exactly what you need in this neat little app.