LumaFusion Reviews

by UATW

I've used this app for about 5 months as my editing app of choice and have generally been ok with the intricacies, but while editing my latest video I found the straw that broke this camel's back (pun intended...read on). While overall things work well enough to get a decent edit done, when I went back to start adding music I found that every time I hit play the music starts from a different point in the song. As such it's impossible to edit to the beat when the beat changes every time, and from what I'm reading I'm not the only one who is experiencing this issue. Another different, non-deal breaker, yet still super annoying issue is the WD Passport support, or should I say lack thereof. While they advertise that you can edit directly from the drive and it'll only download the necessary footage, in practice the connection is so slow that its completely unuable. Not sure if this is an issue with the drive or this app. As such I've resorted back to just copying footage from the drive to a PNY lightning/USB flash drive then copying from there to my iPad. It's time consuming but it works and once the footage is on the iPad I can edit like normal without waiting for it to buffer. In the end I'm giving up on trying to travel light and still get edits done on the road and will be packing my laptop from now on so I can use a real video editor and save my sanity at the expense of my back. Bon Voyage.

by Alibaba0880

This is a well designed app, and may deserve 5 stars in the future. However I have been experiencing multiple media issues and errors. For example it may say “missing media, reimport the file”. The file is indeed there, playable, workable, but upon exporting an error is experienced. Optimize and consolidate does not always fix it. I can not simply re-edit this one media file, as I have spent hours on it. For the media to work in the project and then suddenly not upon export is infuriating. Is it corrupt or not? If so, perhaps let me know before I spend 6 hours working with a playable media file that is not “missing”, and very much so exists on LumaFusion . And I’m not about to upload 8 gigs to my photos every 10 minutes just to see if something magically became corrupted. I’ve dealt with it multiple times beforehand, but I just lost too much work to be content with LumaFusion currently.
Update: even after deleting the media file and reimporting it upon export I got the same error. Please let me know how to fix so I can continue to use LumaFusion. Until then I’ll use something else that works. Update: why can’t I delete a folder??? I have too many files to delete individually and optimizing reimported them all. Please help.

by Drundax

Why continue to add new features when old features are not fully developed. I continue to attempt to edit voice on here and constantly it will skip back to an edit once another one is made. So essentially every time I cut a clip it jumps back to the same place for absolutely no reason. If you want to use a plug-in then it automatically removes any panning you may have done and can entirely silence the audio. The GUI for an iPhone has made landscape mode almost unviewable if held in portrait mode. It defaults to an iPhone specific aspect ratio but I can’t make my own default so I have to switch it every single time. Transitions have never been updated since day one even when their whole selection of effects could be made into stock and standard transitions. The High Pass filter only reduces by about 50% of what it states when compared to PC based DAWs. I want to love LumaFusion and keep using it but it is becoming very challenges to find reasons to use it first anymore.

by Debohf

On an iPhone, I took 6 videos. I brought all of them into my first this app project. I started the project and moved two of them to the video timeline. The iPhone was too small a platform to work on. Then I downloaded LumaFusion to my iPad with older iOS. My iOS was outdated. So then I bought a new iPad, with iOS 11.2.6 and downloaded my data from the cloud. When I downloaded LumaFusion to the new iPad, the 2 videos that I had added to the original video timeline when the project was on my iPhone were still in my photo/video folder, but the other videos were no where to be found! They were not on my iPhone nor in the cloud. Believe me, I checked multiple times! I lost hours of video time. I read after that there is the ability to delete material on your account from this app, but I don’t know how I did. If they were deleted via LumaFusion there should be a huge warning explaining what’s happening. I don’t remember doing anything that would have deleted any videos. I hardly did anything, given I could hardly work LumaFusion on the iPhone’s small screen. Anyone else seen this behavior? I like the functionality, but at this point, I’ll only use it after I back up my data separately before dragging any files into LF.

by MJT Free Time YT

First of all, if you’re someone new to video editing, I gotta say, LumaFusion is great and straight forward with many things to explore. For everyone like me, who comes from Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro this is the best I’ve seen out there similar to those two power houses. Sure, this can’t beat those two, but for the price you get a lot that you get from AE and PR. I make edits as a hobby using AE, of animes, etc. So the one thing I’m used to using and love to do is have key frame transitions. I know that we have them here, but the one thing lacking is graphs. I typically use the graphs to make the transition, for example zoom in, go fast at the point I’d like to zoom in rather than it be at the same speed zooming in the entire transitions, as it does not look fast and keep the beat of the song up. Over all though, great app if you’re not in my place and are just looking for a good overall video editor that does most of everything you want it to do without the through the roof prices of other software out there. Hope this helps anyone who’s looking into this! 👌🏻

by YouCrazyPug

I love LumaFusion and use it all the time for editing simple videos I record with my iPhone 7 Red. It’s great for tweaking simple things like endings, or cutting parts out, etc. Also useful for more complicated videos when needed. I used pinnacle pro before and loved it and LumaFusion certainly improved upon it. The 4K support is awesome but if you have a long video can take time to load and everything will move much slower. A minor detail not applying to my needs very often. One of the stand outs among others is the incredible audio features. I won’t go into detail but it’s pretty extensive and feature full allowing you to adjust even the most minor audio details.

In closing and to reference my title , a surprising feature that is lacking is a simple reverb preset. When looking at all of the audio presets offered, not having a reverb seems silly. People are more familiar with Reverb then most other audio terms and is the most useful and easily applied. Having more in depth presets like Bandpass Filter, N-Band EQ, etc is great but I mean come on dude where’s the Reverb.

That is all.

by Ssb540

I’m a full time videographer who mostly uses FCPX but purchased this app for simple edits on the go. I emailed customer support asking if FCPX project compatibility will be available in the near future. Their customer service responded quickly with a nice and professional email saying yes it will be a feature available soon but will be an additional $20 fee and will not be covered under the standard free updates.
I was disappointed that they chose to make this a paywall locked feature instead of including it in their software update but they’re allowed to do that. I just responded explaining I purchased this software under the impression these features will be included so unfortunately I won’t be purchasing this $20 update for my own personal use.
They told me $20 is fine if I have “quite a bit of money” invested into my video editing capability.
So I guess this software is only for professionals with “quite a bit of money”..

by Jamie The Shedder

(I use the iPad Pro 2018 and both the iPad and LumaFusion 's software are up to date)
I've been having problems with the audio in my videos.
I thought it was just this one song i was trying to use at first but after trying several different songs, sound effects and other types of audio files, I keep having the same problem. The audio sounds fine when I'm editing in LumaFusion but every time i save a video to my camera roll I notice clipping in the audio when i listen to it. I've tried downloading the video with the volume turned down lower on every audio file in the video, I've tried downloading the video in different Audio Quality's but nothing to works. The only way I've gotten the audio to sound good is if i save the video with no audio, go into iMovie and edit in the audio in, then save that video. This makes things very difficult and annoying for me considering that most videos i create are music videos and/or videos with lots of sound effects. So if someone's got some advice or knows how to help me that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

by Mikeyboards

LumaFusion does so much, and for a much lower price than one would expect (especially in comparison to other products).

Great reference guide & videos for learning. You’ll definitely want to absorb some of that guidance before trying a project, or you won’t know what to do, looking at the screen. But once you read or watch the basic parts, it makes perfect sense. It also helps that within any of the screens, you can press on the settings and/or “?” icon, and it will label all the items/functions showing on the screen. Also, it’s easy to get to the Reference Guide via the Settings button.

I’m so impressed by the support; really knowledgable and helpful people, often going above and beyond (and giving very comprehensive answers, and never making you feel dumb).

I love that I can purchase LumaFusion for a one-time price, without a subscription, and with almost everything included. (There are some options for in-app purchases, but I think that’s just for 3rd party stuff.)

I’ve only had this for a short time, and my experience with creating and editing films is limited, yet I was able to create, edit & export a project even before I thought I’d put in enough study to pull it off. (It was easy to refer to the Reference Guide as needed.) I highly recommend!!

by Brillvinnie

Most of my work is doing rough cut editing from short films to fashion events. I have managed to do everything I can do in Final Cut with this app having only one exception, the ability to have overlays or screening clips with clips on one another. Specifically for transitions. But other than that it’s perfection. I can run it directly from my iPhone and mirror it to my appleTV and work remotely from anywhere around the world from my phone. All of my files can be easily viewed and imported from Google drive. When I’m finished with the edit I can archive it with the entire clips or just the edits directly back into google drive. Using LumaFusion/program has entirely changed my workflow and has made working feel more like a video game over actual work effectively changing how I see my art. I am ready to work anywhere from my phone without having to lug around a laptop or tablet everywhere.

by Geezaluis

I’ve been using this video editing app for about a year now and have been very happy with it! I purchased and use at least three other apps before using this one and definitely think it was worth the money.
There were a couple of times where I had some issues with LumaFusion but it was with some complicated files and I contacted the developer and they help walk me through the issues.
I really hope that they add a couple of features in the future additions. The two I would like to see first would be a stabilization effect and a chromakey effect.
It does take a little while to learn how to use LumaFusion so don’t think you can buy it and then just magically be able to edit videos. Take the time to learn how to use it and the workflow and that time spent will be well invested.
There are a few instances while using LumaFusion that you might feel like you’re stuck on a screen. You just don’t know where to click to get back to where you were. In those situations it seems like you need to just click on whatever text is on the screen and then you’ll maybe end up where you want to be.
I’d like to finish this review was saying that that iMovie mobile is the worst video app I used of all the ones I tried. Also, I’d recommend getting a phone gimbal and a wide angle lens for shooting your videos on your phone.
I hope this helps. Aloha!

by Ethan Cheatwood

Color Grading: I the fact that LumaFusion is very versatile. However i feel like i spent $20 on an app that does that same stuff iMovie does. If i’m editing on a plane and i don’t have my Mac, it’s annoying not to be able to properly color grade things. It will either have too much contrast or there’s just no way to get a Horror movie Color grade without it being too dark.

Masking Tools: It is so annoying when i cannot Mask out shapes of people. i can only crop the video and not cut around the actor frame by frame. If i could do this; i could film this such as wire removal. It would make my job a lot easier. I love LumaFusion, but it’s hard to edit complicated projects without getting frustrated. If i don’t have my computer, i cannot do anything else but leave it the way it is.

Add 3D Layers: If you can somehow put in 3D layers, i love you. Having 3D layers and Masking would make it more like After Effects.

by Hobes312

this app goes beyond any other Mobile video app I have either used or heard of. I think what makes LumaFusion better than other mobile video editors, is its ability to give the user so much creativity with little restrictions. I love the key-framing ability and even though the masking is limited to a rectangle/square, LumaFusion still allows you to use your creativity and get around that limitation. Although I do suggest working on a masking tool to make this app even better. Lastly a camera movement tracker would be awesome, I think if LumaFusion had a masking tool, and a camera movement/object tracker, LumaFusion would be complete and dominate over all mobile video editors for A Long Long Time. As a programmer though I understand that creating such things takes time and is not easy, so for now, this app is and remains the best. —-“motion tracker would be great”.

by Jpm6078

I have been doing videography and video editing for over 35 years and postproduction work is a significant part of any project. LumaFusion is truly awesome using with the new iPad Pro 2020.

I use it exclusively for Livestream posts that need some tweaking and for non-intensive graphics projects However, I haven’t used it for that long but it does have some significant higher end capabilities.

I hate giving away trade secrets on programs I use but this is a game changer for any producers using the latest iPad Pro 2020. There are still a lot of creative capabilities that I haven’t even had to use at this point. I have tried and used multiple other iOS video editing software. There are a couple that I use for certain capabilitiesAnd then I’ll import that segment into LumaFusion. So far, I have not found any other that will fill 80% of my needs like this app.

by Ramephius

Short and sweet: this is the best video editing app out there, end of story. Basically mini Final Cut Pro but on the go. I never knew my iPhone 7 had so much processing power!!! Best $20 ever spent! Cheers to developers like this who are in tune with their base and work relentlessly to keep improving an already amazing app!

UPDATE: Still the best app I have ever owned and the only one I have written a review for. I have it now on my iPad Pro and boy oh boy does it FLY through 160mbps footage! More than half of my projects are on Luma now instead of FCPX. I have recommended LumaFusion to dozens of friends who all love it. IT JUST WORKS. I would love to meet the developers because they just NAILED it!! I would pay easily $100 for LumaFusion.

UPDATE 2: version 2.3 just dropped and oh my is LF better than ever now, I feel wrong having only paid $20 for it 2 years ago because it adds so much value to my workflow. Get LumaFusion.

by Mattguitar

To preface this, I just want to say I am no pro video editor. My strength lies in music, and as someone just looking for some pro quality functionality that allows me to do more than iMovie without lopping a hand off at the wrist for a big budget video editing software, this app checks all the boxes for me. I can choose aspect ratios, rearrange clips and stack them, choose the duration of audio and video, photos, GIFs, what have you. Importing is immensely simple. Every file I have tried to import always has a “share to this app” button. Easy to understand, and let’s not mention the included tutorial videos and PDF which is masterfully explained. Perhaps my amateur nature at this field of media is what allows me to see no flaws in this software- I’ll leave that level of critique to the pros.
But for this musician-

10/10. Bravo. Exactly what I was looking for.

by TussalDragon344

Luma Fusion is worth more than its price tag; it competes well against the likes of Adobe Premiere and Sony Vegas with its simplicity and efficiency. However, it lacks some (most used/ popular) effects that you may find the former having plenty of (both visual and audio). That doesn’t mean that it isn't worth the trouble; the precision, the control, the friendly UI and the overall organized file distribution, you can’t go wrong there.

It supports your everyday file formats and it can export your “movie” faster than Sony Vegas Pro, yet when it comes to editing, there are a few bugs (unfixed...?) and minor problems that may be annoying;
- audio (only audio, not audio from video) can be off sync, when the file itself is 100% intact (this happens after scrolling forwards in the editing section)
- preview may lag if you scroll through the editing fast and do a forceful stop to play a part of the video
- it takes quite a bit to wait for the lag to go away
- if the preview is played after these previous 2 events occur, the editing won’t scroll with the preview and when paused, will pause off sync to the preview (this is very complicated to explain...)
- the audio waveforms (the white spikes that represent audio) aren’t precise; editing may be a bit difficult since it can be hard to do an exact cut + the audio being off sync

Hope these issues get dealt with as soon as the devs read this. Thank you anyway!

by Ivan Machiz

Luma-Fusion is great and continues to grow in its capabilities. I appreciate that the company listens to it’s users. I have given, and received feedback regarding the capabilities and limitations of LumaFusion . I edit on a 2020 iPad Pro 12.9 and on an iPhone 6s Max for professional (Paid) and hobby (family/friends) video. Power in my pocket, power on my desktop, I am very happy with LumaFusion . There are many things I would like to see added to bring up to speed with Adobe Premier Pro on a full on desktop, or with Good old AVID, but considering the platform, and the price, this is remarkable for an editor.

Update: I have been editing more complicated work for more demanding clients and for my own enjoyment lately. Yes, this app is fun to use! The tutorials are fantastic and have gotten me out of some jams. I continue to be impressed with this app’s response to my technical questions when all else fails me. It has happened more than once.

by The Foog

Easy to use and, only if you want, lots more.

This video editor for iPad has all the complexity you might want. It also keeps the simple features simple. That’s the bottom line of this review—once I realized the basic features were easy to use, I abandoned the stock iMovie for iPad.

This is a hobbyist’s review. I do no professional video work, but I spend much time on home videos. Apple’s iMovie app is wonderful for most home video editing projects, until more is needed.

My first “need”, I thought at the time, was for more visual effects. Those were fun to play with in Luma Fusion, but my real need came later.

My spouse and I both took iPhone videos of our child’s marching band. We had differing view points in the stadium—very nice inputs for a final product. Combining them, and keeping both video inputs precisely in sync with the band’s clear sound beats, can be challenging. I succeeded in iMovie, but inserting and removing material ruined the synchronization. The iMovie project was very painful to get right.

Some time later, with similar inputs, I used Luma Fusion. It provides genuine multiple video tracks, tied reliably to the base video and soundtrack. All the editing/keeping-sync problems went away.

That was my real need for a more sophisticated video editor. And yet, despite all the advanced features, the most common editing remains as easy as iMovie. That’s why I switched to Luma Fusion—easy to use and, only if you want, lots more.

by Jksoren82

There are a lot of video editing apps on iOS, but this is the only one that actually allows me to produce a complex, polished product from start to finish on just my iPad Pro. In recent times it’s performance has really improved, and as I’ve grown along with LumaFusion I’ve learned ways to avoid technical problems that prevented me from exporting projects in the past. I think LumaFusion is more reliable than ever, and it was always reliable enough in the past.

If you do professional video and have an iPad Pro then this app is a must have app. Indeed, because of both Luma fusion and procreate, I consider the iPad Pro a must have tool for creators. These two programs in conjunction are simply immensely powerful.

Also, Luma fusion technical support is outstanding....they aware of all potential issues and will help you work through them systematically.

by Opoteat

While I have loved LumaFusion enough to purchase a 512gb iPad Pro along with LumaFusion to create our videos, I have been unable to use it reliably. 2 out of the last 4 weeks videos have failed to create the file when rendering. This week I spent 4 hours trying to figure out which of the many clips, effects or transitions in the 10 minute video could be causing the problem and finally gave up and went back to FCP on my MacBook. I wanted to be able to use this iPad and this app to create videos on the road and not have to carry the MacBook just to do videos. But, I can’t afford to roll the dice when creating videos as to whether they will actually render. For me, this issue has been happening since November of last year and the fact that it is still an issue concerns me. It is a great product with tons of great features. But reliability should be the top goal when creating an app. Even though the most of the features needed are in LumaFusion every time I create a video I find myself wondering if it will actually render. Can’t continue doing this. So my advice is if you use multiple cameras with different file formats you will probably experience issues. $20 should include reliability with the price.

by Mcgaughja

I’ve been having an issue for two weeks now, where a lot of the buttons have been squeezed together to make room for the “Size and Position” text box displayed to the left in the size and position menu, causing them to overlap and make LumaFusion basically unusable. This may not be your problem, but I do use LumaFusion to edit animations and videos for school or friends, and it has played a rather big role in my life for the past 3 or 4 months. I’ve been using this editor for everything, and it was absolutely perfect! But now, I can’t use it at all. I emailed customer support and was told they’d write a bug report to notify the developers of this issue, and they told me it’d take a couple days. Then, a couple days past, and there was an update! Only it wasn’t fixing the issue... so I emailed again and was told that I’d have to wait until the end of the year. I don’t know what to do now but ask you to PLEASE PRIORITIZE THIS ISSUE! I know I’m not the only one, I have friends who use LumaFusion who have the same phone as me and they’re having the same problem! If this came off as aggressive or impatient, I’m sorry, but the best you can do if not prioritize the issue is give an estimated date of when you think the issue will be fixed?? this app has always been an incredible app and I don’t want to lose it! Thank you for reading this!

by James Walnut

I got experience editing on desktop with expensive softwares, to be an app iPhone software is a challenger, I have an iPhone 8 Plus. LumaFusion software does an excellent rendering video fast & easy, love the selection of frames, I can select quality in megabytes, select the Quality sound and the format video MP4, HD, 2k, 4K etc But I would like to suggest to developers all next -We need to lock 🔐 some portions of video edited in the area where the video is already so it won’t move if we add a new song track or other video - We need a feature to manipulate the video like sharpness - we need some scene-based real to mix scenes like using the green screen. 👍 ok! Also we would love some better and easy graphic in order to add video or sound from folders the actual have to small letters and confuse al the way to choose any file, archive, video, music etc from our files. But yes, until now is an excellent recommend software for edit in any iPhone, works great and rendering fast and excellently well edited.

by In-App-Ripoff

Great update, guys!....NOT. Now LumaFusion keeps immediately crashing, as soon as it opens! I click the icon, to start app. I pull in 2 short videos to edit them together. I try to link them, before editing, and LumaFusion appears to just shut down. I restart app. It does it again. I try it again....same thing, but I then notice that it doesn’t completely close. It looks like it’s running in the background, as I see LumaFusion screen/window, when I double click home button (on iPad Pro.) I completely close LumaFusion out, (there are no other apps open) and click icon to start it again. It does the same thing..appears to close, (My home screen wallpaper is on screen) but I see LumaFusion is running in the background, as seen by once again double clicking home button. I completely close app out, again, and this time completely shut down the iPad, and restart it. Try to open app once more..surprise, it does the same thing as before...shuts down to background! LumaFusion is now totally unusable! It stays open for about 2 seconds each time I open it, and then crashes/app window disappears, as if it closed, but is running in background, and if I click on LumaFusion window to bring it up again, it just keeps doing the same thing! LumaFusion had been working fine, before I installed the latest update. What now?????

by PhillyTG

I was a Pinnacle Pro user who was always disappointed by it’s limitations. I’m happy to say that this app makes up for every Pinnacle Pro deficiency. The ability to have 3 video and audio tracks is HUGE and the level of control you can natively exert to both he video and audio is impressive. The key-framing capabilities are particularly useful and something lacking in most iOS video editing programs. The StoryBlocks integration is another killer feature. The free offerings are more than enough for most, but I’m a subscriber and their prices are low, so this is icing on the cake.

I’ve completed a personal and professional project so far on my 12.9” iPad Pro (original) and haven’t experienced any slow-down whatsoever.

I’m a pretty demanding user, being accustomed to Premiere Pro and Avid, but this is a legit professional mobile video editing suite. Well done, Luma Touch.

by Ceyveron

If iMovie hadn’t been dumbed down for smartphones, I would never have had a reason to search for LumaFusion. It is expensive as far as apps, but as the best video editor, fully featured and fast, it’s worth it. I deleted iMovie and see no reason to ever go back. From multi-track, nonlinear editing of video layers and audio layers independently, to easy animation of every video parameter similar to Adobe Premiere, the fact LumaFusion does all that with my 4K 150mbps H265 video on my iPhone 7+ without blinking blows my mind. The interface could be more streamlined and intuitive. You will need to watch their tutorials. In doing so, though, the phenomenal power of this editor will be obvious. Compared to other creative video apps that only work with one layer and charge you ridiculous subscription prices, LumaFusion is far superior and far cheaper.