When they rolled out Luminar 3 around the beginning of the year, it was slow and buggy. The last couple of updates to 3.1.2 seem to have solved some of these problems, but they've made no progress on their promises from 2018 that Luminar 3 would support DAM (digital asset management) and allow users to add metadata to images, which is fundamental if you want to be able to find them again.
So, I was surprised to get an e-mail with a time-limited offer to pre-order Luminar 4. They haven't even delivered on the promises made before the previous version and they're rolling out a new version. It sounds like a company in over its head saying, "We know we promised metadata entry, but that's boring. Look! We have a new program where you can replace the sky in your photos! All you have to do is pay us $50." This kind of behaviour sets off alarms because it's often followed by announcements such as, "We know we promised to implement DAM and metadata entry, but it was harder than we thought, so we've decided to focus our efforts on making Luminar 4 the best software ever. All you need to do is pay us $50 and you can join us on this exciting journey."
If you haven't bought it, I'd advise hanging on to your money until they figure out what they're doing.
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sucks because i can download it and open file but how the hell do i get it to run and this is the same shit im having with my canon printer or any update files i can download and open them but how do i make them run and be there so i can use them automatically or use them at all cause i constantly get bombed with upgrade this and that and i download and open but they are not running or im doing something wrong
Let me introduce you to Luminar 4. It is so far superior to Luminar 3 that it is starling. Here's a prime example…Luminar 3 would periodically become unstable or even crash when Batch Processing too many pieces (Over 60). Luminar 4 was just able to resize and run the AI filter simultaneously on 280 pieces with no effort at all! The process was very quick and I was able to run Quark at the same time along with Mail and Safari being active in the background with no hesitation or complaint. If you currently have Luminar 3 when you install 4 it will appropriate the Luminar 3 Library, Folders etc with no disruption or alteration. All of 3's functions remain undisturbed. You will not have to reinstall the brushes into 4 as the brushes in 3 are immediately available to you. DO NOT buy from the App Store because it will be sandboxed which will decrease the flexibility and eventually cause a host of other problems. Finally the Support people are simply amazing.
When they rolled out Luminar 3 around the beginning of the year, it was slow and buggy. The last couple of updates to 3.1.2 seem to have solved some of these problems, but they've made no progress on their promises from 2018 that Luminar 3 would support DAM (digital asset management) and allow users to add metadata to images, which is fundamental if you want to be able to find them again.
So, I was surprised to get an e-mail with a time-limited offer to pre-order Luminar 4. They haven't even delivered on the promises made before the previous version and they're rolling out a new version. It sounds like a company in over its head saying, "We know we promised metadata entry, but that's boring. Look! We have a new program where you can replace the sky in your photos! All you have to do is pay us $50." This kind of behaviour sets off alarms because it's often followed by announcements such as, "We know we promised to implement DAM and metadata entry, but it was harder than we thought, so we've decided to focus our efforts on making Luminar 4 the best software ever. All you need to do is pay us $50 and you can join us on this exciting journey."
If you haven't bought it, I'd advise hanging on to your money until they figure out what they're doing.
This software is sooooo easy to use. I love the fact that you have all the presets to choose from instead of having to experiment with a bunch of different and seemingly unrelated sliders. It takes only a few minutes to enhance a photo as opposed to other photo editing software which you almost have to have a PhD to know how to use.
I would recommend all Skylum products because they pay attention to detail. Their products allow you to transform images into fantastic works of art in a very short time. You do not need to be a professional photo editor to get great looks with Skylum leading the way.
Easy to use, great results, even if you only use the presets. Catalogue function also very easy to handle, even if you have large amounts of pictures. Recommended for everybody, who doesn't want to spend his time with reworking pictures but going out and take some....
The software is doing exactly what was promised and it is getting better with each upgrade. Easy and fun to use; several easy ways to do creative artistry without a lot of difficulty.
New Luminar 3.1.1 update brings usability and speed improvements. With this update, you can expect improved launch times, better reliability and more to make your workflow easier and more reliable.
Mac users can update to version 3.1.1 by choosing Luminar 3 in the top menu bar, and then clicking “Check for updates.”
Can't explain all the whining here but I'm new and BLOWN AWAY!!! Just lacks skewing, unless I haven't figured that out and lens correction. Even without it, I'll avoid the Adobe subscription. Thank you for a fabulous product!!!
I reverted to Luminar 2018 to edit my images and it can do some interesting things ; Luminar 3 is slow, buggy. Skylum should not have tried to be a replacement for LR.
I've been using Luminar since Nov. 2018 and have truly enjoyed the app. Luminar is truly an editing tool geared towards all level of photographers. A library panel to organize your images, convenient workspaces that provide recommend tools for your photography, and of course the Luminar Looks provide one-click tools to give you a great starting point on your editing.
The latest update has brought some improvements to Luminar. Performance speed has improved, a new backup created each time you open Luminar, improved RAW support, and (my favorite) Aurora HDR integration.
The support team at Skylum is always there to answer any questions you might have about the program, they also offer great Webinars and tutorials on the companies YouTube Channel to help you learn Luminar and enhance your photography and photo editing skills.
Luminar is a great editing tool for the price. You an download the program for a 30 day trial and see how you like the program.
Such shame. I have liked using Luminar since it came out. However, my experience with them has been dreadfully soured by their treatment of their customers since they base Skylum. I bought v2018 based on the expectation of the DAM component, which had been promised for early 2018.
They did manage to ease the pain a little by not charging again for v3, but as I understand it, they will be producing a chargeable v2020 at some point. Despite the advertising information stating that it's 'buy once, enjoy forever for free'. They use stealth upgrade tactics by renaming products to charge for upgrades. I'd rather they be honest, and say that version upgrades are chargeable (I have no issue with buying software and future upgrades, if they present reasonable value).
To the software itself, the DAM has failed to deliver compared to their initial promises, and they haven't listened to any concerns expressed in their forums over design matters that had been revealed.
Stability is painful at the moment, and it is pretty mush unusable for many users. You can make use of it as an extension by deleting the DAM library files though, which makes it stable enough for that.
It's a real shame, because once you do get it to work, it does a very good job of editing images, and has a plethora of excellent tools and presets.
Let's hope they can turn this around and deliver on their promises.
The very first thing this software tries to do is to connect to Google Analytics and Facebook Graph, which totally disqualifies it for any further testing.
Uninstalled immediately.
Right now with the inability to open any photo after the 3.0.1 update I can't give this product any positive ratings. This is also why I'm waiting to update my other existing products that I own from Skylum.
The new Luminar 3 asset management is a huge disappointment. Competes with Apple Photos rather than being an Aperture or Lightroom replacement. Lost opportunity ...
I tried it and it is very confusing, the tools section on the right is overloaded with different tools, many of them not exactly clear what they do. Too pricey for what it does. For $30 I'd consider.
I prefer understating a fact or at least, stating what you have clearly. I bit on the 2018 version as it now advertises using Photoshop plugin filters. I have perfectly clear which now operates as a stand alone or as photoshop plugin filters. I bit on the 2018 version upgrade and then found out, no, it really won't allow all Photoshop plugins, only the ones they wrote the code for - which turns out to be their own photoshop plug ins. What a rip. And the DAM feature promised for sometime this year? Well, not trusting too much after the fake photoshop filter advertisement.
Less overstating and marketing and more development please. I still gave two and a half stars as it’s good for what it already does. But, it’s not truthfully advertised and as such, half baked.
However the long promised Asset Management component has yet to appear. Still. It was promised with Luminar 2018, a fake promise so far. That's a problem for many of us who have stuck with Aperture in hopes of something better than Adobe Lightroom. At the least, it would be nice if the Skylum folks would be up front and tell us what's happening. We are tolerant folk. Otherwise must migrate over to Adobe shortly ... Aperture is aging and long in the tooth, increasingly a problem to use effectively.
A long time MacPhun customer - now known as Skylum.
This version of Luminar is Neptune v1.2.2 and not the latest version Luminar 2018. Their website download has been slow as hell to download due to heavy traffic as near as I can tell. I haven't been able to get it for 4 days now, this for a new update to the initial offering.
I don't care much for the new interface so beware of it yourself. Nice new features though.
How could you go from greatness to f&*^%#g up big time? Luminar 2018 is an abomination. The controls are tiny and unappealing, the beautiful ease of use and layout has gone to return to a truly bad user experience. Filters disappear and have to be reinstalled (because it's so difficult to think about moving them as part of the installation, right?). There's still no convenient way to compare filters (see my countless suggestions and feedback) similar to CameraBag. Rather the opposite... you've made that stupid bar at the bottom even smaller! And the icons... my God. Luminar 1.0 was a revelation. Luminar 2018 is just horrible. What were you thinking?
I just upgraded to the next version of Luminar due mid November. I am still only dabbling and have not gotten back to photography full time yet so I can't really comment on how robust Luminar is in a work flow. It seems pretty nice and makes realistic adjustments. But the new version of Luminar will finally take Photoshop type plugins - hooray! It is also said to have been substantially rethought and rebuilt. We will see.
On a related note (somewhat) Perfectly Clear - which oddly is not listed here on MacUpdate, has released their Perfectly Clear filters for the first time as a stand alone app. Lucid was a smaller stand alone app by them (Athentech) but is now is discontinued. I liked Lucid and I am very impressed at how often it gets adjustments right almost on auto pilot. With Perfectly Clear there are sliders galore but apparently they have quite a bit of patented methods of pixel by pixel matching of values. As I said, Lucid impressed me. I am looking forward to see what I can do with Perfectly Clear.
The upgraded Luminar can take the perfectly Clear plugins as well (I am assuming this) as they fit Photoshop and Lightroom as plugins. I guess the upshot of all this is that Luminar is getting a whole new rebuild so it might be worth another look. No I am not shilling for the company, just saying.
And, whether they manage a DAM component or not, I am finding FastRawViewer to be an excellent and inexpensive alternative to PhotoSupreme. I gave up expecting all in one DAM/Editing like Lightroom did (does). I won’t do a subscription plan. And whoever is leaving comments that Luminar is subscription like Adobe is just flat wrong. I have had a license with Luminar for almost a year now and no mention ever of a subscription. I just paid the upgrade prerelease for the next Luminar and no mention of a subscription.
Would love to see the clone tool work from one image to another. If it would work....I can't seem to....clone from one layer to another. So far I really like the application, denoise works for me on older images that needed it. Works quite fast for me on 2 machines. Pretty happy. I NOT want to see it go to subscription mode as I live in the woods with low satellite strength.
Disappointing. I foolishly purchased without testing on hi res photos and RAW files. It is just so slow that it is painful to use. This is despite using it on a new MacBook Pro.
I would avoid for the time being.
Matt
Most unbelievable of all is quite another fact: this developer is going to imitate Adobe’s subscription model !
So, whoever does a quick consideration will immediately drop those devs who follow this way
I am frustrated with a lack of response from customer service. I had written them last December asking for pre-sales help before a holiday sale purchase. Not only did Macphun ignore my initial query I see on searching that they also ignored my attempts to follow up with them. I passed on making the purchase and I lost the then available sale price because they would not respond.
Today I am again tempted and have reviewed several videos. I just discovered FastRawViewer on this site from a different review (a much cheaper alternative to Photo Mechanic) and am delighted to have a cataloging app now that will open other apps as external.
Has anyone had success getting their attention at Macphun? I won’t lay out dollars for an app if the company isn't even going to talk to me pre-sales. I am still tempted to purchase Luminar - if anyone was actually home. Thoughts?
Never found anything more brilliant than Luminar. I like all about this app - it's name, it's interface, it's tools, it's functions. Everything's perfect. This editor is designed for making best quality photos for a minute. It's very convenient for me. The feature I like the most is the opportunity to add/remove objects from the photo. Give Luminar all the stars cause it deserves them.
I just want to say THANK YOU to the Macphun Team! You guys rock. I've been using your CK apps & Aurora HDR and now I enjoy editing my photos with Luminar. With batch processing it looks even more impressive. Thanks!
Incidentally, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Luminar. It is without a doubt the best photo editing program ever! Good job, you guys. All the extra filters that Luminar has beyond the standard set are amazing!
Just finished editing several of my photos shot on film quite some time ago and scanned, and loved it. Got noise removed so accurately, erased some flickering and a couple of small objects, made some color and structure adjustments, and it took just a few minutes. I can see so many directions to go with a single photo, something totally new to me a guy who's used to do the same type of editing all of the time. Thank you guys, really turned my creativity on with Luminar.
Super helpful. I was looking for LR replacement for a long time. If these guys will add DAM tool (as they're promising) that would be a killer! I'm using Luminar with Apple Photos and I LOVE it.
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However the long promised Asset Management component has yet to appear. Still. It was promised with Luminar 2018, a fake promise so far. That's a problem for many of us who have stuck with Aperture in hopes of something better than Adobe Lightroom. At the least, it would be nice if the Skylum folks would be up front and tell us what's happening. We are tolerant folk. Otherwise must migrate over to Adobe shortly ... Aperture is aging and long in the tooth, increasingly a problem to use effectively.
A long time MacPhun customer - now known as Skylum.
Today I am again tempted and have reviewed several videos. I just discovered FastRawViewer on this site from a different review (a much cheaper alternative to Photo Mechanic) and am delighted to have a cataloging app now that will open other apps as external.
Has anyone had success getting their attention at Macphun? I won’t lay out dollars for an app if the company isn't even going to talk to me pre-sales. I am still tempted to purchase Luminar - if anyone was actually home. Thoughts?
Now there is the new Luminar. But I cannot fathom where this fits in the scheme of things.
I can only surmise, based on the MacPhun website, that Luminar is meant to displace Creative Kit.
After all, there seems to be tremendous product function overlap between them.
The web site highlights Luminar and HDR 2017. But no sign of Creative Kit.
MacPhun, your product strategy is crystal clear - to you. But not at all to me, the customer.
Please clarify ... Thank you.
ottojohnson363 : "It is without a doubt the best photo editing program ever! ". "I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Luminar."
Calm down, do not be too positive, it's too easy to spot as an overenthusiastic review.