So...Luminar.

[havoc315]

6 hours ago, pierces said:

 

I am doing some construction around the house and am using both power saws and occasionally hand saws. I am not sure, but I don't think that the wise fellow who designed the Ryoba pull saw would think the battery-powered circular saw was cheating. 

 

Sky replacer is a tool. Tools make stuff easier. Necessity may be the mother of invention but Lazy is its daddy!

 

🙂

 

Dave

 

You misunderstand me..... I don't feel like I'm cheating because I'm replacing the sky. I feel like it's cheating that it's SO EASY, compared to the difficult layers and masking of photoshop.

 

Let's play a game, which are Luminar skies, which are real Paris skies?

 

1:

untitled (22 of 1308).jpg by Adam Brown, on Flickr

 

2:

untitled (53 of 1308)_L by Adam Brown, on Flickr

 

3:

untitled (102 of 1308)_L by Adam Brown, on Flickr

 

4:

untitled (33 of 1308).jpg by Adam Brown, on Flickr

 

5:

untitled (192 of 1308)_L by Adam Brown, on Flickr

 

6:

untitled (40 of 1308).jpg by Adam Brown, on Flickr

 

7:

untitled (243 of 1308)_L by Adam Brown, on Flickr

 

 

[pierces]

8 hours ago, havoc315 said:

 

You misunderstand me..... I don't feel like I'm cheating because I'm replacing the sky. I feel like it's cheating that it's SO EASY, compared to the difficult layers and masking of photoshop.

 

Let's play a game, which are Luminar skies, which are real Paris skies?

 

1:

untitled (22 of 1308).jpg by Adam Brown, on Flickr

 

2:

untitled (53 of 1308)_L by Adam Brown, on Flickr

 

3:

untitled (102 of 1308)_L by Adam Brown, on Flickr

 

4:

untitled (33 of 1308).jpg by Adam Brown, on Flickr

 

5:

untitled (192 of 1308)_L by Adam Brown, on Flickr

 

6:

untitled (40 of 1308).jpg by Adam Brown, on Flickr

 

7:

untitled (243 of 1308)_L by Adam Brown, on Flickr

 

 

You misunderstood me! 🙂

 

I was agreeing with you. That sawmaker would have been overjoyed to have a tool capable of saving so much time and effort on a necessary but tedious part of his craft. 

 

In the short time I have had to play with Luminar 4, I'm pretty impressed with how far they've come in the last couple of years.

 

Dave

[tommui987]

4 hours ago, pierces said:

You misunderstood me! 🙂

 

I was agreeing with you. That sawmaker would have been overjoyed to have a tool capable of saving so much time and effort on a necessary but tedious part of his craft. 

 

In the short time I have had to play with Luminar 4, I'm pretty impressed with how far they've come in the last couple of years.

 

Dave

 

13 hours ago, havoc315 said:

 

 

 

Let's play a game, which are Luminar skies, which are real Paris skies?

 

Can't really tell but they all look good to me!

 

 

 

[havoc315]

5 hours ago, pierces said:

You misunderstood me! 🙂

 

I was agreeing with you. That sawmaker would have been overjoyed to have a tool capable of saving so much time and effort on a necessary but tedious part of his craft. 

 

In the short time I have had to play with Luminar 4, I'm pretty impressed with how far they've come in the last couple of years.

 

Dave

 

Honestly, my feelings are mixed. There isn't a good user manual, it's impossible to figure out some of the features and controls. For some reason, I wasn't able to get cropping to work -- I don't know if it's a bug.

I wasn't super impressed with the portrait enhancements.

 

I don't like the implementation of their clone stamp or their content-aware eraser. You don't see the effect of the content-aware eraser in real time as you use it. 

 

But generally, for landscapes, I'm impressed. Beyond the sky replacement, the AI enhancements usually come out pretty well. And the detail enhancements are better than lightroom. My only frustration is that Luminar doesn't seem to have built-in lens corrections for raw files. I may have to do my lens corrections in Lightroom and then export to Luminar for everything else. (And for now, I need to do cropping in Lightroom). 

 

Sky removal.... I still think ideally, you want to capture REAL beautiful skies. Shadows, etc, in the rest of the image won't really play naturally with a fake sky. Not to mention, things like -- in my Eiffel tower photo, the sun is setting in the south!

But when I get stuck with a totally overcast or a totally clear blue sky, I feel I'd want to use one of the more subtle fake skies.

If it's a picture of Notre Dame for example, I still want someone to look at it and say "what a beautiful picture of Notre Dame" -- Not, "wow, what a gorgeous sky over Notre Dame."

In other words, personally, I may use it to remove a boring element from a photo, but not to create a fake exciting element.

I feel like I achieved that balance in these examples -- except the Eiffel tower which I think went over the top.

 

Among the first 6 photos -- 3 have real skies, 3 have fake skies. The fact that you can't tell the difference is kudos to Luminar, but supports the way I hope to incorporate this tool into my workflow. 

 

I also will need to make a habit of shooting some custom skies of my own, so I'm not constantly using the same pre-set skies. 

 

 

 

[DCB9]

I have a question for the Luminar users.  I am locked into the Adobe Lightroom / Photoshop combo for my own work, but I am looking at Luminar 4 as a Christmas gift for my brother.  He is looking for a way to organize his photos and I thought a program such as Liminar would do the trick for him without having to deal with a subscription plus it looks like a relatively powerful, easy to use editor.  I have read reviews and everything in this thread, but I haven't actually heard anyone say much about the cataloging capabilities except for the speed issues, I can't even find much detail on the Luminar website.  My question is how does it compare to the Lightroom catalog capabilities.  I see it has star ratings, but does it have keywords and other ways to filter you photos like Lightroom does?  Thanks for your help.

Dave

[pierces]

On 12/9/2019 at 2:39 PM, DCB9 said:

I have a question for the Luminar users.  I am locked into the Adobe Lightroom / Photoshop combo for my own work, but I am looking at Luminar 4 as a Christmas gift for my brother.  He is looking for a way to organize his photos and I thought a program such as Liminar would do the trick for him without having to deal with a subscription plus it looks like a relatively powerful, easy to use editor.  I have read reviews and everything in this thread, but I haven't actually heard anyone say much about the cataloging capabilities except for the speed issues, I can't even find much detail on the Luminar website.  My question is how does it compare to the Lightroom catalog capabilities.  I see it has star ratings, but does it have keywords and other ways to filter you photos like Lightroom does?  Thanks for your help.

Dave

 

 

Sorry! I completely missed this post.

 

It may be too late, but if your brother. Luminar is pretty good as a cataloging app. It is easy to organize folders and allows for some pretty complete editing, though not to the extent of Lightroom.

 

Recommended. With some caveats previously discussed here...and in the next post.

 

Dave

[pierces]

---------------------------
Luminar 4
---------------------------
OpenGL 3.3 and later is required for this application to run.
Try updating your graphics drivers.
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------
 

Here is my experience with Luminar 4 on my new desktop. Extra special. No detailed method on the Skylum forums on how to correct it other than get the newest driver (my RTX 2070 has Open GL 4.something) and see you card manufacturer's site to learn how to set Luminar 18 to the default GPU. In case you haven't guessed, the manufacturers are generally oblivious to the existence of Luminar.

 

Researching.

 

For the record, Lightroom and Photoshop installed seamlessly.

 

Dave

[pierces]

I reset the Windows 10 installation with the option of apps removed and files left in place. Reinstalled the graphics driver and it fixed the OpenGL fatal error. Not a huge issue since I had only transferred files and installed a few programs.

 

Luminar now starts and runs very nicely. 

 

Only 999,999 things left to do....

 

 

Dave

 

[pierces]

Another year...another Luminar.

 

Luminar AI is up for preorder and at this rate, It is hovering about even with my subscription to Lightroom over the same period. So much for the evil big-tech plot to skim our money with subscription business models.

 

I still use Luminar rarely since there is still absolutely no way to migrate a bazillion non-destructive edits from Lightroom. Again I'll state that just exporting all my photos with adjustments applied and maintaining a separate space for the old unretouched versions isn't an option I'll pursue. I could bite the bullet and just accept the changes made and move forward from this point on, but the combination of Lightroom and Photoshop still provides more basic organizational and editing power. If I didn't have years of experience in both and was starting from scratch, the story might be different. Luminar lacks much of the organizational power of Lightroom, but for a user with no need or desire for detailed keywording and facial recognition (Lightroom is a bit stupid on faces), the ease of use and automated retouching with "looks" can make digital life easier. I am also a bit put off by the creative direction Luminar is going with image manipulation. The pre-order trailer video was big on improving your "like" count on social media and lean on detail but the rest of the page hints at features to add atmosphere, alter body and facial features like Anthropics Portrait Pro and of course, change the sky from the one you took to the one someone else took and sold you in a bundle for $45 on a special introductory price. For me, capturing a great sky is like finding a shiny gold nugget in a stream bed. Buying a nugget just doesn't feel as good. 🙂

 

Again, much of my reluctance to adopt Luminar is from being not only invested in the Adobe environment but my personal preference for mostly realistic photography without all the added replacements and effects. If this appeals to you and you don't have thousands of non-destructive edits in a Lightroom database, Luminar is reasonably priced, powerful and offers some pretty good and rather powerful image editing tools. Paid upgrades and add-on packs can add up over time, but if you aren't blown away by the new bells and whistles, skipping an upgrade cycle is a money saving option.

 

Since it is only $79, I'll probably give the AI version a look and if I do, will outline my experience here.

 

Take a look for yourself: https://skylum.com/luminar-ai

 

Happy Shooting!

 

 

Dave

Edited September 3, 2020 by pierces

[Gardyloo]

I've been having a lot of fun with the product, adding some cool skies to pictures that are otherwise a bit flat.  Like any technique (especially HDR processing, which people use to excess) it's possible to have too much of a good thing, but for everyday manipulations it's a blast.

 

A couple of "before and after" examples - 

 

"Grandfather Looses the Ponies," a sculpture commemorating the region's wild horses, set on a clifftop overlooking the Columbia River in central Washington state:

 

 

 

Mont Saint-Michel (base image)

 

 

 

 

While dramatic, these illustrate (to me at least) that one has to limit the use of this, especially in the case of backlit scenes or when the foreground is going to be very different from the sky in terms of luminescence and tint.  For example, in the last image you can see what looks like fill light on the side of the Mont, inexplicable given the strong sunset background sky.  It's nothing that can't be fixed in some further processing (I haven't bothered for this post) but you can see what I'm talking about.

 

Still, it's a blast to transform some otherwise meh images.

[pierces]

Well, it looks like they want people to upgrade. My previous purchases qualified me for a $59 for one or $69 for a two user deal. 

 

I'm officially on the pre-order list and will be commenting on what I find when it magically appears in my inbox.

 

I may also have my darling granddaughter install it on her laptop and share impressions from a newbie to photo organization and editing.

 

Dave 

[tommui987]

22 hours ago, pierces said:

 

 

I'm officially on the pre-order list and will be commenting on what I find when it magically appears in my inbo

 

Dave 

 

With the stay-in-place orders, probably all offers look good - something to do!

 

So I ordered the AI version.

Look forward to your comments!

 

Stay well!

[pierces]

Well, Luminar AI is pretty good. I will probably remain in the Adobe universe because of Photoshop and many years climbing up the learning curve, but for users that want an easy and effective way to correct, crop and clean up photos, Luminar AI is a strong option. 

 

New development: A company called Avalanche is offering a $59 tool that will convert Lightroom catalogs to Luminar AI, preserving edits and corrections. Sadly, it is useless to the majority of PC users as it is only available for IOS with no plans to offer a Windows version. If you use a Mac and want to migrate off of your Lightroom subscription to Luminar, here is the link:

 

Avalanche for Luminar

 

 

Dave

Edited February 19, 2021 by pierces

[tommui987]

I've  been slowly (very slowly) photoshopping slides-converted-CDs, which conversion occured in 2005! And all of those slides, many of them having fungus, mold and other inperfections, were taken as far back as 1956-57!

 

For whatever reason, my sky replacement had disappeared from Photoshop and I use the Luminar program as a filter for sky replacement. It does have the bonus of having more skies to use as replacements - probably because they have been selling sky photos  for several years.

 

I'm also surprised that so many pictures had horrible skies in them, if not just plain vanilla!

 

[pierces]

I just updated my Luminar AI to update 2 and so far it is problematic. I don't know if it changed something basic in the rendering engine and has to update all 170k+ thumbnails before it will work smoothly, but it now it stutters and takes several seconds (as long as 20s) to render an image preview and again when you zoom. It seems to speed up when you've been in a folder for a while, so my assumption that there is some basic rendering change involved seems to be correct.

 

On another subject, I keep checking for a "Show images in sub-folders" toggle but it has never been added and seems to be a sore subject on the support forums. It doesn't seem like a difficult feature to add and would make library management much easier. I could rearrange thousands of photos into single depth folders but.....no.

 

Still no pressure to jump from Lightroom for me but casual editors who don't want the steep Adobe learning curve should at least look at Luminar.

 

Dave

Edited March 16, 2021 by pierces