Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Other Raw Converters => Topic started by: peterwgallagher on November 01, 2017, 06:49:47 pm
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[Just venting annoyance: apologies]
I purchased Luminar for AUD 84 in June. I found it to be still sort of 'unsettled', like a lot of new software. It is over-stuffed (with tricksy 'filters') and under-powered (printing? color-profiling? workflow aids?). But it had some interesting ideas. I hoped they'd continue to improve in the usual way through dot-upgrades as they seemed to indicate they would. And they were widely marketing their work on a forthcoming "DAM", so I expected I'd get a 'dot upgrade' there, too.
Now I'm disappointed by their suggestion I should pay a further AUD 54 for a "pre-order" upgrade to their still unpublished cross-platform version with the promised (but untried and unspecified) "DAM". I'm inclined, instead, to abandon Luminar as just another 'sunk cost' (like my flirtation with On1).
Macphun are directly targeting Lightroom with their new marketing campaign. Presumably, they appreciate that it's very expensive in a lot of ways for LR users to switch horses. But it's completely pointless, if it means just more upgrade 'suck' for immature software.
Also, I don't buy their suggestion that 'filters' are the 'modern' way to work or that direct manipulation of discrete image characteristics such as contrast, luminance, saturation etc or the use of local exposure manipulation and edge- and luminance-masking etc is 'old' technology. I'm certainly interested in new technologies for manipulating the digital signal to alter the representation of captured light (e.g. Adobe's 'Dehaze'). But filters that 'mash-up' these technologies take the art out of processing in the name of a (mostly) illusory convenience.
In my view, filter-bundles are too often non-transparent and too often supervene artistic choice. The results are uniformly "stunning" (iPhone captures) and inevitably boring.
Then... come think of it, why would I pay any more money to a company that thinks its current name isn't silly enough?
[/venting]
Peter
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I think expecting the addition of a DAM to be part of dot upgrade was far from realistic. Frankly, if it's good, it's a small price to pay. As to the filters, if you don't like them, don't use them. Filters aren't the only way of working in the app.
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Program works and the price is good and it is not a subscriber issue.
Dave S
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Did you get an email recently about a pre-order? I have Luminar although I haven't tried it at all, just opened to make sure it installed. but I have received nothing from Macphun.
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Yes I got an email about the upgrade.
Dave S
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Thanks Peter for your frank description. I’m thinking about Luminar, but am not convinced, certainly not by gimmicky filters.
What’s your assessment of the raw conversion quality and the basic adjustments (those similar to LR)?
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What’s your assessment of the raw conversion quality and the basic adjustments (those similar to LR)?
These are the important things to me. If it can't get at least excellent raw demosaicing done, there are better choices, albeit more expensive, for me.