Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Other Raw Converters => Topic started by: Bob Rockefeller on October 12, 2018, 02:59:01 pm
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Once Luminar adds it's Library, I wonder how close to the original concept of Aperture it will be? I'm not part of the beta program, so I can't tell much about the interface beyond the videos, but it looks like there may not be a mode switch from a "library" to a "develop" module. And Scott Bourne is part of the company; he was a very early and very strong proponent of Aperture.
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And Scott Bourne is part of the company; he was a very early and very strong proponent of Aperture.
a harbinger of things to come then... what happened to Aperture will happen to ;D
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Hmm.
Well, does anyone know if Luminar 2019 will be modal, that is, a Library and a Develop mode or module?
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I doubt it. Aperture had remarkably advanced DAM/editing (in the original sense of “editing”) tools which nothing else has come anywhere close to. Which indicates to me that there is no market for such tools in today’s hyper-saturation like-magnet hero shot world. Also Aperture featured a tastefully tuned Raw converter and a curve tool like no other (I don’t think anybody else has offered the luminosity curve with extended range combination). “Tasteful” is not a adjective that came to mind when I took a look at Luminar.
Exposure X4 is a better candidate IMHO.
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Watching some of the Luminar 3 intro videos, it appears that Luminar will indeed have a Library <-> Edit interface similar to Aperture. There seems to be no mode switching with the context switch. The three side panels – Library, Edit, and Info – change the tools available, but don't invoke a mode switch as does ON1 Photo RAW or Lightroom.
That will be a powerful motive for me to use Luminar as my primary RAW workflow tool.
Luminar is pretty young. And that shows in its library feature set – no keywords nor IPTC metadata display/editing. But those are promised in free upgrades "coming in 2019."
But I may be willing to ride through to bumpy times in hopes of a fuller feature set sooner, rather than later.
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But those are promised in free upgrades "coming in 2019."
This seems to be their marketing strategy. Issue a press release that a new feature is coming next month. It is picked up by all the photo sites. Free advertising. Then about two weeks before it is released, issue another press release saying it will be released on a date certain. It is picked up by all the photo sites. Free advertising. Then issue another press release on the day of release, saying it is $10 off for a limited time. It is picked up by all the photo sites. Free advertising. Rinse and repeat. It seems there is something in my RSS feed about Luminar every week. It gives the impression that it is constantly evolving. And that it is being run by a bunch of hucksters.
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This seems to be their marketing strategy. Issue a press release that a new feature is coming next month. It is picked up by all the photo sites. Free advertising. Then about two weeks before it is released, issue another press release saying it will be released on a date certain. It is picked up by all the photo sites. Free advertising. Then issue another press release on the day of release, saying it is $10 off for a limited time. It is picked up by all the photo sites. Free advertising. Rinse and repeat. It seems there is something in my RSS feed about Luminar every week. It gives the impression that it is constantly evolving. And that it is being run by a bunch of hucksters.
Yes. It may be the "play of the day." ON1 Photo RAW has been on a similar, but perhaps less severe path. Now that the ON1 feature set is closer to Lightroom's, maybe they will lay off. The test for me with Luminar is not if they over-promote themselves, but if they steadily add the features they promise in something close to the timeframe they promise them.
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Luminar 3 (so-called 2019) released today. Took a few minutes to do catelogue and we shall see what other features are present.
Dave S
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Luminar 3 (so-called 2019) released today. Took a few minutes to do catelogue and we shall see what other features are present.
It released on a Saturday!? Cool!
I have Luminar 2018, but I see no sign of 3.0. Where should I be looking?
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I was sent an email. Early release for Canada and Australia. Cool.
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Now that I have v3 and have fiddled with it for a couple of hours, I'd say it is not "the new Aperture." Yet.
The image adjustment tools are plenty competent and the AI Filters work very well. The user interface design was done well.
Transitioning from Library to Edit is not quite as fluid as Aperture's and you can't make adjustments to thumbnails as you could in Aperture. But the "mode switch," if there is one at all, is very smooth. The only jarring part is if you have a thumbnail selected and switch to editing, the thumbnail expands to full-screen and the Looks and Filmstrip Panels may appear (if you have things set that way).
Because the library features are so very new, they cover only the very basic ground. There are no keywords, virtual copies, stacks, nor IPTC tag editing. Those, other than stacks, are promised for the first seven months of 2019. So we'll have to see when they are released, and how well those features work. I'll be hoping for stacks (I really miss those).
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What it needs to complete the package is a print module.
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What it needs to complete the package is a print module.
That’s a good point. And a feature I don’t see on their roadmap.
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I don't know how you "add a Library".
To me a catalogue programme is built from the ground up as a catalogue programme that does other things as well.
That is where Aperture excelled.
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Luminar does not support dual monitors, and has no intention of supporting them any time soon. That alone is a showstopper for me.
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Not for me - if they finish the nearly useless Library, and get rid of some of the worst bugs, maybe I'll consider using their product - my goto nowadays is ACDSee
Harry Burris
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Luminar has replaced my need for Aperture. It's far from perfect but the GUI and workflow suit my needs. Until they provide a printing module I'm using Epson's.
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Personally, I HATE the new Luminar. I hated that as soon as I launched it, after installing, it immediately started to search every drive on my system and started importing -- whether I wanted it to or not. I'm so sick of these programs that want to replace what I have, rather add to it. I'm not going to, for instance, abandon PS for On1 Photo Raw. Or use Alien Skin Exposure to import and convert and organize my photos. At least those two make it an option. Luminar 3 just blithely started importing thousands of photos, whether I wanted to or not. I couldn't even cancel the import.
I will only use it as a plugin for PS as a result. Oh, and you'd think they could figure out how to create a "Close" command on a PC if you wanted to work with more than one photo. When all is said and done, for me, Luminar has marginal value and irritates the crap out me.
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I already moved on from Lightroom and Aperture a couple of years ago with Capture One Pro. Now at version 12, it's great. The IQ is the best that I've seen out of the box with my Leica M10 DNG and Fuji X-trans RAF files. The DAM features have come along in the past few updates and is very functional.
Since switching to Capture One, I no longer need plugins and Affinity Photo handles all of my pixel-mashing needs without a subscription.
I'm a very happy camper, for the moment.
Regards,
Bud James
Please check out my fine art and travel photography at www.budjames.photography or on Instagram at www.instagram.com/budjamesphoto.
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Why not use one of the industry standard programs (Lightroom or Capture One) instead of participating in ongoing beta testing.
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"Industry Standard" - the only industry standards are TIFF and JPG. Lightroom forced my workflow to work in the way that a bunch of engineers in Santa Clara decided it should go and would add a lot of unnecessary time to accomplish nothing of substance. The library structure was created by low level engineers with no knowledge of database structures and is no more sophisticated than Outlook from Microsoft. Capture One was created by a single photographer who had skills in programming code but it is his view of how and editor should work.
With the shift from Lightroom and Photoshop to alternatives each photographer can work with whichever applications best suits their workflow and end product requirements. Even with Photoshop, which I worked with before the application was renamed by Adobe, the Raw conversion was good enough for small prints or images going into an album or online but not good enough for large prints where I wanted to have access to 100% of the data in the Raw file.
For highest quality Raw to TIFF I use Nikon's Capture for my Nikon NEF files. No surprise to me that software engineers at Nikon can provide a better file conversion than all the outside companies whose people have to reverse engineer their code from NEF files on a trial and error basis. The delay in getting ACR updates after new cameras are released is for this reason. The outside engineers have to wait until they can buy the new camera and start producing Raw files and then make adjustments to their code.
Think of a house that has been built and someone wants an exact duplicate and one builder has the original blueprints and the second builder has to go look at the house and make measurements and has no access to what if below the floors or in the walls and must make a best guess. Which "duplicate" house would you expect to be a better match?