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Macphun Luminar?
- Thread starter mujana
- Start date
robgendreau
Veteran Member
If you search here you'll see a lot of people have tried and/or adopted it; the threads are usually in combo with stuff like Aperture or Lr alternatives. To see just a feature comparison see: https://macphun.com/luminar/compare
I think there's a demo available, but I sure couldn't find it. Macphun's website sometimes doesn't even keep up with the features in their programs, which are kinda segmented into confusing groups. But keep looking; they do make decent stuff.
The comparison above re Aperture or Lr obviously only compares image adjustment; Aperture, Lr and C1P all have well developed image organization tools. Luminar is more like DxO, Pixelmator, Affinity etc in that it doesn't really do any of that. And saves into layered proprietary file formats, akin to Photoshop. But since you've got Lr, you've got that covered.
I do use the Macphun CK stuff, and it works really well with Lr. One BIG reason is that you can send RAW files to the CK applications, not just TIFFs. Their Tonality BW plugin is great, but I dunno how much of it's utility is in Luminar. I suspect a lot, since I think it's basically gonna replace Tonality. Maybe just fewer presets. IMHO the biggest advantage of the Macphun stuff is a very easy interface for doing layers, which can really take your image adjustment to another level (layer? :-D ). The luminosity mask, eg, is really easy to use in Macphun and while not as powerful as Ps its fast and easy.
And it's definitely cheaper than C1P, which is Lr/Ps expensive; Luminar is on sale for the next few days.
allanimal
Forum Enthusiast
MacPhun has announced they are working on a DAM for Luminar, though it is currently vapourware, I'm keeping an eye on it. I like the editing side of things a lot, and hope they can keep up the quality on the DAM side and finally replace Aperture.
robgendreau
Veteran Member
I doubt that Macphun will come up with much of anything DAM wise, but ya never know. Kinda hard to compete with Photos for that, given it's free and all. Maybe now that they're moving to the Windows platform as well.
In any case, I asked Macphun for a demo of Luminar and they nicely provided a 15-day full demo. It does work very well with Lr: you can transfer a RAW via their plugin direct to Luminar, and get back a TIFF. Or you can use "edit in..." in Lr to send an Lr-edited TIFF to Luminar. Luminar then sends back a TIFF to the original folder. Or, optionally, you can "Save" and have a copy saved in Luminar's own format (so as to preserve layers, eg); unfortunately you have to remember where to put it as it doesn't auto-redirect to the original folder. Would be a nice way to use Lr for free with a good editor, although I find Luminar to be rather slow, and lacking in many tools. But it's almost worth buying just for the sliding comparison pane thing; I love that. And for easy layers, although the selection tools obviously aren't anywhere as good as say Ps.
robgendreau
Veteran Member
BTW, forgot to mention that as an extension to Photos it sends back a JPG. I dunno whether it (or other extensions) get sent a RAW or something else from Photos, probably someone who knows Photos could answer that better. And you can't save directly from the extension; this is where that "edit in..." option which is supposed to be in the next version of Photos would be very handy if not essential. If you do a bunch of work in something with layers, like Luminar, Aurora, AP, etc you wanna preserve those so that you can change 'em later, and if you just send it back to Photos all you can do is start over.
comfortstarr
Member
I just bought it (they're having a "flash" sale right now, it's $49 USD). I played with a bit. All such software is pretty new to me. But it seem very intuitive.
comfortstarr
Member
Thanks for this point. I was wondering about that in my experimentation the other day.
allanimal
Forum Enthusiast
Interesting that you say luminar is lacking in tools, because I find there are almost too many for me to remember them all....
what do you find lacking, just out of curiosity?
robgendreau
Veteran Member
Sending several images to it to open them in layers seems to be impossible, although maybe I'm missing something. It also hangs trying to send more than one image from Lr.
A very pronounced lack of keyboard equivalents.
No snapshots, and the history didn't seem to always work for me.
No selection tools to speak of. It's pretty much masking brush and/or gradient or circular tools. But that's not so bad cuz it really isn't set up to do that kind of thing.
No stitching or panorama tool. No tools for say aligning shots for say focus stacking and that sort of thing.
Not much for auto HDRing, like Aurora.
Don't get me wrong...I personally don't think all those are needed. I can do panos, HDR, and some fussy selection stuff elsewhere. I think they're correct to focus on Luminar's core skills, which like in taking the sort of image adjustment stuff you'd find in say an Lr, or Aperture and make those availabe with layers and layer masks. Sometimes, with single images, you don't really need layers; you could use say a gradiant or brush in Lr and get the same result. But with layers you get much more control and different ways to blend in the effects, even if you're just using adjustment layers. And of course you can also layer in a new sky with another image too, which is kinda handy.
I like the split image slider, the way you can add filters (I think of 'em more as tools) to each layer (kinda like DxO, although I find Luminar's a bit more uncluttered), and the ease of doing stuff like luminence layers. It's a nice product, and definitely better than when I first demo'd it. And yeah, I forget a lot of the tools too, and expect to find Ps ones that aren't there at times too. It's a good adjunct to say Lr or Photos.
RussellP
Veteran Member
I use it as an extension to Photos. I have a few extensions from McPhun, some free some cheap.
I mainly use the DXO prime extension to remove noise and then luminar for its new accent boost filter which does a nice job of adjusting highlights and shadows at the same time. Usually finish of in photos. I haven't delved too deeply into it but it seems pretty good if you want fast simple adjustment which is what I want.
I also use Snapheal on occasions. I switched from Aperture to Photos with a few plugins and must say it does what I want.
cheers
I mainly use the DXO prime extension to remove noise and then luminar for its new accent boost filter which does a nice job of adjusting highlights and shadows at the same time. Usually finish of in photos. I haven't delved too deeply into it but it seems pretty good if you want fast simple adjustment which is what I want.
I also use Snapheal on occasions. I switched from Aperture to Photos with a few plugins and must say it does what I want.
cheers
Ted Wilson
Veteran Member
robgendreau
Veteran Member
Ah, thanks for that. I looked up "External Editors for Photos" and it seems to be a nice workaround. One review said with RAW edited elsewhere you've gotta actually drop the edited file into the extension separately, which I'd hope Apple's revamp of Photos will make unnecessary. Although I guess it's not at all clear Photos will send out RAW in the new "edit in..." feature. I don't think Aperture did, I recall having to use a plugin for that.
RussellP
Veteran Member
that interesting. I use DXO optics Prime for NR on Nikon 1 files. (the DXO plugin is a $10 bargain). When I import a RAW file and then edit in Photos I need to go directly to the DXO plugin to use Prime. It only works on RAW files and if its not RAW it has a little logo with RAW and a line through it. So I can do what I want in DXO on the RAW file and then save it and go to Photos or any other plugin to continue editing.
If I try to do general editing first then go to DXO it says its not a RAW file and won't work.
Yet Photos still shows my file as RAW in the file manager.
Is photos editing the RAW file or a jpeg copy?
cheers
Russell
If I try to do general editing first then go to DXO it says its not a RAW file and won't work.
Yet Photos still shows my file as RAW in the file manager.
Is photos editing the RAW file or a jpeg copy?
cheers
Russell
Ted Wilson
Veteran Member
robgendreau
Veteran Member
Ted Wilson
Veteran Member
None of those apps actually modify the RAW file they use the data and then export out another format, the RAW file is unchanged, but you are no longer using the RAW file once you work on it with anything you can always revert back to the original RAW file if you want if you want to keep the edits you made you will need to duplicate the image and then revert the original back to RAW.
in short Photos does send a RAW file to the extensions, but once they are edited they send a jpg back to Photos leaving the RAW file unmodified so you can always revert back to it.
in short Photos does send a RAW file to the extensions, but once they are edited they send a jpg back to Photos leaving the RAW file unmodified so you can always revert back to it.
Just a question. Do you mean a DXO Optics Prime Noise reduction plugin?? If so, where can I find that?
Thank you!
Ted Wilson
Veteran Member
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