Free Luminar 4

I downloaded it myself 3 weeks ago. I haven't received an email asking me to pay. I opened up the program a couple of days ago and it worked. So, who knows?

MNE said:

Carol Darby said:

I can’t understand why there is such negativity to the Adobe subscription as I think it is great value for a software that is constantly updated. I have it on my desktop Windows and travelling MacBook Air for $AU14 a month. Bargain. I used to have the regular version prior to subscription. The original outlay in Australia was $AU1400 and that was Photoshop only. I could have it on two computers but they both had to be the same platform. I only did every second upgrade and that was over $300. So $14 a month is a bargain.

Carol

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I don't get it either. I pay $10/month USD and get both Lightroom versions, PhotoShop, Bridge and everything else associated with those. I get free upgrades of every product.

So, do the people that pay more than $120/yr for a product get free upgrades?

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For comparisons sake, I upgraded to DxO Photolab 5 for $50. I don't usually upgrade every year. If I upgrade every two years, it costs me $25 per year. Minor updates and bug fixes are included for free.

I have Affinity Photo. I think I paid $50 4 or 5 years ago.

I had Lightroom 5 for approximately 7 years. Before that, I had Aperture for probably 7 years.

Using $120/year as an estimate for the last 15 years:

Aperture - $840

Lightroom/Photoshop - $840

Photolab - $240

Total - $1,920

I paid (purchase price plus upgrades):

Aperture - $270

Lightroom - $250

Photolab - $200

Affinity Photo - $50

Total - $770

That is a savings of $1,150 and growing. I expect to upgrade Photolab every two years. The savings will continue to grow at $95 per year.

If I chose to not upgrade, the software will continue to work. I still have Lightroom 5.7. I could still use it if I didn't shoot raw or if I processed the raw in Olympus Workspace and managed the photos in Lightroom.

If you continue this thought process to other software (MS Office, video editing, various utility software, etc.) and the savings can easily be $200 - $300 per year.

Thanks for the heads up on this. In the past I never warmed up to Luminar, but this version seems more mature and less buggy. The interface is easy to use. The Noise Reduction module compared to DXO Pure Raw is pretty poor from my initial usage. I will continue to evaluate this version.

Carol Darby said:

I can’t understand why there is such negativity to the Adobe subscription as I think it is great value for a software that is constantly updated.

Carol

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It's not a Negativity.

How much an average PS user can exploit of all PS possibilities? 3-5%. I think, there are a very small number of photographers(and/or graphic artists) who can use PS at perhaps 50-80% of what software can offer. Therefore, what updates can be constantly used by and average PS user?

I do have an old PS CS2 that is good for my - an amateur enthusiast needs and I would never will use in my lifetime even PS CS2 for 100% of what it could be done.

What's the reason for most to pay for subscription if it won't be used.

Subscriptions and updates could be good for those PS users who could squeeze at least 50% or more of what software can offer.

That's my point of view.

Trevor Carpenter said:

https://skylum.com/chip-luminar4

Got this from the Retouching forum, maybe of interest

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Hi Trevor,

Thanks for head-ups.

I did download and tried to play with a little bit and I think, I'll like and try to explore it more:

Original edit:





Edit after playing with Luminar4:







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Gintaras B. said:

Carol Darby said:

I can’t understand why there is such negativity to the Adobe subscription as I think it is great value for a software that is constantly updated.

Carol

Click to expand...

It's not a Negativity.

How much an average PS user can exploit of all PS possibilities? 3-5%. I think, there are a very small number of photographers(and/or graphic artists) who can use PS at perhaps 50-80% of what software can offer. Therefore, what updates can be constantly used by and average PS user?

I do have an old PS CS2 that is good for my - an amateur enthusiast needs and I would never will use in my lifetime even PS CS2 for 100% of what it could be done.

What's the reason for most to pay for subscription if it won't be used.

Subscriptions and updates could be good for those PS users who could squeeze at least 50% or more of what software can offer.

That's my point of view.

Click to expand...

I feel the same way, I don’t use 90%+ of the things Photoshop has to offer…

I’m using an old Photoshop version too and last Black Friday tried several options because I know I’ll eventually need to switch. One thing I noticed is that newer software like newer cameras seem to have better JPeg processing. That one reason made me decided to get a newer software, but am still deciding which.

Luminar 4 seems like a good alternative…

As the person who started this thread I thought I might give my appraisal of Luminar 4. I'm not very impressed. Although a lot of the functionality can be accessed with a single touch, I feel I can do all of this with Affinity Photo with much more control. The big one is the sky replacement which is very impressive but I am not keen on sky replacement images that I see and I would definitely need some practice to make it natural looking. I can see that it would be incredibly useful for people who do design work and composites but not for straight photographers like me. It's quite fun to play with and as a freebie definitely worth having.

Trevor Carpenter said:

As the person who started this thread I thought I might give my appraisal of Luminar 4. I'm not very impressed. Although a lot of the functionality can be accessed with a single touch, I feel I can do all of this with Affinity Photo with much more control. The big one is the sky replacement which is very impressive but I am not keen on sky replacement images that I see and I would definitely need some practice to make it natural looking. I can see that it would be incredibly useful for people who do design work and composites but not for straight photographers like me. It's quite fun to play with and as a freebie definitely worth having.

Click to expand...

I hesitated to download Luminar because I am happy with the tools I currently use. Still, I wanted to give it a fair look. It has a few nice bells-n-whistles, but nothing that would compel me to switch.

Of course, now I am getting a lot of emails from them ... smh

MNE said:

Trevor Carpenter said:

As the person who started this thread I thought I might give my appraisal of Luminar 4. I'm not very impressed. Although a lot of the functionality can be accessed with a single touch, I feel I can do all of this with Affinity Photo with much more control. The big one is the sky replacement which is very impressive but I am not keen on sky replacement images that I see and I would definitely need some practice to make it natural looking. I can see that it would be incredibly useful for people who do design work and composites but not for straight photographers like me. It's quite fun to play with and as a freebie definitely worth having.

Click to expand...

I hesitated to download Luminar because I am happy with the tools I currently use. Still, I wanted to give it a fair look. It has a few nice bells-n-whistles, but nothing that would compel me to switch.

Of course, now I am getting a lot of emails from them ... smh

Click to expand...

I had also installed the complementary copy as headed up by this thread 2~3 weeks ago.

Similar to your opinion, I am not particularly happy with it over the current set of software I am using. I shall keep this on my computer for a while for further experience. I did the same to many commentary/free software previously. e.g., I uninstalled the Aurora a few months later while I finally realized the NIK can do HDR much better.

However, not sure whether it is because of my antivirus software or what, I receive no ad e-mail from Skylum so far (or they had been classified junk and be sorted immediately?).

i downloaded it and i asked for the licence but i didn't installed it yet.

i need to read first about what it can do for me what i can't with my present applications. it's the older version and i read that the new version with AI is much better at most things. So i am hesitating to instal.

i don't want to overcrowd my pc with sleeping software.

It worked on my laptop which I don't use for photo editing. It won't install properly on my desktop which has a calibrated monitor. Get the message "Database failed to Load". Have had a few attempts including copying the installation file that was downloaded to my laptop onto the desktop in case something was corrupted.

Considering people's comments about it not being so great I won't persevere. Will just have a play on the laptop.

I picked up a free copy of Luminar 3 a couple years ago and found it very useful in spicing up a long-term floral/botanical project. Just a lot of fun to mess around with and use to inject new life into routine images. I've just gotten a copy of Luminar AI ($30 on sale) and am looking forward to playing with it. Wish, though, it had some upscaling included.

Its a trial. Luminar 4 is slooooooooowwwwww

On my old PC (iCore 5 running on Windows 10 x64) it launches very slow (on-line or not), needs > minutes to launch, but do smoothly on operation.

I don't think your PC is older than mine?

--
Albert
** Please forgive my typo error.
** Please feel free to download my image and edit it as you like **