Skylum software's Luminar 4 image editing application is now shipping. The company had been giving us a few glimpses at the software's new AI-powered editing tools over the past few months, including the AI Skin Enhancer and Portrait Enhancer filters, the AI Sky Replacement filter and the AI Structure filter which selectively enhances textures and detail in images. Now the package is finally available to users.
In addition to the new tools there's also a revamped user interface that, according to Skylum, will shorten the learning process for new users and, thanks to customizable tools, should provide ease of use for beginners and veteran users of Luminar alike.
Luminar 4 is available is a standalone application but can also be used as a plugin for Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom Classic and Photoshop Elements, as well as Apple Photos for macOS and Aperture.
The full version will set you back $89, an update from a previous Luminar version will cost you $74. Mixed-computer households can share the same product key for Mac and PC which can be activated on 2 devices. More information is available on the Skylum website.
Purchased Luminar 4 to check out the sky replacement and any other "AI" tools it might offer. The sky masking works really well (and is quick), especially with complicated margins (e.g. foliage against sky). However, the software has started leaving a 50%? transparent original sky image over/under the new sky. This is usually visible. Export is very slow, but I assume some processing remains at the time of export.
Export speeds are really slow. Crashed upon opening an image from USB dongle. Rendering is average, slower than a Lightroom which is already not a speed demon on Mac. Sky replacement is interesting, sometimes it really works quite well. I can see it using for quick real estate shots in taken in overcast day. In other cases it is clunky to use. Sometimes, sky replacement does not even work if I do something with AI accents. Might be good solution for very quick edits but for serious work I would skip it. Would purchase sky replacement plugin for photoshop though, it's not bad at all.
I use Luminar 4 on my Win10 desktop as a Photoshop plugin and haven't experienced any of the issues mentioned in many of the comments. Not a single crash, zero issues with installation, zero issues with application speed. I'm at a loss to explain why. I didn't spend a fortune on my editing hardware - Intel i7, 32 GB RAM, Nvidea GC, SSD. Based on my experience, would highly recommend.
What to say about this software? I purchased it for the sky replacement tool but the software itself isn’t very good. Masking is horrible, it‘s very very slow even on a high end machine. It’s just not ready, it’s buggy beta. And don’t even think that it could be an alternative to Capture One or Lightroom. It’s so far away of being competitive.
I was an early buyer fro Luminar 4 based on good reviews and hype about how great it was/would be. Now it is released, it won't install, and if it does install it wont run but crashes. This on on my 2 Windows 10 machines, a Laptop and a Desktop.
5 days on and there is absolutely no response from Skylum Support. Their support forum is alive with similar problems, the launch is a disaster and the lack of response is a disgrace.
Looks like I will be upgrading my Adobe Photoshop Elements to 2020 after all!
I had same experience but Skylum did work with me and finally sent an alternative download site which worked perfect. I’m learning and enjoying the program
I bought Luminar 3 in January and now they want full price for this "upgrade". Might as well have taken a subscription to the Adobe ponzi. They are not getting my money for this, anyway.
Why future upgrades should be free? They need to keep people on the payroll to develop those upgrades. It is not Adobe model but close and one still can decide on upgrade decision or upgrade later. This is the only sustainable business model these day. The benefit to consumers is that software now is way cheaper than it was years ago.
Disclosure: I did try Luminar 3 but found it too slow on my machine and did not even try Luminar 4. So, I have no bias in this discussion.
I'd generally agree that there's only so much in the way of upgrades that can be little or no cost to current users, but since Luminar 3 was such a train wreck and never really worked right or truly delivered promised features (at least not usably), it's hard to stomach an upgrade price over $10-15...
Interesting tool but no miracle worker.. I purchased it for the sky tool. Played around with it on bird and landscape images. Better than manually dropping in skies or using render filters, but it failed on one image by darkening my subjects. Still a lot of manual masking needed and I find the masking interface to be a real pain compared to PS...
I have absolutely no problems with this version, I consider it an excellent piece of equipment. I get wonderful results, maybe because I run a Mac, a clean running Mac
I bought Luminar 3, and it was a semi-functional piece of broken garbage, that barely ever worked on my high-end editing workstation. It kept freezing, crashing, and failing to load the editing tools. The memory leaks alone made the entire workflow a chore, and they were far from being the only issue.
They never actually fixed it, and now they are selling Luminar 4? How about actually fixing your product and supporting it through quality of life updates, instead of slapping a new number on it and asking for more money?
It still crashes extremely often, however sky replacement tool is too awesome. I do not know how they do masking but I am pretty confident it would take me otherwise hours to mask hairs and setup everything to achieve similar result which is possible by couple of sliders in Luminar.
I used Luminar Flex before, and was already happy with it. No crashes, nice filters etc. That's why I had no issue to preorder Luminar 4. I still use it as a plug-in only (within Apple Photos), and it works fine for me. No crashes, fast, IMHO better user interface than before, and the new tools are worth it for me.
I can understand that people who used L3 standalone are frustrated. I see that most issues occour with the standalone version.
Sadly couldn't agree more. And the fact that the Flex and other plugin versions purportedly work well is just another slap in the face. I'd like to see Adobe have real competition, but anytime someone asks about/mentions Luminar, I have to be honest, and my experience with Luminar 3 was pretty abysmal on both Mac and PC, so it's basically impossible to recommend even with caveats.
I'm not sure if it's because I'm using Fuji files but despite being on a 8th gen i7 with 16GB RAM it's pretty painful. Fine for individual images but terrible for workflow of anything more than a handful of shots.
I’m deeply offended seeing someone said this software is for “those who are too lazy to put in the work and those who have very little ability”
I guess when I start shooting film I can also say to that person digital photography is for “those who are too lazy to put in the work and those who have very little ability”
These products are for those of us who take way too many pictures and would rather be writing, shooting, working on video and having a life than fixing each tiny detail from scratch. However, I use Perfectly Clear, not Luminar.
Bought it for $69 really enjoy the sky replacement tool, using it for Real Estate photos and does a great job and luckily one can edit the mask. yet to touch on the other tools. Would be great if it was faster but my machine is a 2012 duel core imac so must not expect too much
Anyway there is no such things as AI - this is some scientist (atheists) and marketing dreams. But there is machine learning that if properly trained could be useful.
I preordered Luminar 4 and have been using it for a few days. I really like the AI features BUT the software is so buggy it is almost impossible to keep running! In two hours of testing yesterday the software crashed (simply disappeared) three times taking most of my image mods with it. Problems reported to Skylum support.
I would much prefer software development companies but less effort (and $$$'s) into marketing products and more into solid development and testing. I'm sick and tired of being a company's beta tester!!
Yes. As a software user since 1982 (I had an original Morrow Micro Decision), I am still annoyed by products that ignore the user. Currently my pet peeves are hipster user interfaces (are you listening, Luminar and DaVinci Resolve devs?). Please stop giving us gray-on-black, heavily iconized UIs! As for bugs, I'm no longer willing to participate as an unpaid beta tester - refund, please.
I bought, tried and gave up on both Luminar 1, 2 and 3 and Aurorahdr 1,2,3 : buggy, slow, huge files and aurorahdr cannot even autoselect brackets only to make a hdr batch (always wants to make hdr out of single files...)
I have written them a dozen times about how to specifically easily fix the problems, yet always got the answer that they will look into it and have the new version to make first!!!
Now i use exposureX5 as my main organizer and editor, it is not perfect yet way faster, with direct file system and i get instant personal responses for the issues i ask about :)
It is real disaster this days. When you start from operating systems up to the highest level apps. All is bugs over the bugs. And the way they fix it is with new version with more bugs........
I posted this comment nearly a year ago on Luminar's site. Has v4 addressed any of these issues? ["It appears that there are some great tools in Luminar, and I'm certain that a team of people has worked very hard to meet deadlines of releasing the new version. But, after waiting patiently for such a long time, it's hard to believe that I cannot batch rename images on export. Nor can I add keywords, or see full EXIF data. I used Luminar for my first shoot of 2019 hoping that I'd be able to use it for all my professional work going forward. It's still clunky (which is not unexpected for a new version). But I think there's a way to go yet."] ps Exporting a single image to the desktop of a relatively fast iMac is VERY slow Note to Luminar: There are obviously many photographers interested in using this app for serious editing. It has to be better than what has been released so far.
Metadata support was one of the first things I tried after downloading v4 and sadly it's sorely lacking.
My workflow involves importing to Lightroom, keywording and titling images, and then selecting a few from within Luminar 4 to apply edits and export for uploading to Flickr. So when I end up with photos without any of metadata I get really disappointed.
I bought Luminar 3 and have no intention getting version 4. Reason? Promises to fix Luminar 3 was only partially honored. Until they fix 3 no more money from my pocket is going to them. The program has potential but is lost of execution.
I am a hobbyist photographer. I purchased Luminar 4 and it seems like the exact software I need. I agree that it is little bit slower in processing, especially while exporting to jpeg. But it produces beautiful output with very basic and simple steps. The sky replacement is simply amazing. Also thanks to Skylum that there is no-subscription headaches.
Opinions seem to vary from 100% love it to 100% hate it. Sadly some hate comments seem to come from people who never used Luminar, or (Adobe employees??, Just asking). I think it is worth a try, so I'm downloading a 30-day free trial.
It's a bit tricky to find this offline installer, and if you try to download from Skylum main page using Firefox, it will block the download, and label it as a security risk. So here is the link to the offline installer (an msi file, approx. 500 MB):
How did you make the determination that comments are from people that never used Luminar? I am adamantly against anything Skylum. I bought into Luminar 2 and the empty promises of Luminar 3 which never materialized. The DAM which they touted as going to be something revolutionary and great never came to life and was quickly abandoned. They put out Flex to work as a plugin without the DAM and that was quickly abandoned. All the hate for this company and their products was earned by them. My issues pale in comparison to others. Just read through their forum and the ridiculous responses from Skylum.
I'm with you, col4bin. I'll keep using Athentech Perfectly Clear for quick initial adjustments (after Camera Raw). PClear works "buglessly," is much faster than Luminar (which I own but rarely use), and gives me easy access to the tweaks I commonly use.
Yes I am one who has nothing but BAD about Luminar 4 and I have never used it! Why, because I bought it and it won't install at all on one Windows 10 high-end laptop, and installed but crashes on my high. end desktop.
I have sent numerous crash reports and Event Log files with the crash events, but still have nothing for my £68 2.5 weeks after the launch. Thousands are experiencing these issues and nothing appears to be being dome about it. I never have problems with any other software, but Luminar 4 is a dud, if not a con trick.
Translation: You won’t have to pay a truly creative person because we “think” we’ve created software that can do the same thing ... any monkey can be trained to use it.
If you have a modern/recent camera, you are, and have been, using AI. If you have a relatively modern smartphone, smart TV, ..., smart anything, you have been using AI. Technology advances fast. Staying stationary is an option, though.
No AI is not on your camera, smart TV, ... There is just a label on the box of it. Most AI applications train an algorithm. Once training is done the algorithm is put into your device - no more learning is done.
There is no such thing as AI!!! Just some atheists and marketing department dreams. But there is machine learning that could be useful if properly done and used. If you missed out around 1910-1920 communist leaders tried to create new race. Strong and stupid as monkeys and to be able to do some useful work as humans. They tried to fertilize woman with monkey sperm. Little bit later Nazis tried to create perfect "white" race that will rule the world and all other will be slaves. And made biggest medical experiments with alive people. Today so called scientist again a trying to produce smarter monkeys by mate of monkey and human genes. At same time we are looking for life at places where life could not exist like cosmos. And during that time we abort most of the children in the idea to be equal and have equal chance and rights. And of course to feel better. So there it is AI and the great world we are creating!
AI is not new. It has been there for many years. AI is on your camera, on your smartphone, on your TV, ..., etc. The technology world cannot just sit and watch us continue to drive Ford Model T's.
Whatever you call it, automatic image adjustments work for me, as a first step in post. Camera Raw's Auto adjust is helpful, as is Perfectly Clear. Saves me time. My objections to Luminar (which I own) are that it is slow and the UI is annoying - not straightforward and fraught with icons and grey-on-black hipster typography.
I bought the Luminar 3 and noticed these things below. They not only have not improved on them in v3, they launched v4 and these are still not fixed. I suggest waiting for v6 or v7 - maybe then the software will be worth trying.
- the app still feels slow switching between raw photos in edit mode (probably because there are no miniatures being generated) - the UI is worse than in v3 - many filters are hidden and you have to click more (although a bit more responsive, that seems to be a small improvement) - no ability to sample a color for HSL adjustment, just a the several basic colors to choose from - grain filter looks awful, artificial and unappealing - no ability to sample curve adjustment. - when dragging bottom left side of the curve, the whole curve moves (in C1 or LR, the middle stays in place, which is definitely more convenient) - exporting is slow
@themountainphotographer: 'Skylumber' is very appropriate. Compared to Lightroom it is SLOW! And Lightroom is not all that snappy even on an i7 CPU w/ lots of RAM and an SSD.
i dont think they will fix the issues, since i pointed out several issues in both version 1,2 and 3 and likewise for aurorahdr, so i have now given up and use the decent and fast exposureX5 instead, having wasted days and way too much money on the fake promises of the macphun/skylum updates :(
I'm not comparing it to Lightroom. That's what Skylum obviously does. And maybe Photoshop as well.
I agree on your statement "I will fix your images for you".
And that's what Luminar is.
I stated that I wished they would have let the UI just for that matter: selection of filters without grouping them together to meaningless categories. Categories that are meant be similar to other RAW editor apps.
Btw. editing RAW images in Luminar is awful. The highlights slider introduces noise in the sky... the preview 100% image is not very sharp, at least not as sharp as Lightroom shows it...
I make the crucial adjustments in Lightroom and when I want a specific look that I know I could achieve easily in Luminar I open the image in the Luminar Plugin.
Like fixing family members faces with just a few clicks is OK for me.
I don't have the time diving deep into Photoshop as a hobby shooter. Lightroom+Luminar is enough for this matter for now.
Well if I read a *Lightroom wannabee* there is some kind of comparison I guess. But besides that I think Skylum is aiming at a different kind of customers. Those of who want to get 'attention' results in just a few clicks (relative) without the need of (expensive) Photoshop or spending lots of time.
By that it's not new, there are dozens of software promising that. But this one looks like it's really promising that what it does, with scary professional looking results (if used with care.)
It's not about lazy or not. I think many pro photographer will use the portrait features just to safe time. If they are not printing for high fashion magazines the new features are quite good.
Why not being lazy and saving lots of time when it is possible? :)
But I can understand you. Now more and more people are able to achieve good results without deep knowledge and lots of work. This is sad for photographers business I know.
No... portrait photographers will not use this to save time. In terms of rendering colors and face - just checked - and what I get from C1 without ever touching any sliders is astonishingly better (more pleasing colours, better skin rendition, smoother tone transitions, overall a more natural look) than any AI tweaks I could get from Luminar.
I expected it to work similar to Portrait Pro (or even Facetune for iOS), which could actually save time for certain low budget tasks, but this... It just looks like the defaults are overdone on clarity and sharpness, the AI just masks the face and decreases both clarity and sharpness and adds some funky blur/smear on top of that... Seriously? You can get immensly better results with just the texture slider in LR, not to mention the skin correction tools in C1.
Having wasted days of work and hundreds of dollars does sadly cause some frustration, especially when this product is being advertised here and everywhere, potential costumers should be warned about the countless problems and fake promises in these products!
This is actually good because you could get real feeling of what marketed product is! I really start look in any product support pages and forums prior to buy. You could learn much more than marketing materials and ads. of course you need to take it with salt and grain. But much better than nothing!
Again anger/hate. I have this product and the version before and aurora. I use them as plug-in to photoshop cc on Mac and Windows, They never crashed on me, they do what they need to do, they could be a little bit faster, in export but that’s it. Same with several things here. I own several and I never understand the hate dpr is full of. It is beyond what early adopter feedback used to be.
I think it's often an outlet for frustrated users who don't feel heard by the companies they patronize. Skylum is honestly a very good example of this dynamic in that their standalone software has never really lived up to the marketing claims the company makes, or honestly even been especially usable (I say this as someone who, perhaps foolishly, paid for Luminar 2 & 3). I'm glad your experience with the plugin products has been adequate, but it's not surprising to see users who've had entirely unsatisfactory experiences venting when there's no redress from Skylum directly - aside from "Luminar 5 will be out next year and it will fix EVERYTHING!"
The youtube video makes me puke. If you are into that sort of 'enhancement' (which you can do in any post prod workflow with any tool) be my guest, but I'd say you contribute to a distorted view of reality that populates the facebook and instagram streams and offers a view of a non existing world.
It's not that you can do that with other image editors (Photoshop) it's that with some exercise any one can do this kind of 'enhancements' (subjective) now. It will safe time as well for many.
So if you are into mixing images (especially skies) together quickly and creating 'fake imagery', this might be a very well engineered piece of software.
@PhotoRotterdam some people have clients and sell what clients want. Also, some of these tools do not need to be overused and can be a time saver vs conventional methods.
@Video-vs-photo Virtually any portrait-driven business requires some level of touch up, an efficient tool is welcome. Pornography and murders? Maybe, I do not know, seems like you are the expert and you would know. Pornography seems a good place to make good money, but not for everyone I would think, I got offered, I turned it down.
@armandino - I am the expert ....... No, just don like this "and sell what clients want". Means sell on every price. This is bad business practice and will end bad. About the tools it is good to have wide choice.
@Video-vs-photo There is ways in interpreting my message, I think you are trying to read it in extreme terms. When you are selling a product you sell something that differentiate you from others, which hopefully is not only or at all the price.... so clearly you have control over your product, yet unless you are an extremely successful business you do not entirely dictate your product, you listen to the client. It is a healthy balance.
how people very fast writing here negative feedback... who they are? I think they are guys from Adobe and other competitors, hen no need to pay attention to their "opinions". I used it often and except some stability problem (just sometimes!) its a great software, for non-pros and for pros too. And cheap.
maybe... I know just one thing - take and use it and get results... Even with Luminar 3 I got many good results in my work, very fast and high quality.
i don`t use any adobe software, but i`m a luminar user since the first beta versions (mac and also pc). I also bought every major update and things are getting worst. tonns of bugs (mosttly in the pc version), slow as hell, a lot of promisses with every update which are not included till now, so yes, i can understand that people get angry.
as an excuse for non functionality you get a limited 500px, viewbug or smugmug account
they did a real good job years ago with their macphun plugins and i rather use them than luminar.
now they are acting like a bunch of headless chickens. sorry, no more money from me, guys
Cheap and great is proper word for Luminar, I think. In fact now Luminar (and some others too) is cheap, but some others are overpriced! This is a proper word for them...
I don't understand why there is so much hate. While the software is not perfect, at least on Mac it allows pretty quickly to create pleasing images from otherwise dull raw files. It is hard to say how much real ML neural networks in this software, but the result is not bad and it is easier to get a nice image than in LR. Image catalog is atrocious and I wish they spent time on that, but I liked Accent AI with human non-adjustment introduced this year. Made processing photos that much easier. This software might not be marketed correctly - the best use case IMHO are baby boomers returning from their vacations and desiring to process 1000 pictures in one go. For that purpose Luminar is a great piece of software. I probably will never use Sky Replace like not once did I add sun rays to the photos, but may someone did. However, so long as there are programs like Luminar exist and are being developed, the industry is moving forward, that in my books is worth occasional 50$ upgrade fee.
Hi, I had luminar 3 and what kept me from using it (besides the cluttered menu) was the missing ability to mass process images. What I mean is copying development adjustment from one picture to others like possible in LR or C1. Is that possible now in Luminar 4?
Actual users seem to hate the software, yet each photo related blog or news website is full of Luminar this, Luminar that, „AI“, new version, rebates, bla. Very annoying. I even consider making and selling a browser plugin the replaces every Luminar content with an artificial sky.
That’s such a broad statement. Did you take a survey? I like using Luminar as well as other post software. They’re software tools to simplify the processing of image files, nothing more, nothing less.
Simple reason: Skylum spends 80% of their venture capital money on marketing. All rumor sites keep showing adverts, all photographers get it for free in return for some article or tweet, and sites like DPR and IR cover it in a high frequency unlike most other (and dare I say better) software besides Adobe. Year of free Smug Mug ($180) with $70 software... every year they give a bunch of stuff away for which I am sure they need to pay considerably.
A lot of talk and way less action. Software is still very buggy and sluggish, DAM features that were promised still haven't been delivered and a lot of their tricks just create incredibly fake looking images.
Some filters show promise but overall execution is just bad.
No it is influencer marketing since all these sites and photographers do not disclose it as advertising ("they are being paid for exposure on the software, for every single feature they announce") and pretend that the software is the greatest things on the planet. None of them looks at this software critically.
Core group that created Nik Collection formed MacPhun (now Skylum) post Google Acquisition. I use Luminar 3 or 4 as a tool as I would photoshop, affinity pro, Aurora 2019, or even Nik Collection. In the end, it's important to me that software works as advertised. As far as DAM, Lightroom is my repository of choice. Plug-ins from LR help me access these various software tools.
Why is Luminar taken seriously? If the features work, it is in part a way to turn your photos into something you did not really create. Their edits are extreme, almost fraudulent. Each example of slowness or bugs will always be fixed in the next release, which just brings more bugs. It is always slow, PC or Mac. I loaded the 3.1.4 update and suddenly all of my images were blurry. After an hour of hunting, worrying that it had screwed up my images, and wondering what the white caution sign meant, I accidentally discovered that confirming the location of my Pictures folder on my mac fixed the issue. Who would have thought? There are complaints on the internet of blurry photos. Try refinding your Pictures folder and it might fix it. These bozos are not to be taken seriously. I fire it up out of morbid curiosity every few months, download the latest update, amaze myself at all the bugs and problems, wonder who really uses it, and quit for another few months. I wish I had saved my $60.
I use Luminar as a plug in, and it works perfectly fine for me. No problems at all, and it's also fast on my mac.
Since you have full control about the AI-Filters (there is a slider in each!), it's upt to you how much you apply. I get really pleasing results with it, that would take much more time in other software.
And it's not "fake" at all, since you can do exactly the same in other software too, but with much more effort and knowledge. OK, the Sun-ray filter is pretty unique, and really fake. But you don't have to use it.
Sky replacement is done by professionals too. Sometimes you just don't have the time to get back to a place with better sky. And I have to say this tool does a good job, with almost no effort.
Did those YouTuber all get paid to make the review positive? This software is beta at best. Slow, Crashes, Sky replacement only works in some selected situations. Not sure anybody should spend the money on it!
I just put 4 photos in it on a this year iMac , RAW photos from a7r4 and Leica M10. I had already 4 crashes in one evening. Happy it works for you, I am happy it is only a trail and didn't spend any money on it. I thought I would use it for sky replacement to JPG' but it doesn't not have that option.
Of course it has! I work only with jpeg within Apple Photos, and already tried the sky replacement in the Luminar Extension in Photos. With a jpg from my iPhone - and it worked like a charme.
They were not even able to fix the incompatibility with the Apple Magic Mouse, on which any inadvertent touch will flip between the images. A simple checkbox to disable mouse"wheel" scrolling in the film strip, as can be selected in LR, would have done the trick and was asked for over and over again by many. They promised it for each update in Luminar 3 but did not manage to get this minor fix implemented. Better not even remotely consider what was promised for the library. Sure, more and more fancy "AI" to trick up mediocre images was introduced. Nice-looking eye candy. But as far away as ever from a full-featured replacement for Lightroom or C1 especially because: DAM? No!
After some testing I must say I'm positively surprised about the new interface, and about the results I'm getting with the simple sliders for landscapes. I'm prepared to give it another try for quick processing of large numbers of images.
Have only begun testing but I'm a little disappointed with the portrait retouching mode so far. Maybe it was the specific photo I used, but it had trouble detecting faces. Has anyone got any tips/recommendations on this?
The retouching features seems to work much better on studio lit portraits...maybe lighting has something to do with it.
As a user of luminar 3 I'm extremely dissappointed that they have created a faking app for inserting any "suitable" sky and making artificial dummie - faces out of natural looking images. I'm even thinking of deleting my existing version of luminar 3. Shame on them!
I do not understand why are you on war trail with company that created feature that many photographers are using and this feature is very comfortable and saves a lot of time. Sky replacement is common technique. Usage of this feature is optional.
Dear Trk, I'm definitely not on any kind of war trail - I'm only trying to stay an honest hobbyist in my photography. I'm not willing to "safe" the time for waiting of the perfect light in a morning sky on a mountain top by faking a sky - that really would not satisfy me! Also changing the eye size or slimming faces and erasing signs of real life in a face would offend my attitude as a hobby photographer.
$74 to upgrade from ver 3 is daylight robbery especially when they didn't deliver on 1/2 the promised upgrades to 3 but implemented them in 4 instead - no sense of loyalty to the customer base.
They and On1 have no chance of ever biting a real piece of Adobe’s market if they keep upgrade prices like that. Yes, you can keep the old version forever - but who does that unless it’s Photoshop? And if you upgrade, it’s the same as Adobe’s awful subscription model. With a full version costing about €80, an upgrade from a version just before that should cost no more than €20
Even with CaptureOne, it's the same concept. Most people would update their software after about 2-3 years, and so for C1 for example, now you're at about $450 after 5 years of use (assuming you upgraded every 2-3 years).
Still cheaper than Adobe's $600 over a 5 year period, but with Adobe you are actually getting 2 pretty powerful programs (PS and various forms of LR) for $10 per month (something people forget).
As one of my friends puts it, "For the price of a martini, I can get both LR and PS."
It can't be simply improved by fixing bugs or adding features. Its problems are somewhere deeper. It's probably lack of good taste or any creative values.
Luminar is consistently the worst editor with annoyingly most aggressive PR & marketing.
Luminar 3 is still being actively updated, as in there are more updates to come before 2019 is through. So technically they can still make good on the promises. It seems pretty complete to me.
sirhawkeye64 "Other than open source, many are." True, but what has changed is the frequency of updates and the pricing. The new trend is to update yearly or sooner and charge almost as much as the original buy in. In the past major "charged for" updates happened every few years and the price to update was a smaller fraction.
There inlays the rub. Luminar does provide an alternative to "subscriptions" but in some ways the very nature of "staying up to date" precludes a year over year payment. And yes it absolutely is more expensive than version 1.0 despite the chasm of improvement. Skylum is however promoting that users may choose to simply "not update" should they feel L4 does not have enough value. My guess is progress (sometimes catchup) and competition comes at a cost and this cost is sadly funded by us the used users. It might not suit everyone, it is what it is.
Just to temper my last post, it should be noted that software used to cost a lot more. My imperfect memory tells me I may have paid $600 for Photoshop and $200 to update every couple of years. I also got Photoshop free when it was bundled with a Wacom tablet or a scanner.
@photo_rb that's what I was sort of getting at with my example. For now, some may be cheaper if you stick to a 2 year update cycle (for "perpetual" licensed software) but since many companies are adding so many features, many will update each year, and in the end, pay more than a subscription (and in particular, Adobe's).
I agree that software used to cost more, which is why I'm glad Adobe has a subscription model now, especially for PS (I never really used LR until about version 6 so I'm not that tied to the program), but PS I had been using for longer. I think some people forget what you get with the Photography bundle, which is two (or three, depending on how you count them) programs for $10. (Even PS alone for $10 per month would still be totally worth it). The other aspect is people forget about the updates with subscription. In the end, you might pay the same after 3-5 years for software, but with a subscription, you already have the latest version come year 3 or 5.
Unfortunately for the subscription model haters, I suspect that many of the larger companies will do away with perpetual licenses if they haven't already (even companies like PhaseOne, which was one of the big contendors to Adobe's LR that started offering a subscription model). And now it sounds like even Skylum is doing the same.
And I would say for what I pay Adobe each month, I think their progress is OK on LR and PS. I mean, there are still a lot of quirks in LR that I would like to see fixed (which is one reason I sort of stopped using it as my main RAW processor) but it's still great values at $10 per month.
@sirhawkeye64 - you are correct in that once into the Adobe subscription you have access to all sorts of stuff, including multiple versions of LR, BUT, some of which are incompatible with others though; And that's not the limit of the restrictions, you also need to use Apple - phone, tablet, laptop, desktop (all of which attract premium prices compared to alternatives) - if you are going to have a seamless workflow, so it's really more than the price of a martini.
You can keep the "old version full of bugs that will never be fixed" forever.
Crapware is what I call this and ON1.
As said many times: subscription software in all but name, capitalizing on the anti-Adobe sentiments. People keep buying all this cheap software which never covers their workflow, ultimately spending more than before.
Tried Luminar 4 as an upgrade from version 3 and they have still not fixed the Magic Mouse problem. Totally unusable and I do find some of the features very gimmicky. It does however seem to render Fuji files quite well.
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