LongLensPhotography
Th..th..that's all folks!
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- LongLensPhotography
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A quick first impressions review of Luminar AI:
The app has lots of options. The first part is called Templates and is clearly geared towards either beginners or someone in dire need of saving time... You quickly get lost in there if you want fine and well defined control.
The second part or "Edit" presents a lot of similar sliders as found in Lightroom. I would say one does better in some areas and vice versa but LRC is better laid out and more intuitive at least to me. The histogram is not enabled by default and is tiny... Even worse there is no proofing mode that I can find making it pretty useless, except perhaps when starting from a well defined TIFF file.
As a current LRC user I didn't download it to try out the basics. The interesting part was the AI. Sadly in my view it failed to live up to the expectations. The promised SKY AI V2 is missing and one is instead presented with the old V1 version which is in my opinion just making a complete mess. V2 is perhaps coming at some point in 2021 if they can make it happen at all (they literally promised the moon on the stick and it will hard to deliver). So forget sky reflections for now. This is one edit I can't figure out in Photoshop, particularly where there are ripples and other movement.
Augmented sky is very gimmicky. Sun rays perhaps could be useful. I'm not sure on that one as not many images are suitable for it. It shouldn't be hard to achieve the same effect in Photoshop. Finally, it failed miserably with the fog / mist AI on a reflective Elan Valley landscape image. Forget AI mist on the lake. All it does is brighten and reduce contrast over very large portions of image. Edit: the latter two can be quite effective specifically in the forest scenes, but may also introduce some imperfections or artifacts. I'm not sure if that alone is worth the money
I understand this all sounds very negative, and it is from my position. Your mileage may vary. I want to be clear it applies to Luminar AI v1.0.0 and hopefully the updates will bring the needed and promised improvements.
In short:. It is NOT some miracle solution that will generate pixel perfect photorealistic AI masterpieces in one click. It is also not a 1:1 Lightroom replacement, but in some respects may be quite close.
However, it may suit certain groups of users looking for a quick and effective image processing, beginners, or perhaps those seeking non-subscription based RAW processor as an alternative to Adobe.
Notably the company is now pushing everyone to buy the software with theoretical 30d refund window and the 7d trial option is hidden very deep. The main point is: I very strongly urge anyone interested to get the free trial and make your mind up before parting with the cash.
The app has lots of options. The first part is called Templates and is clearly geared towards either beginners or someone in dire need of saving time... You quickly get lost in there if you want fine and well defined control.
The second part or "Edit" presents a lot of similar sliders as found in Lightroom. I would say one does better in some areas and vice versa but LRC is better laid out and more intuitive at least to me. The histogram is not enabled by default and is tiny... Even worse there is no proofing mode that I can find making it pretty useless, except perhaps when starting from a well defined TIFF file.
As a current LRC user I didn't download it to try out the basics. The interesting part was the AI. Sadly in my view it failed to live up to the expectations. The promised SKY AI V2 is missing and one is instead presented with the old V1 version which is in my opinion just making a complete mess. V2 is perhaps coming at some point in 2021 if they can make it happen at all (they literally promised the moon on the stick and it will hard to deliver). So forget sky reflections for now. This is one edit I can't figure out in Photoshop, particularly where there are ripples and other movement.
Augmented sky is very gimmicky. Sun rays perhaps could be useful. I'm not sure on that one as not many images are suitable for it. It shouldn't be hard to achieve the same effect in Photoshop. Finally, it failed miserably with the fog / mist AI on a reflective Elan Valley landscape image. Forget AI mist on the lake. All it does is brighten and reduce contrast over very large portions of image. Edit: the latter two can be quite effective specifically in the forest scenes, but may also introduce some imperfections or artifacts. I'm not sure if that alone is worth the money
I understand this all sounds very negative, and it is from my position. Your mileage may vary. I want to be clear it applies to Luminar AI v1.0.0 and hopefully the updates will bring the needed and promised improvements.
In short:. It is NOT some miracle solution that will generate pixel perfect photorealistic AI masterpieces in one click. It is also not a 1:1 Lightroom replacement, but in some respects may be quite close.
However, it may suit certain groups of users looking for a quick and effective image processing, beginners, or perhaps those seeking non-subscription based RAW processor as an alternative to Adobe.
Notably the company is now pushing everyone to buy the software with theoretical 30d refund window and the 7d trial option is hidden very deep. The main point is: I very strongly urge anyone interested to get the free trial and make your mind up before parting with the cash.
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