Luminar 4.3 won't launch as a Photoshop Plug-In
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Hi, I recently upgraded to Luminar 4.3 and now Luminar doesn't launch as a Photoshop Plug-In. It will only launch as a standalone. It's still listed in the Photoshop Filters Menu but won't launch from Photoshop. What should I do?
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I have tried everything suggested in this thread. The last thing I did was uninstall Luminar 4 using Revo Uninstaller so all registry entries and directories were wiped out. I reinstalled using the OFFLINE installer. With the offline installer I at least didn't have to resort to the Windows 8 compatibility mode trick. On install Luminar 4 saw I had both Lightroom and Photoshop CS6 and installed them. After rebuilding my Library of photos the same result, Lightroom version 6.14 was working fine but no plugin shows up in the filters drop down in Photoshop CS6. I tried Kirk's fix for like the 20th time. Uninstalled the PS plugin. Rebooted. Launched Luminar 4. Installed the PS plugin. Rebooted again. Checked if Luminar 4 showed up in the filters drop down but still no luck. I hope this issue is addressed in a not too distant release.
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I don't know if this may be related but I had to reinstall a number of Looks (preset packs) after having completely uninstalled Luminar 4 with Revo. What I noticed was that each time I clicked out of Luminar to restart it it would hang on the splash screen until I used the task manager to kill the task. Then, the second time I launched Luminar it would load. I wonder if some of the above problems with the plugins not installing is that going from a user launch to an admin launch is flaky because Luminar is not getting out of memory, releasing memory, or has some kind of hung process.
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PC running Windows 10 Pro.
I did use the update function to migrate to 4.3. Everything appeared fine launching standalone and as a plugin from Lightroom. Just today I had reason to use Photoshop CS6 for edits that could not be done in Lightroom. I realized that I could finish up in Luminar 4 without having to go back to Lightroom by opening the filters drop down. That is when I discovered that Luminar 4 was not appearing as a plugin for CS6, After spending hours trying many of the things suggested in this thread I decided to do a complete uninstall of Luminar 4 using Revo Uninstaller. I assume the new install would have created a brand new database as all the registry entries and and Luminar directories were deleted in the clean uninstall using Revo. seeing as how I explained above that all registry entries were removed and a made reference to Windows uninstall software you might have guessed I was on a Windows PC running the latest version of Luminar 4.
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And you tried right click run as admin to launch luminar 4. Uninstall o plugin. Close app. Run as admin launch install plugin, close app and restart computer. Then test plugin.
If that doesn’t work, confirm the plugin gets installed in the correct directory, skyline should be able to provide you the manual plugin which you can test as well. But after you add it, restart.
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When I right click and run as admin the program hangs at the splash screen and hour glass. Have to use Task Manager to kill the app. Then set Luminar to run in compatibility mode Windows 8. Software st least starts. Uninstall the PS plugin. Close app. Reboot PC. Run as Admin in Win 8 mode again. Close app. Reboot PC again. Then look for plugin in Photoshop CS6. Still not listed. The plugin definitely does not show up in any sub-directory under \\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS (64 bit)\.
It should be in the Plug-ins folder under the above path. That's where all my other Plug-ins to other external editors are. If I could get the actual plug-in it would be easy to copy it to the correct folder. Given the problems others are having, it may not actually launch Luminar 4 if it were there.
Thanks for the help.
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Mike try this. They sent me this in my early days of trying to get it to work. Copy the plugin into the correct path below, and reboot, test.
- Make sure Photoshop is closed.
- Download the plugin from here.
- Navigate to the Photoshop Plugins folder. The default path is: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Plug-Ins\CC
For Photoshop CS5 and CS6, the paths will look like this: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop version name\Plug-Ins\Filters
and C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop version name\Plug-ins - Copy the .8bf file into the folder(s) you've opened in Step 3.
Here is the video tutorial that may also be helpful: https://www.loom.com/share/a38b3e9ffcea49f9b7f76f540f843af4
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Thank You. Copied the .8bf file to the correct CS6 directory and works perfectly. The Skylum developers need to get this sorted. The Luminar 4 install deleted all previous plug-ins related to Luminar products. I bought Luminar Flex. Seldom use it, but it did have a working plug-in in Photoshop CS6. After the 4.3 Luminar 4 update it disappeared. Well at least now, thanks to you, I can use the latest Luminar product as a plug-in in Photoshop and Lightroom.
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Great news Mike, glad to be of help. RCSB, did you try the following:
close everything, right click run as admin luminar 4. uninstall the plugin.
Close luminar 4. Right click run as admin luminar 4. Install plugin.
REBOOT.
Open Photoshop and test. Let me know if it worked, and if your shortcut on desktop has a shield on it or not.
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It finally worked!!!!!!!!!!! After reboot on first test launching the plug-in the Luminar splash screen showed up (which it didn't before) but it hanged and a couple of minutes later the computer crashed. Rebooted again and launched the plug-in once more from PS and it worked!!!!
Many thanks for the help, Shaun.
That said, the ""connection" with Capture One is not working (I'm a C1 user and "Edit with" Luminar should open your file in Luminar and it doesn't at the moment.
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Mike Thompson I'm afraid that the .8bf plugin will not work without the actual app being installed on your computer.
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Kirk, you have not read this thread carefully enough. Luminar 4.3 HAS NEVER failed to install, I think it is a UAC problem or permissions problem that it cannot successfully copy the plug-in to the CS6 plug-in directory when it actually thinks it has. It is also true that in Windows 10, when Luminar 4 is launched with administrator privileges, it stops loading and hangs at the splash screen. The workaround is to put the app into Windows 8 compatibility mode.
As I said to Shaun manually copying the Luminr4.8bf to the CS6 plug-ins directory DID INDEED resolve all my problems.
Now my question was can I get a link to the .8bf files for the other products I own, namely Luminar Flex? It's .8bf file was deleted by the Luminar 4.3 install. I also own Luminar 3 and Luminar 2018 but no longer have them installed.
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I am SO FRUSTRATED by this. I tried to follow The Shaun method but mine is not working.
- Win 10 Home, 10.0.19041 Build 19041 - Bare Metal install 2 days ago
- 32GB RAM, 383GB Free on SSD C:\
- Installed and uninstalled Luminar at least 4 times, installed as Admin
- Rebooted after Admin install of Luminar
- It asks me for my Activation Key (so that tells me it is indeed a fresh install)
- ALL of the menus are grayed out (Except for Language and About, even Help is grayed out) so I can't do the UNINSTALL REINSTALL thing.
- Copied over the .8bf file to the proper directory
- Run PS CC 2020, I see the plug in under Filter, when I click it, I get the spinning wheel for less than a second and then nothing.
This is utterly ridiculous. I am using lots of profanity right now but will refrain from it here, :( What should I do?
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Holy {beeeeppp} - I got this working.
- After fresh install
- Rebooted
- Ran Luminar in standalone as admin (menus still grayed out)
- Loaded a random image - menus appeared
- Uninstalled PS plug in
- Rebooted
- Ran Luminar again as Admin
- Installed Plug in
- Ran PS
- Presto, it worked
Skylume - shame on you for putting your customers through this! This was WAY too dang hard. Thank you to those here in the forum taking time to help us poor blokes out in the wild.
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I am not sure, this was my 1st purchase from them. I like their software very much but this clearly hasn't been thoroughly tested. BTW, since I wrote my post I had to completely re-image my PC. When it came time to reinstall Luminar, I indeed ran into the same exact issue but I used my method above and it worked the 1st time.
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Hi Wagner,
I'm sorry for the inconvenience caused. Our developers are doing their best to solve the problem as soon as possible.
Be sure you'll ve notified as soon as the fix is there in this thread:
https://community.skylum.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360009453700?
Thanks for your understanding.
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Bought a new PC and sort of dreaded installing this SW again but....
- Installed Luminar, registered it, it launched just fine
- Tested PS plug-in, didn't launch as expected
- Loaded desktop Luminar app, loaded a test image.
- Went into the settings, uninstall PS Plug-In, Close Lumiar
- RUN AS ADMIN (Important), re-install Plug in
- Tested PS Plugin, worked great.
So in my case on Windows 10 (latest build w all updates and latest PS w all updates), this has worked twice.
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Hi Steve Cowell,
Here's the link to 4.2.0:
https://downloads.skylum.com/luminar4/win/Luminar4Setup_offline_420.exe
I'm so sorry to hear that. Please, reach us via https://skylum.com/support and we'll see what else we can do.
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