Initial Reactions to Luminar AI
Answered
Pluses:
AI as a program performs much faster than Luminar 4. And editing photos in AI is much faster time wise..
The templates are very good, even as starting points. I noticed that it even adjusted the advance color contrast in a template.
The Composition suggestions for crops are very good.
The Local Adjustments are pretty good and I can see how they can eliminate the need for layers in many cases. But not all cases.
These are the new features in AI, and they are all good. But the rest of the program, to me, is a crippled version of Luminar 4 and I hate it for the reasons below.
Bugs:
I used a Local Adjustment of a Texture to see if I could bring in a white over black signature logo. And I can. The blend mode to make the white overlay and the black background disappear is different from in Luminar 4. But it works. I was playing with the flip commands to invert the texture top to bottom or left to right. But when I finished the texture was just as it was imported. When I went back to the catalog, it was flipped top to bottom. And stayed that way. That is a BUG.
Things I hate about Luminar AI that will probably make me request a refund and keep me on Luminar 4:
I cannot zoom my signature texture small enough nor can the texture be repositioned. There is no more TRANSFORMATION control. That is a deal killer.
If I double-click on a photo in the catalog tab to see it bigger, the software switches to the selected photo large in the middle of the screen and a row of thumbnails underneath. There was no intuitive way to go back to the default catalog "checkerboard" view.
Clicking on the Catalog tab doesn't work, because technically I am still in the catalog function. But the Catalog has two different views. So it takes two clicks to get back to the checkerboard view. Onc click on the edit tab, then another click on the catalog tab to go back to the checkerboard view.
There are also not any onscreen left and right arrows to "scroll" through the photos in the catalog. I can only select them from the thumbnails. Although the keyboard arrow keys do work. Left and right arrow select the next picture from the ribbon. But the up arrow key should be programmed to take me back up out of the ribbon view and to the default checkerboard catalog view. THERE ARE TWO VIEW IN CATALOG. Make it EASY to go between them.
I hate that I cannot adjust the radius of the brush in Dodge and Burn with the brush on top of the photograph. I need to see the exact size of the brush on the photo. The [ ] bracket keys do not change the size of the brush. The left bracket key actually goes to the next photo to the right in the thumbnail ribbon. Why is it changing photos while i am in EDIT mode?? The LEFT bracket key, this one [ should at least select the photo on the ribbon to the left. I need a fast and easy way to adjust brushes without moving the mouse back to the menu.
I should be able to adjust the radius of the brush while the brush is positioned over the photo. Moving my mouse back to the menus on the right to change brush size doesn't cut it. It is slow, clunky, and doesn't let me adjust the brush on top of the photo. Deal killer, horrible interface.
Also, nothing in AI works with Better Touch Tool which makes the Apple Mac touch bar work. BTT users may write a tool for Luminar AI, but you should have done it so on day one, users can use BTT to change brush radius. BTT works in Luminar 4.
The Topaz Sharpen AI and Topaz Denoise AI program work as add-ons in Luminar 4. They do not work at all in Luminar AI. There isn't even a menu for them and the Edit In Menu only shows Skylum products and Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom.
I read Skylum's answer and it appears you are stubbornly holding on to the No Layers decision, even thought the users seem to want layers back in some form. I can live with local adjustments, it is actually a decent idea.
But if removing layers kills all other companies' Add-ons, that is not a trade off I am willing to accept. This decision too will drive me to request a refund and stay on Luminar 4 until you begin to listen to and respect your users.
You can lead us to change with better tools and you have. No one is begging you to go back to looks. But you cannot take away tools we rely on without providing an effective substitute.
All the old looks are not sorted in any way, just a long list of each look. So I have no idea which package they came from.
Summary:
No signature logos
No adjustment to textures other than flip and zoom, and zoom out does not go far enough out.
Third party add-ons are dead in Luminar AI.
Adjustable Gradient that can allow top and bottom to be adjusted differently is gone too. No idea why. Although, t I suppose it can be done in local adjustment, but using 2 of the 10 local adjustments, doing one area first, copying the gradient, inverting it, and then doing the second area. But adjustable gradient let the user do everything on one page, easily going back and forth from top to bottom to top.
The rest are bugs, not design decisions and bugs can be fixed. To fix these design deficiencies will require an attitude adjustment and I just don't see that happening at Skylum. I don't think AI will fail, it will attract a whole new market of users. But the cost will be losing the professional users you have now.
BUGS IN THE COMMUNITY:
IN THE TOPIC POP UP MENU THERE IS NOT AN ENTRY FOR LUMINAR AI. you should anticipate a lot of discussion about AI, yet in the community, you are totally unprepared for it.
Clicking and holding in the T box at the top of the details window just brings up a white box. I am in dark mode on my Mac. It is actually when I hover over it WHITE ON WHITE text with a series of menus saying Normal, Code, and Header 1 ,2 ,and 3. It is not programmed correctly for Mac OS Dark Mode.
However, as I just discovered in Edit mode of a previously submitted post, the text menus display correctly in dark mode as black letters on a white background in edit.But not in compse.
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with all the things you find objectionable, at least you were able to find things - I have NO idea where any of the tools are - or even if there are any!! is there a crop tool? I haven't spent much time on this yet, while it seems that you have. after playing around with it on a photo I wanted to process, I ended up going back to Luminar 4 where I could find the tools I needed, and of course was able to make the adjustments in a reasonable time probably because L4 works so similarly to the previous Luminar programs.. I can't use Luminar AI as a plugin with Photoshop Elements - so there goes my workflow. A manual would really help!! obviously I'll hang in there for a while but so far, I'm feeling totally lost. I need something to walk me through the program - the previous programs (L) seemed so simple.
I'm still hoping for some improvements
Lynne
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Lynn:
Not sure you will see this reply.
They apparently didn't like what I wrote, so my comment is no longer public. Pending approval. Let's see if they approve it. If they do not approve it within 24 hours, or tell me what edit they think I should make, I will just file for my refund and move on, staying on Luminar 4 as long as possible. And starting to learn a different package for the day that Luminar 4 stops working.Crop is now under COMPOSITION. It is actually very good, because it can now adjust geometry with one click and it suggests a crop that I found very acceptable.
Still plenty of deficiencies that make the program unacceptable to me. -
Hi Norm,
Thanks for much for such a detailed feedback! I will be sure to share it with our product team.I will be glad to answer your concerns.
You can switch to the Galery view by pressing the G key.
You can scroll through the photos in your catalog by using the mouse wheel or the touchpad. However, if you want to select one of the photos, you will have to click on a photo or use the arrow keys.
The [ ] bracket keys should work with the English keyboard.> When I went back to the catalog, it was flipped top to bottom. And stayed that way. - I haven't been able to reproduce the issue with my own photos. Are you able to replicate it?
If so, could you please provide our support team with the files that you're working with?Here's how you can send us the files:
- Visit https://wetransfer.com/
- If it's your first time visiting this website, it might ask you to purchase a subscription. Simply select to proceed with the free version.
- Click Add your files.
- Select the file(s) on your computer.
- After you see all the files you need to send appear in the list, click the icon to the left of the Transfer button (the icon looks like a circle with three dots in it).
- In Send As select Link.
- Click Transfer.
- After the files have finished uploading, click Copy Link and paste it into your support request at skylum.com/support
Thank you in advance!
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Hi Helga:
Before I send you the original photo, I want to send you two screenshots and give your team the opportunity to test it with any other photo. Because I don't thin the photo used as the background makes a difference.
The first screenshot is from the EDIT tab of Luminar AI, in Local Masking, after I have inserted the texture, zoomed all the way out, set it to fit, and changed the blend mode. Then I flipped it around, upside down and left and right. I am sure each of these actions created an entry in the history. But my last flip restored the lettering to normal, readable, right side up.
I then immediately came back to Catalog and took a screenshot. You can see that the image in the catalog does not match the last edit I made in the local masking tool. The texture is inverted. After quitting the program in this state last night, and restarting just now, the inverted texture was gone, the catalog now reflected the final state of the edit.
If you cannot duplicate this with an image of your own, let me know and I'll upload my original image, but I honestly do not believe that my image is the problem.
It is something in the code when an image is written out to the catalog that isn't happening until the catalog is re-read upon startup. You didn't catch it in beta testing because the circumstances that cause it are rare.
Choose and insert texture, fit to size, then transform by zooming out, then change blend mode, then flip the text ture around a lot, but return to the starting point, then look at the catalog tab.
Notice in the screen shots the time of day in the upper right hand corner. One was done right after the other.
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Hi. Please contact us via https://skylum.com/support and send us a link to this post so we could keep track of all the info you send us.
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