September DAM Update
Yesterday our CEO, Alex Tsepko released the following statement about the upcoming Digital Asset Manager (DAM) update for Luminar 2018:
"We know that hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people are waiting for this update. But mainly because there are so many people who need this tool, we wanted to take just enough time to make everything right.
We promise we will ship the DAM this year. I know it has been a long wait, but we don’t want to ship a product that we would not use ourselves. The new Luminar (with DAM) will bring you great speed and the most incredible user experience available. Your photos will play the main role. Our software aims to get out of the way.
The update will be free for everyone who has Luminar 2018.”
Since that post we’ve had a few questions:
Q: Will Luminar 2018 be updated with the DAM or will all Luminar 2018 users get a copy of Luminar 2019?
A: Luminar 2018 will be updated with the DAM
Q: How long after Luminar 2018 is updated with DAM will Luminar 2019 be released?
A: We plan to release Luminar 2019 later next year.
Q: Will Luminar 2018 users get updates to the DAM to address bugs?
A: Seeing as there will be several months between the release of DAM and the next (paid) major version upgrade, there will be updates to address bugs.
Q: Will Luminar 2018 users get a discount on Luminar 2019?
A: Yes. We always provide upgrade discounts for our customers. However, pricing for Luminar 2019 (and discount amounts) have not yet been finalized.
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Hi Verlon,
Our goal is not to copy Lightroom (or Aperture, Apple Photos, etc.). The Luminar Library has been designed from the ground up to be fast and simple - and presents a new way of organizing and working with photos. It may not be the perfect fit for all photographers, but we hope you'll take the time to check it out once it is released. It might surprise you.
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@Angela,
sorrry to rain on your parade but you should have asked people who are using a DAM. Keywording for many (if not all) is a must (that's why Lightroom CC has a slow uptake, nobody I know who really needs a DAM is willing to dumb down his workflow with that tool). What's even worse though is that you don't give us control over the metadata - when exporting photos, due the new legislation within the EU - photographers better strip certain information from the export (location data for example) while adding other data (copyright) is a must. To be able to produce images that can be uploaded to (micro-)stock proper IPTC keywording is a must. So sorry, while "re-imagining" things may be the way for small companies to find their niche you have (and still are) marketing Luminar as a Lightroom alternative and there you currently score a 0 out of 100 possible points and the new library will only get you to 5/100 of what really makes LR so indispensable.
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Addendum: Had you asked DAM users you would have heard that star ratings, color labels are rarely used at all because they are much too coarse. How would you go ahead and find a Mantis religiosa on say a sloe bush when asked to produce such an image for a panel in a nature reserve? I have about 1000 different subjects in my collection - all are nature images, the color tags are woefully inadequate to make any meaningful selections, I have done photography projects trying to photograph certain species spanning over 10 years, so your date search is ridiculously limited...
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I shoot with two identical bodies. So when I import into Lr, I have Lr change the file names to "camera body serial number"-"4 digit sequence number". This means as long as I do not shoot more than 10,000 files per day with the same body (not very likely), I do not have to work about duplicate file names. For auto folder and file naming/renaming, we need the library to be about to use any of the metadata files such as shoot date, camera body serial number,....etc.
The classic reference how how a good Library works is the Library and Import functions in Capture One Pro.
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I am beginning to think the Library feature will be less than spectacular. borderline just a simple folder view....kinda like Mojave is now with photos in a folder.
The blog post showing off colors, star-ratings, favorites seems very basic. This is NOT exciting and new and simply the way others have used in their DAMs. this is copying a system already and a very basic one at that. the blog post tries to show these great ways photographers can use those ratings but if a photographer is already using a DAM (or has in the past) we know what those are and how we can use them. And even Apple Photos and GooglePhotos use Favorites, so that is nothing special.
Will we see any concrete information in November showing off the Libraries that will launch in December? Not a few clips of scrolling images, or sorting by date (really nothing new there in the world of DAM). BUT Key Features that will set Luminar Libraries apart?
On1 Photo Raw 2019 has a list of key features they are pushing in their latest release. these are exciting to customers and potential customers. Luminar simply says we have great things...ratings, favorites, scrolling, oh ahh but those are nothing NEW in the DAM world. Nothing that sets Luminar apart. It seems that Luminar Libraries will be on par with free Photo DAMs.
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Hi Angela,
I am not suggesting you copy Lightroom. After all, I do not like Lightroom. That said, certain features are expected in a photo DAM. For example, the ability to manage photos. You could not handle the photos at all under the claim of being different, but you see how that might fail to appeal to photographers.
Abandoning keywords and the inability to edit metadata introduces real concerns. Someone already mentioned new privacy regulations in the EU. If you intend to make a radical change to how we manage photos, you’re going to have to give us a clue or expect us to be suspicious.
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Angela is the king of Spin, been hearing her lame repetitive excuses for 2 years now on DAM and other topics. So sorry I bought from this company. 2plus years to develop DAM they must hire high school kids to do their programing. I uninstalled all their software and went back to my older version of LR and Photo elements. At least they gave what was promised. CEO promised DAM by the end of this year, now I see post sometime late 2019. I give up.
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@Colin Grant there was the promise of a new system to free us from the shackles of old ways. It wasn’t just going to be a “checklist of must-have features.” So how does this radically alter my organizing workflow? Order by date? Tag by color?
@skylum I do not see the grand vision. How is this an improvement over Lightroom or any of the competition? I’m sure you had something in mind, but this looks like what I did in my pre-DAM days in Windows Explorer; create a year folder, create a month folder, create an event folder, and copy photos. -
If you had followed the threads here and elsewhere you would have known the functionality was going to be nowhere near that of the professional level stuff like Lr. It was always going to come in well below the level of the Skylum hype and the hope is that future updates will bring with them increased functionality. That is the promise. I never expected Skylum to deliver even a 75% completed DAM but what we have been given does perhaps give them something to build on. My personal view is that they should not have built a DAM but rather taken steps to ensure Luminar could work with other DAMs (Neofinder is quite nice). However none of this worries me personally as I use Lr and do not see that changing. L3 still makes for a nice plugin.
Of course if the DAM improves as promised I might consider leaving Adobe but there-again Lr continues to improve. Competition is good and, well, anything could happen :-)
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