New Luminar with Libraries, No Paid Upgrades, and MORE!
We made a decision to do everything we can for your favorite Luminar to continue being an imaging software you can rely on for your photo editing needs. I understand that some of you are frustrated because we are delayed in delivering the promised update. We want you to know that we have heard every single one of you, and we've taken actions to do right by you. Great things are coming...
Skylum will ship the new version of Luminar (with Libraries) in December or possibly even earlier! That means that it's now only months away; before you know it, you'll be playing around with new Luminar in the new year. What's more is that we've made a promise to get better in communicating with our customers. From now on, not only will you always know what's coming and when, but you'll also get answers to your questions straight away.
That's not all. We're also happy to announce that you will not have to buy an upgrade to get Luminar's new features! Because you shouldn't have to pay extra for new features that every photographer needs. And we’ll also give more people early access to our software.
Have I got your attention? If so, let's delve deeper the details.
Luminar with Libraries
As mentioned last week, the new version will be released later this year. Anyone who owns Luminar will get the new update for free in December, if not earlier. This new version is now in a closed beta testing, and the feedback we have been getting so far has been overwhelming.
The first version of Libraries in Luminar is all about these main points: performance, comfort, and a complete user experience. This means the new version will give you speed to browse & organize images without the extra wait time. This means that you’ll enjoy your photos moments after you start the software.
Here’s a short speed test I did last week. Take a look and stay tuned for more videos, webinars, posts and live sessions about other features.
Most importantly, with the new version of Luminar, you’ll be able to conveniently group photos into albums, rate pictures, sync edits between hundreds of images, and do more without the need to check back a manual every time.
We spent years, studying the needs, workflows, and preferences of different photographers. So in the new Luminar, you get a truly great viewing/browsing experience that draws you in and helps you enjoy and organize your photos without extra distractions.
And since Luminar is already packed with dozens of innovative tools to edit, enhance, and share photos, you will soon get the most comprehensive and well-rounded photography experience available in a piece of software.
No paid upgrade. You will get all the great stuff for free.
Alongside the new Libraries feature, we also poured a lot of hard work, time & research to bring you new editing tools for portraits, landscapes, aerial and other genres of photography; new features powered by Artificial Intelligence, new looks and styles, and more.
We have initially planned to release those features in Luminar 2019, as a paid upgrade, just like we usually do. However, this week, we made a decision to forgo any paid upgrades at least until the end of 2019, and add those features to Luminar 2018 for free.
Luminar will be getting faster, more powerful, and smarter, but you won't have to pay a dime to get new upgrades.
We will incorporate the new tools and features in the latest version of Luminar instead of asking you to pay for the upgrade. Expect first updates as soon as this year. And throughout the next year we will be frequently rolling out more free updates to make Luminar Libraries, and its Editing & Sharing tools faster, better and more powerful for you.
A new price for a limited time.
Skylum's software is priced so that everyone can afford them and designed so that everyone can easily use them. We do this because everyone takes photos, not just experienced and pro photographers. We do this because photos are more than just the captions they come with.
We believe that every single person deserves to make his/her photos look their best without the extra hassle and without having to study and master all those photo editing tips the pros use.
So for a limited time, Luminar will be available for just $59 for new users who have yet to purchase the software. For this price, you’ll get the current version of the software, the free update to the new version that boasts Libraries, and free updates for the new features we initially developed for Luminar 2019.
No subscriptions. No upgrade fees. No extra charges.
A roadmap.
We also plan to launch a new section on Skylum.com, a section dedicated to upcoming releases and update announcements. You’ll see what’s coming and what to expect next. You’ll also be able to share your feedback and make suggestions for new features.
An early access to new versions.
We are building Luminar and our other products for you so we'd like to make you a part of our product development. Selected customers will get early access to the new versions, and these lucky folks will be able to participate in the beta program as well as contribute to the development itself.
I can’t share a lot of details on this now, but be sure to stay tuned for more announcements in the coming weeks.
A summary (if you hate long reads)
- The new Luminar with Libraries will come this December.
- This update is free for all Luminar 2018 users.
- There will be NO paid upgrade to Luminar 2019.
- Instead, you will get the new tools and features as free updates to your current version of Luminar.
- More AI-powered tools will come to Luminar soon.
- We will get better in keeping you updated on what’s coming.
- Some of you will have a chance to become a part of Luminar development.
- More users will get an early access to beta versions of Luminar.
- For new users, Luminar is available at a discounted price for a limited time.
- We are sorry to keep you waiting for these updates.
- We love you!!
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I was encouraged by this video. Seems to be a decent start. One topic not covered is how you can tell Luminar to rename files using tokens. Lr, C1P and other DAMs provide a sizable list of tokens usually based on EXIF and IPTC fields. I hope Luminar does likewise. I guess we will find out in just under 2 weeks.
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I doubt it will even be close to that, John. I dislike the owners of Skylum immensely. Arrogant in the extreme and dismissive of both their customers and business ethics. Being upset by what is generally perceived as misleading advertising and none delivery of promises is hardly being cynical!
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On the blog, example URL: https://skylum.com/blog/user-spotlight-kevin-dooley
Even though I'm logged in to the blog, I cannot make a comment unless I log in to Facebook. I don't want to use that absolutely awful company's social network.
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I have 80,000 photos in my Apple Aperture library, with hundreds of keywords applied, as well as ratings, flags, etc. Apple Aperture still runs on my Mac, and it's fast, but it will probably not be compatible with the next OS upgrade. As it was last updated in 2014, it's missing some features that newer programs have.
Because there is no import feature in Luminar, the DAM appears to be for people that never have used a DAM before. I am truly disappointed that an import feature could not be included - at the very least, they could have partnered with a third-party software company to come up with a solution, like Aperture Exporter.
Lightroom, Capture One and Mylio all can import many aspects of Apple Aperture metadata and edits, and have had this capability for several years.
Why would someone already using a DAM be willing to start all over again, it makes no sense.
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@Francis,
with all due respect and with as much passion I am bashing Skylum all the time myself, but bringing in a piece of software that has been dead for almost 5 years now and expecting a new software to have an importer for this just isn't fair at all. If you are still trapped in the Aperture ecosystem that is your fault, and your fault alone. You had enough time and opportunity to get out. You can't expect other software companies to provide a solution for a piece of software that was shut down 5 years ago. It would be a total waste of money and resources.
Am I happy that Luminar doesn't have any catalog importers at all? No. But expecting one for Aperture is ridiculous.
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The software isn't dead yet - it runs quite well on my Mac and I am not trapped in the Aperture ecosystem. I have had a contingency plan for at least two years - migrating to Capture One Pro, though I was hoping I could instead migrate to software less professional and perhaps cheaper.
Luminar is not a "new software". Macphun launched Luminar in November 2016. The final update to Aperture was released on October 2014. It's not ludicrous to expect a software launched on MacOS to have the capability to import Aperture libraries - there were many people in the same boat as me. So I waited patiently while Macphun promised a DAM, which was released about a year after it was promised and with less features than more than a few people hoped for.
But, not to worry, you will no longer see me complaining here.
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If someone wants our of Aperture, both Lightroom and Capture 1 Pro offered tools for that a few years back. Must be very close to zero business case for developing such a migration tool these days.
Both Jim Nix and Matt Suess have said they will not be moving to the Luminar DAM's first release. Who knows what will happen by next July when we should have a Lr migration tool and support for more of the DAM basics that are missing in the initial release. In the meantime, Luminar does have some very interesting filters.
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Of course is Aperture dead. It may still run, but it's been marked End Of Life by Apple some 5 years ago. No one is going to support it for you.
And yes, it's ludicrous to expect Skylum to support it. Luminar, as you said, launched 2 years after Apple shut down Aperture. And when Luminar launched, it was a photo editor at heart, not a DAM. When I said Luminar is new, I was referring to the new DAM module, and that thing will be far from perfect for the foreseeable future. It would make absolutely zero sense for Skylum to build an Aperture importer for the hand full of people who still use it (e.g. next to no market) while at the same time not getting any kind of support or documentation from Apple to be able to build that thing in the first place.
So yes, your expectation actually is ludicrous. No offense.
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Question for Skylum:
Judging by some of the videos on the Library module, it seems you're generating thumbnails based on the embedded JPG thumbnails in RAW files. I hope that is optional. I want my thumbnails generated from the RAW directly. The embedded thumbs in most RAWs are usually pretty crappy.
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I've watched a few of the Luminar with Libraries videos. I'm underwhelmed but then I expected to be. Photo Joseph suggests experienced photographers will not move over to Libraries and neither will those who already use Apple's Photos as the DAM and Luminar editing tools. I'm a snapper in the latter camp and it looks like my expectation of a manageable workflow of Skylum's DAM and Luminar by the end of the year has not be met.
Well at least I know where I stand.
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Did we really expect anything other than this? I was, perhaps foolishly, a little hopeful when they said they had spent hours talking to pro photographers about what would be needed in this re-imagined dam. The functionality in Apple Photos far exceeds Luminar so why would anyone switch from there or Lr.
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Well these guys are WAY better at marketing than they are at software development. Having said that, their hearts are in the right place but they are still second tier developers. Luminar is less buggy than it used to be, and the DAM is not very far along at all but they are doing a great job of messaging how sexy it is. It will likely be another year until it is ready for prime time. On1 is much further along in it's file management and functionality (managing presets, layers, local adjustments etc) but there are some things (AI, specialized filters) that Luminar is preferable for. Alienskin is better at some things as well. Kind of makes me laugh at all the complaining however as these pieces of software are so cheap that it makes good sense to have at least two of them. I move back and forth all the time, taking the best of each one as required. As far as the Luminar DAM is concerned, its essentially useless right now, but they will get there.
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Marya,
re: thumbnails - this just gets worse and worse. If you guys want to attract the professional and semi-professional crowd, you need to do better than this. No one will seriously judge their photos by the embedded JPG thumbnails, which in 99.99% of all cases look completely different than the actual photo (rendered from the RAW).
You should seriously consider changing this. Otherwise, I am just going to think you are faking the speed of the app with this.
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Thank you for your feedback.
Yes, there are a lot of features we want to improve and add to make Luminar 3 as good as possible, and we're constantly improving our software. Needless to say, all our plans cannot be released at once, it requires time. Nevertheless, we try to do our best.
Also, you can check our future plans for Luminar 3 here:
https://skylum.com/luminar/roadmap
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Well looking at the roadmap - especially what isn't mentioned, expect two years until this product fleshes out as it should. Oh yah you will have to pay for an upgrade in mid 2019 for a still half finished product. But I still say, while they have bit off more than they can chew in the short run, its coming along,,,,
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Both On1 and Skylum want to offer their products as Lr replacements. And neither have a catalog that can import and rename files with the same abilities as Lr Library. So short term, you may need to either continue with Lr for handling the imports or use something like PhotoMechanic to do the imports with file renaming, EXIF and IPTC data input, and adding keywords. In the example PhotoMechanic is setup to create a destination folder of the year (if needed) and then a folder for each shoot day. the shoot day folder names would be like "2018-12-11". The file renaming example is creating files using the camera body serial number followed by a 4 digit sequence number, "BUBBA-1234".
Think about and carefully plan how you will setup a new folder structure or continue your current one. Make sure the apps you plan to use can do the job with a minimum of intervention.
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