Luminar 3 Stuck on splash screen
Luminar installed ok on the 3rd try and displayed my catalogue ok. When closed down, however, Luminar will not start again and hangs on the splash screen. Have tried rebooting the machine several times but still cannot get past the splash screen. I am running Windows 10 x64, version 1809. I see that I am not the only one with this issue - very disappointing and frustrating.
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@David Ford @Larry Boshell @Ricky Kwan - Do you get any error message?
@AL HERMS - "database initialization error" is a known issue that occurs due to bad EXIF data in the photos that are being imported into Luminar. We'll release a hotfix for it soon.
In order to get Luminar up and running while we fix everything, follow these steps:
- Reboot your computer.
- Locate your Luminar Catalog folder. The default location is C:\Users\UserName\Pictures\. If you specified a custom location for Luminar Catalog folder, search your custom location.
- Remove the Luminar Catalog folder.
- Start Luminar. This time it should open without errors.
- When adding an image folder to your Luminar catalog, specify another folder with photos (not the one you pointed Luminar to before encountering the error).
@Wenxin He - The speed of the app could depend on a variety of factors: your hardware, size of files, files' format etc. Please ensure that your computer meets the system requirements posted here. I assure you, that catalog is a database. It's located in your Pictures folder by default if you didn't change its location. Luminar 3 caches the thumbnails of the images so it can take some time until Luminar 3 generated the previews for all of your files.
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I do not get any error msgs. It just hangs on the splash screen. I see some network activity for Luminar 3 under task manage whenLuminar 3 hangs at the splash screen.
I am also using ACDSEE Pro 2018 and I have no issues with the catalog of my 6tb worth of photos. ACDSEE launches within 5 secs.
I was hoping that Luminar 3 can be viable replacement for ACDSEE. There is no point of using Luminar 3 if we cannot use the catalog function.
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Here is my PC
Windows 10 with i7 4790K 16GB memory. System disk is Samsung Evo 850 500GB SSD.
If this machine is not good enough, I don't know what to use.
Regarding the catalog files, databas usually don't manage data by folder. It is too easy to break and perform very badly. Lightroom and ACDSee all use database with a small set of files only. It would be a nightmare to backup the catalog files.
I know Skylum maybe in panic mode now as the complaint waves come.
Please let the management team know, customers want a working product NOT a pre-BETA software.
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@Vic, Luminar is almost certainly listed in Task Manager, but you have to 1) click "More details" at the bottom left of Task Manager, and once you do that, scroll down to Background processes. (See screen shot.) It'll be there for several minutes to a couple hours, until it finishes cataloging everything. I was assured today by Skylum Support they have a hot fix nearly ready to deploy that fixes this.
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I left it loading (I assumed it was loading) and it eventually opened about 35 minutes later with 36,000 files. It's a good thing I only loaded a few years Fuji X files. I'll open it again tomorrow to see if the boffins have their hot fix ready.
All you guys thinking it's frozen can be forgiven but it isn't. Open it but do no more - then open something else to work on or a web page and pop back to see if it's open every 5-10 mins. Eventually it will open.
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I'm pretty sure the slowness was caused by the PreviewCache folder and its sub-folders. As a programmer, I know it is a bad idea to let the OS to handle all the small files. I just deleted the catalog folder and added only one folder. It is much faster now.
Can you imagine deleting the cache folder took about 4 minutes? If you want to load files from folders all over the places, it will take forever to find all of them and load them into the program.
If there is no fundamental database redesign, I don't see any significant improvement in the near future.
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My user profile is stuck on splash screen and has been for 4 days. My second user profile is working OK. I cannot see any catalog in mine and luminar 3 is u usable. Luminar 2018 is ok in both.
My real frustration is the lack of any true guidance from their support. I have asked for refund and will look at it in a year or so. -
So far, unusable. Hangs at splash screen. Worked first time after, but even then fussed about my activation code, copied from mail. It finally worked, once. It found my picture files, but hangs without changing. I have uninstalled 4 or 5 times. No good. My lap top has dedicated dedicated Nvida, Geoforce 1050 video adapter, works fine with PS and LR. How long is it going to take to get an answer and solution from Skylum? My laptop is a 14 month old Lenovo 720 with hi res screen and 16 ram. I got my money back about a year ago when it turned out the program was't on par with the Macks. Soposed it might be now, but may be not, PLEASE Help, Would like to give the library feature a real go.
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I have the same issue. It is very slow. Please wait for few minutes to see the actual Window.
In addition, it doesn't show the thumbnails correctly and loading each photo extremely slow.
My ACDSee is 10x faster than that.
I'm extremely disappointed! I have to stick with Luminar 2018 even it can only handle one file at a time.
BTW, the catalog is not even a database. It is a bunch of folders on your machine.
My catalog folder has 35,253 folders. No wonder it is so slow. The program was created by some amateur programmers who may be good at image processing but don't understand how computer software works.
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@Leila Evans Thanks, I had worked out that solution on the fourth install! It now runs - sort of. However, the program is not fit for purpose - it is very slow, unpredictable, and missing very basic functionality. For example, I use Export to save a file into another folder in the Luminar catalogue and it doesn't show up in Luminar until I close and reopen the program. So Luminar is not even keeping track of its own files properly.
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In my case, the issue was that I set the program to look at a folder that had a large number of photos (around 30,000). I followed the instructions in various posts here and deleted the Luminar catalog folder, then restarted. I then pointed the program to work on a folder that didn't have a large number of photos. That resolved the issue with the splash screen. Of course, that limits the photos I can work with. So I export the ones I want to work with from Lightroom into the luminar folder I set up, work with it there, then import it back to Lightroom. Not a great workaround...
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That's my experience too, Vic. It took over 2 hours to initially catalogue my 40,000+ files (the catalog is on an SSD but the photos aren't). After they were finally in the Luminar database, now it takes 5 minutes to open and another 2 minutes for the thumbnails to appear and the program become usable. I have 3 locations catalogued so far, and if I had one other than the large one selected when I closed the program, it still takes 5 minutes to start, but doesn't take as long to display the thumbnails.
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