What is a soft launch?

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Alina Skylum
  • Edited

At Skylum, we use a software engineering process that many refer to as a soft launch.  This simply means that we start to roll the software out to different countries on a staggered release schedule. This means that depending upon where you live, you might see the software earlier or later than another photographer who lives elsewhere in the world.

Clocks by Elisa Michelet

Why we do this.

The concept of a soft launch is actually quite common.  In fact Apple does it when they release new version of iOS and macOS. It’s all about performance.  

Think of a fire hose connected to a hydrant.  When there’s enough water pressure the water comes blasting out rapidly.  But open up too many hydrants and suddenly your stuck with a trickle. Turns out that computer networks work the same way.

Leaking fire hydrant By Grace

If every Skylum customer tried to pull down the latest copy of Luminar in the same hour, it’d be pretty frustrating.  Even more so are activation servers for serial numbers. You may recall trouble with many iPhones all trying to activate on release day and taking hours or even days.

What it means.

The bottom line is this… we release software in a rolling wave.  Our engineering team unlocks access to a few countries early to balance the load.  No, we don’t play favorites… rather we just try to spread access to the latest versions over a 48 hour period.  This is why you might get early access or wonder why someone else got the latest software before you.

Doorways by Quino Al

What it doesn’t mean.

A soft launch is not a beta test.  We’re not looking for last minute bugs to solve or feedback on the software.  Several external and internal testers have been working with this next version of software for months.  As soon as we ship a new version, our engineering and testing teams start working on the next. We appreciate your patience as we work hard to deliver a better Luminar with each release.

How to Update

Updating your Luminar software is easy.  Be sure to also rerun the plugin installer if using Luminar as a plugin for Photoshop or Lightroom Classic.

  • Mac – Please, launch Luminar 3, then in the Top Menu Bar choose Luminar 3 > Check for updates.
  • Windows  – Please, launch Luminar 3, then in the Top Menu Bar choose Help > Check for updates.

We hope you enjoy these improvements.  We’re hard at work on more performance updates and features.  Be sure to view our roadmap - click here.



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    Tomasz Gomolka

    thank you for all the efforts!

    if the performance is fixed I'm all in love in Luminar!

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    Richard Huggins

    Your external and internal testers missed four critical issues? Have they been fired?

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    Andy H
    • Edited

    Now we have another condescending analogy from Skylum that tries to compare the soft launching of software to a water main network and hydrants. A better analogy would have been a sewer network, given the contents are similar to what we've had from Skylum over the past few months.

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    Richard Huggins

    Somewhat interestingly in replying to my review of my dealings with Skylum they said

    "You're referring to the soft launch of the Luminar update, which helped us to discover and fix some critical issues."

     

     

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    Andy H

    @Richard. Skylum’s messaging is all over the place and contradictory. It is clear they were not ready to release 3.0.2 and used the soft launch as an opportunity to get more feedback, One critical issue is bad enough for a launch, but four? They cannot pretend that they didn’t know there were issues and this was just a regular soft launch.

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    Tomasz Gomolka

    was anybody able to update? any feedback?

    no update available in Switzerland yet....

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    Angela Andrieux

    Hi Tomasz,

    The update is live now. If you re-launch Luminar you should be prompted to update. 

    Alternatively on Mac go to Luminar 3 > Check for Updates for on Windows File > Check for Updates.

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    Tomasz Gomolka

    Thanks Angela! I did the update, all went smooth. Performance seems to be perfect now. I did series of RAWs browsing and editing and my Mac is not boiling anymore :D

    Great job!

    Lve Luminar now :)

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    Angela Andrieux

    Hi Tomasz - That is great to hear!! :)

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    Michael Brodey

    I have the latest version of Luminar 3, but it won't update my the plugin for LR.  I currently only have the Luminar 2018 plugin in LR.  When I try to install the plugin from Luminar 3, I get the msg that I must restart LR to install the plugin.  When I do, nothing happens.  The plugin for PhotoShop installed fine.

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    Angela Andrieux

    Hi Michael,

    You can install the plugins manually:

    For Mac:

    1. Make sure Lightroom is closed.
    2. Open Finder, click Go > Go to Folder and paste the following path: /Library/Application Support/MacPhun Software/Luminar3/Plug-Ins/. There will be a bunch of files in there, the ones you're interested in have the following extensions: .lrplugin and .lrtemplate.
    3. Open a new Finder tab or window and click Go > Go to Folder one more time and navigate to the following path: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules/
    4. Copy the .lrplugin into the folder that you opened in Step 3.
    5. Click Go > Go to Folder one more time and navigate to the following path: ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/External Editor Presets/
    6. Copy the .lrtemplate file into the folder that you opened in Step 5.

    You may  be asked whether you'd like to overwrite the existing file in the folder or keep both, choose to overwrite in all cases.

    For Windows:

    • Make sure Luminar and Lightroom are closed.
    • Download the plugin file from here (click Download in the upper right): https://www.dropbox.com/s/qvk85snt6sgxhi0/Luminar3Export.lrplugin.zip?dl=0
    • Right-click the .zip you've downloaded > click Extract All. When prompted to specify the destination for the extracted file, click Browse. Paste the following path into the address bar in the top of the window that opens: %appdata%\Adobe\Lightroom\Modules

    Here's how it should look like:

    • Click Select Folder and then click Extract.

    Access Luminar 3 from Adobe Lightroom in the following way:

    • Right-click on the image > Export > Export to Luminar 3 > You have an option to Open Source Files or, if you've made any changes in Lightroom that you'd like to transfer over to Luminar 3, you can also choose Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments.

    After applying adjustments in Luminar 3 your photo should appear in Lightroom's Catalog > All Photographs.

    Let me know if any further assistance is needed.

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