Luminar 3.1...seems better...so far.
So far this update has been a positive experience for me.
Once the library (thumbnails) all updated I started doing some test work. I only have a library of about 9000 images in Luminar so I don't know how a very large library will respond. It seems snappier to me and doesn't "feel" like it's going to crash if I push it too hard. Mind you, I didn't experience this a lot in 3.02 but it did stumble and crash at times.
I have a 4K, 21.5-inch, 2017...3.6 GHz Core I7...32 GB memory...Radeon Pro 560 4GB graphics which is more than enough power for any photo software, or at least it should be.
Since I mostly shoot landscapes I didn't notice much, if any improvement with Accent AI 2.0 but I think this will work better with skin tones in portrait photography.
RAW + JPEG pairs work as advertised and is a welcome addition, at least for me.
The progress dialog box shows on screen but never moves from 0% while it's processing. Don't really see the sense in that but...whatever, that is minor.
It's still early using 3.1 but so far the biggest plus for me is Luminar doesn't seem to struggle as much as before. Time will tell.
If I can offer up my personal opinion to the devs while moving forward it's this...I think that bug and stability fixes shouldn't have to wait for a release like this. Advancements are great but known bugs should be squashed ASAP with incremental updates. Generally I think most people here are happy with image processing abilities of Luminar but are being continually frustrated by all the stability issues. I believe you need to get these fixes out more frequently. My 2 cents.
-
Also so far so good here too. I have a couple thousand or so imported for now, and it's been working longer than it did before.
I'm very happy with the AI stuff, although I do prefer to use the Camera Standard profile, as I find the Luminar Default a bit too heavy on saturation for my taste (Adobe's Color Profile is similar). The edit syncing seems to work perfectly, so far, so I can apply auto lens corrections, and the basic AI starting adjustments to a whole folder. Many are already pretty near spot on though.
The only issue is still the speed, it doesn't seem to be using any kind of saved thumbnails or previews, so it renders every image each time it's selected for viewing. You certainly cannot quickly browse through a folder of images.
I know I have an aged iMac now (Late 2013 27" i5 model with NVIDA GT755M GPU, 16GB RAM, and a 500GB internal SSD), but other apps are much faster, I have 50,000 images in Lightroom, and most of that works pretty much instantly - even Photos is not bad.
If this progress is maintained, I could see myself finally switching from the Adobe subscription plan, but there's still a lot of trust building to do. You still need to work on the customer relations thing, stop over promising, and please stop saying 'later in the year', or 'later this spring', and then nothing is delivered at that time - this is the update that was promised in January.
And I agree, bug fixes should be out as soon as possible, even if you have to go to silly incremental levels like 3.1.0.1 (for example) - just get them done as soon as possible.
Keep up the good work, I'm hopeful it'll get there.
Cheers and best regards
Andy
-
Andy, I agree this is a "much"more stable release. But how many images do you have in your catalogue? I have a couple of thousand in a test catalogue and the library runs fine but there are those reporting very slow load times for L3 where the catalogue is large (say 25000 images). The problem seems to stem from the fact that Luminar scans through the catalogued folders when it first loads in order to check if images have been added via the file manager rather than Luminar.
-
Hi Colin, similar to you really, bitten by previous experience, I'm only testing with a couple of thousand or so. My main library is over 50,000, but even with a couple thousand browsing and general viewing is too slow. Actual edits work very well, its just the redraws that are painful to wait for.
However, the stability is a step in the right direction nonetheless.
-
The Library does not flow really. Having no right click menus does not help and not having the image information readily available at the bottom of a thumbnail is a real pain. It is rather like the design is so bad they are stripping stuff out in the hope a simplified code base will help with the issues. I have recently switched from Nikon to Fuji and have been playing with C1 as a result. It is light years ahead and so much faster - it is just so expensive unless I opt for the Fuji centric version which is retailing at just over £100. I just might go for it as the high probability is that Luminar will never make it to the first division. This forum has become pretty much useless (apart from user to user) as the staff are just giving out meaningless canned responses now. IMO this shows how little they care. Everything is a smoke screen and as we know smoke has no real substance!
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
6 comments