Luminar 4
I see that Luminar 4 has been announced, with a Fall release time frame. I see a purchase option with an early bird deal, and even purchase Luminar 3 now and get Luminar 4 when it's been released. What will be the upgrade path for existing Luminar customers?
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I have hung with Skylum, kind of, since the very first version of Luminar for Windows PC was offered in November, 2017.
To be bluntly obvious, that first release was Alpha quality, not even Betaware--but features were scheduled to be released during the following 3 months to bring it up to what it should be.
And so my disappointment with Skylum/Luminar began as target after target was late or not met at all.
And startup times on my Windows machine got slower and slower. I remain unconvinced that Skylum's approach to the Windows version is NOT to make a poor-quality port of the functioning Mac version rather than code a parallel version for Windows.
I updated my Luminar 3 yesterday to see if it was usable yet.
After updating and restarting a couple of times for various reasons, I started Luminar 3 this morning and ran a stopwatch to see how long it took to load from nothing to functioning.
It took just over 6 minutes. Now, I do understand that the times for other Windows users might be shorter, and for others it might be longer. But the simple fact is this: I ran the test on the machine that will I would be using for photo editing and it is NOT underpowered. (The processors are about 4 Ghz and I have 16 GB of memory.)
As a comparison, I loaded my copy of ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2019. That app took about 19 seconds from nothing to functioning.
Regardless of the path for current users to Luminar 4, I cannot see the value of throwing more money at Skylum. The only thing that might convince me otherwise would be this: If Skylum were to publish a minimum specs for a Windows 10 PC to run Luminar 4 AND make a money-back guarantee that Luminar 4 would go from nothing to functioning in 60 seconds or less.
Being that ACDSee Photo Studio only takes 19 seconds to load, I think I am being more than gracious in my expectations of how long it should take Luminar to load, be it Luminar 3 or Luminar 4.
Otherwise, I just don't see the value for a program that has a DAM that handles Keywords so poorly and that opens so VERY slowly -- regardless of the upgrade path (unless it was free and I could continue to test the loading and functioning speeds.
The experiences of other users may make it worth the money for them.
But. Not. For. Me. at this point with the poor level of performance of Luminar 3.
The really sad thing is that I LIKE the visual concept of Luminar and that it has the editing details available as well. But I cannot help but think that Skylum has blown a tremendous opportunity in the Windows PC environment.
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I would also like to know the update path. Also, how long will the upgrade price be available?
Personally I feel Luminar 3 needed more work before this one came out. I will purchase the 4th rendition of this either way because screw Lightroom. After the upgrade price I will have spent 118 dollars. Lightroom would have cost more than that either way. Will Luminar 4 actually have better performance than 3 or just more features? Thanks
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Hallo Skylum-Team,
the upgrade is the one thing.
Aber es wurde 2019 mit der Abarbeitung der versprochenen Punkte aus der Roadmap und dem kostenlosen Upgrade begonnen.
Den Himmel austauschen is ja ganz schön, aber erst sollte die Stabilität / Geschwindigkeit verbessert werden sowie die Punkte aus der Roadmap realisiert werden.
Dieter -
Hi Geoffrey,
At this time current Luminar 3 users can pre-order Luminar 4 at a special introductory price. There will always be a discount for current users, but in this introductory period the price is even lower. You can get your special price here: https://skylum.com/luminar-l4pl3
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What did you guys expect? Luminar 2017 was Mac only and worked decently.
Luminar 2018 was so poor in quality that they didn't have a chance to charge for Luminar 3 - now that half of the promised features are there they think they can get away with overpromising again and charge for the update to Luminar 4. D
o you really believe that the Wolf sheds it's coat and turns out to be a sheep underneath? Luminar still has no DAM (promised for Luminar 2017 already!), it's performance is poor, the filter quality is iffy, concepts botched, still no feature parity between the MacOS version and the Windows version (no real time update for histograms or white/black point visualisation), the RAW filter is missing current cameras (yes CR3 is hard but not impossible to read but being a video derived wavelet decomposition it is subject to patents and thus probably requires licensing or buying the Canon SDK) - but all that is not going to come to Luminar 3, that time they wasted on some haphazard AI (that doesn't deserve the "intelligence" part of that moniker) and the highly valuable "this day in the past" - which can't show much because for that it would have to be able to deal with more than a few 100's of images in it's database... It has an unstable database for the meagre few search criteria but can't deal with IPTC, geo referencing, keywords. Color management is half baked (on Windows, on Mac they haven't found a way to avoid it because on that OS that is an integral part of the SDK), printing support is absent as are most of the exporting options other programs offer...
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Come on Skylum. Myself and others have hung in with the very dodgy Luminar 3 despite myself now reverting to Luminar 2018 because Luminar 3 simply did not work. I'll assume that we (the Luminar 3 gang) will be getting L4 upgrade for free. Please, please, please do not release L4 until you have tested it and tested the upgrade path. The sky replacement is something I've been asking for for years. I just hope it and the rest of Luminar finally works. BTW I use Aurora HDR almost daily and it is terrific.
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I thought I would chime in here too about Luminar 4. I was actually very surprised to see a new version coming out so soon, especially with the poor execution of releasing Luminar 3 and the long delays in making the product functional. We had waited patiently since December 2018 for a usable product. The June release of Luminar 3 was a vast improvement and to be honest, the first usable release. However, Luminar 3 still has some serious issues and promised bug fixes. I do hope that you continue to fulfill your commitment to the Luminar 3 users and add promised features, like cr3 support and continue to fix the many reported bugs.
I would gladly upgrade to Luminar 4 if version 3 was working to satisfaction from it's initial release. I feel that you are trying to sell us version 4 which will basically be Luminar 3 with the addition of sky replacement. Luminar 3 has limited functionality in many areas and I do not think it is fair to basically sell us the bug fixes. I think that you owe it to the Luminar community to keep your promise and fix Luminar 3 and add missing/underdeveloped features.
After the chaotic experience with Luminar 3, it is a big ask to want us to upgrade to Luminar 4. I don't think that Skylum has gained enough trust back to expect me and others to pay for an upgrade to Luminar 4.
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Will I be able to use my own skies in the new AI Sky Replacement in Luminar 4?
My and probably most photography club competitions do not allow using "other photographers work" in our entries, so this is useless to me unless I can use my own photographs of skies. Besides being more satisfying.
Thanks,
Nancy Goodenough
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A quote from this forum, below:
no paid upgrades until the end of 2019. it's July, please pay for Luminar 4? Are you serious? Major new version with a half-*ss*d version 3?
I don't think so.
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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<<<<<<<<<<<."
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I find it more than questionable now to offer a paid update to version 4, where not even the promised features of version 3 were met. We were persuaded to buy version 3 with the indication that there would be no paid updates until the end of 2019, the list of improvements during this period was long. What has been implemented? Unfortunately only a little! I just like being around the corner with Version 4 and announcing big "Oh, for only $ 49 you can now also change the sky in your pictures". This is more than dubious!
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Hello Skylum Team,
the upgrade is the one thing.
But it was 2019 with the completion of the promised points from the roadmap and the free upgrade started.
Exchanging the sky is quite nice, but first the stability / speed should be improved and the points from the roadmap realized.Dieter
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Hi Dieter,
We've been collecting and processing artists' feedback and feature requests for quite some time, and came up with a conclusion that people love easy-to-use tools and automatic enhancements. We decided to make the development of new AI features our top priority. New Luminar 4 will have lots of tools that will allow you to create beautiful photos by moving just one slider. Luminar 4 is going to be more intuitive, logical and concise. Please stay tuned to know more about the upcoming features.
We are not giving up on Luminar 3, we are going to continue supporting this app in terms of performance and compatibility. By the way, the nearest update is coming within a few weeks. We don't abandon our plans to implement new Library enhancements, we concentrate on things that are in high demand by our customers. -
So Maryna, you‘re saying that Skylum is abandoning further development putting Luminar 3 into the maintenance state while the all newfangled Luminar 4 will take all of your attention - quite a stretch to explain that to your most loyal customers that they are effectively buying the proverbial cat in the bag - could well be a case of Schrödingers cat...
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This is a bucket of road apples! Back before Luminar 3 was released, the Windows users were told parity with the Mac version of 2018 and operational improvements were back-burnered because Skylum's focus was on releasing a DAM that most users were demanding in order to be the Lightroom replacement we were promised before Luminar 2018 was released. Luminar 3 was finally released and the all important DAM was (and still is not) anything close to a functioning replacement for ANY other product with DAM built in (Lightroom, On1 Photo Raw, Exposure X4, ACDSee, etc.). Every time a new version is in the works, real work on the current version ends up being all but back-burnered. Why should we expect a new leaf from this old tree? Plus their track record on initial releases is trashed because the don't employ real-world beta testing on real-world computers outside of the lab. Do you really expect Luminar 4 to work right out of the box? Are you reading the real-world concerns and complaints at all? SMH.
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