Unacceptable Luminar Stability for Windows
Answered
Looking at these forums, it's brutally obvious that the latest build of Luminar 3 is in dire need of an immediate rebuild - every other thread is a stability question or complaint with a reply of "please talk to support."
The obvious memory leaks in this software make it practically unusable... I am working on a brand new 8-core, 32gb RAM high-end system (with an 8gb DDR5 card) - short of massive 3D video editing and rendering processes, nothing taxes this build, and yet Luminar constantly crashes out after using up 32gb of RAM and pushing my 8 cores > 75% within a few seconds of doing something as simple as adjusting contrast on a RAW image with a few layers/masks in a small library folder (<500 images). These are tasks Lightroom could manage on my 4 year old surface pro without a problem and Luminar is literally crippled and crashing.
The question I'd like to see publicly answered is when is the much needed fix coming? I just bought this software to avoid Adobe's monopolistic economics, and I had to immediately get in touch with support only to be told that the next big patch will address the rampant memory leaks in this program, but there's no ETA on it.
I pre-bought Luminar 4 as wll but quite honestly, you have no right to sell this software or pre-sell any software with claims that you offer a windows build when it's in this state. I believe we're all owed some answer on when this next patch is coming and a promise it actually will be QA'd to ensure the Windows build works. I really want to like and use this software for my amateur photo editing needs, but this lack of stability & support is seriously making me consider demanding a refund and moving back to Adobe's over-priced but usable software.
Please feel free to escalate this matter to a product manager to offer a direct reply to the Luminar Windows community about these much needed stability fixes and predicted delivery timeline.
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Hi Jeffrey,
I'm really sorry to hear about your experience with Luminar.
We're indeed aware of these issues, and our techs are currently working on the optimization and the much-expected fixes. They should be available in one of the following releases. Currently, we do not have a precise ETA for the next update, but please rest assured that it's in the works, as per our Roadmap: https://skylum.com/luminar/roadmap
Once it becomes available, we'll surely let everyone know.
If you require any assistance, please, get in touch with the team at https://skylum.com/support -
More humour from Skylum. I particularly like the "In Development" section of the roadmap which includes this gem:
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"Better memory management
We’ve optimized memory use for an even smoother workflow."
- "Even smoother," they jest. It isn't smooth now.
- Then if you look at Planned updates for L3 there are none that address the bulk of user concerns.
- I've been looking again at the cost of staying with Lighroom. After I subtract the cost of taking Valium when using L3 it is little more expensive and very much better. Why stick around? Because I paid my money thinking I was getting a working program. And one always needs the Candide approach to life.
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"Better memory management
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I have seen no evidence of a software development team at Skylum over the past few years. Only possibly "artists," who think that their "art" is the most important thing, and usability be damned. Skylum pays little attention to the reliability of their programs. There is no exception handling whatsoever, and I doubt Skylum's "artists" even understand what exception handling is. There is little evidence that Skylum's "developers" listen to their users at all.
I want very much to like Luminar, but the people working on it make it so damn difficult. I want a good photo editor. I don't want a cataloging program, much less a poorly performing one and one that cannot be bypassed in any way at all. And much less still, a program that crashes all the time.
Skylum -- Please hire some actual software developers. And a quality assurance team as well. Stop marketing nothing more than bells and whistles. Please.
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I too wanted to like a possible replacement for Lightroom. But given the way Skylum is now operating, $10/month for Lightroom sounds very good and little more expensive than the pay for Luminar upgrades. Additionally, you get a working program much improved over my Lightroom 6.
I'm just hanging on here to see if Skylum can manage to produce working software. But as Kenneth suggests they don't appear to be much interested in the 'boring' bits such as adjustments occurring at the same time as you move a slider. A novel concept apparently. Of course in these days of fake news I'm imagining that Adobe has infiltrated Skylum and ON1 to sabotage the programs and force people back to using Lightroom. Given the state of Luminar I never stopped using Lightroom, I just dust it off periodically hoping to find that it works like a real program. But no fairy has waved a wand over it and I remain disappointed.
Skylum doesn't have much more time left to release an adequately working program. It wont happen for efforts are now devoted to L4. They have never even met one of their slack release dates.
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Thank you Helga, there IS plenty of room for improvement But now disgruntled wanna be users are very much regretting their purchase. Skylum appears to have no idea how to 'fix' L3, we just get vague promises. So it is unlikely that your developers can make L4 better at doing the basics. Unless it is a new, ground up development.
Below is a snippet from 2006 when Adobe bought Raw Shooter. I used Raw Shooter and it worked better than Luminar does now - on a computer with floppy discs! So Helga, Skylum does have a lot of ground to make up. I do hope you pass this along - the message that working Raw development software existed 13 years ago and worked well on a Pentium 4 processor. Why can't Skylum manage something similar with all the processing power available today? Additionally, because I was a Raw Shooter user I got a copy of the new Lightroom free. And Luminar 4 is going to cost how much?
"Adobe on Monday announced it has acquired Pixmantec ApS, a developer of digital photo workflow software. Adobe said it plans to incorporate Pixmentec’s technology into Lightroom, Adobe’s pro photo management software.
Danish software developer Pixmantec develops RawShooter, a digital camera RAW file workflow tool for Windows. The software provides file browsing and preview, image correction tools, color database, batch processing and other capabilities.
Adobe did not disclose the terms of the sale."
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Anyone able to comment on luminar 4 windows stability?
Been "using" L3 for about 9 months, constantly hoping that it would be updated as promised so it wouldn't crash every 5-10 minutes doing basic operations (on a powerful machine with 2tb NVME SSD that lightroom flies on).
Would like top take a punt and update to 4, but I'm not throwing Mike good money after bad if the stability is as useless as L3. I already feel like I was ripped off for software that doesn't even work 9 months after I bought it
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Hi David,
3.2.0 is out, please, ensure that you have the latest release (click Help > Check for Updates).
If you're experiencing any issues with the new update, please, reach out to us at https://skylum.com/support so that it could be investigated.
I recommend you to check how Luminar 4.1.0 works by yourself, as the app can work differently on the computers with roughly the same specs.
You can run a free 14-day trial:
Mac: https://downloads.skylum.com/luminar4/installer/mac/Luminar4Installer.zip
Win: https://downloads.skylum.com/luminar4/installer/win/Luminar4Setup.exe
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Kenneth, the performance depends on a number of factors, including the number of files one loads to the Library, the location of the photos (the app works faster if the files are located on an internal drive), the size of the pagefile, etc.
These factors usually vary from artist to artist, hence, such a suggestion.
If you personally currently are experiencing any issues with Luminar which may cause your dissatisfaction or critical comments like this one, please, do not hesitate to contact us at https://skylum.com/support as well. We'll do our best to help you.
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Thanks for the reply, Kate. If you search your message base for my name, you'll find several posts. You'll see that the flavor of those posts is increasing frustration with Skylum over Luminar 3. Perhaps the easiest of my comments to find is above on this page, from four months ago.
Since its introduction, Skylum has failed to turn Luminar 3 into anything I could use. They seem intent on developing bells and whistles to rah rah about, rather than fixing the basic infrastructure of the program. At least minimal exception handling to prevent crashes and/or report what caused them would be a good idea, for example. Making Windows keyboard inputs match those of the Mac would be another handy thing (how do Windows users draw a straight line when masking, as Mac users can do?). There's a long list of defects that should again turn up if you search for messages from me.
Luminar 3 remains on my system, and I'm often annoyed when I accidentally invoke it. If and when I want to use a Skylum product, it's Luminar 2018. In my estimation, Skylum has made no significant improvements to Luminar since that time. The most significant change to Luminar 4? It's not "AI sky replacement. It's the reduction in per purchase installation licenses from five to two.
When Skylum comes up with a version of Luminar that doesn't include its catalog stuff ("Luminar Basic?"), when they add exception handling to their programs, when they add proper plug-in support, and when they start paying attention to all those pesky little program details, I'll take a look again. Of course, they need to have a proper corporate announcement notifying us all, celebrating that they've undertaken a major effort to fix all the little stuff and offer a catalog-free version, or we'll never know about it.
Until then, it's Luminar 2018 for me for all the quick and dirty stuff, and ON1 Photo Raw for more major efforts, perhaps with some use of Gimp here and there for good measure. ON1's exception handling is pretty primitive, but it does have it. It still includes five seats per purchase, and I can tell it to write the 100,000+ catalog jpg thumbnails to a ram drive that disappears with each boot, rather than on my M.2 SSD, thereby making my SSD live a bit longer, perhaps, but also avoiding use of their cataloging thing completely..
As for Gimp -- Lots of people knock it, but you know, photo editors that are all about editing photos without crashing instead of being about adding in more "gosh gee whiz" marketing features can be pretty nice. Corporations that try to sell photo editing programs might want to think about trying that approach.
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Hi Kenneth,
Recently we've released an update for Luminar 3 that has great improvements in terms of performance and managing catalogs.
So, if you're still experiencing any issues while working with Luminar 3, be sure to reach us via https://skylum.com/support.
We're always here to assist you at our best!
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