Luminar Update

Sounds like you have a workflow that works for you. If you like ON1 2018 but think the $100 upgrade price is too steep, here's an idea: I discovered through a reader yesterday that you can piggyback my discount code (JW18ON1) on their Please login or register to view links. That's almost half the price of the upgrade. They have a 30 day money back guarantee and with the special they throw in all kinds of freebies. If you don't want to spend any more money, I get it... just thought I'd throw it out there.

 

The LUTs that caused the crashes were the “Smoke” and “Earthtones” ones, but only when I started adjusting contrast/saturation. I have also played around with the “UltraViolet” set, which if I recall correctly I got through a link on Skylum’s site. Those didn’t cause any problems, but I don’t see myself using them very much either. I hadn’t tried the film sim LUTs yet, so I gave them a go this afternoon, and yes, all I get with them is a pure white block. As a side note, I hadn’t run my routine disk maintenance for awhile, and I ran my usual utility this afternoon. After that, I played around with the previously problematic Smoke and Earthtones LUTs again, and everything seemed fine… no crashes. Purely a guess, but after installing the latest Luminar, maybe there were some old cache files or something that needed cleaning up. Time will tell.

 

Thanks! This is useful information.

Cheers,
Joel

 

Oops, I hit post reply on the my previous post by mistake!

 

I have a funny feeling Luminar has an issue with LUTs created in Affinity Photo using the .3ds extension. The LUTs that seem to be working fine for me have a .cube extension. Hopefully Skylum will sort it out though.

 

I still use Creative Kit on 90% of my images, it does all I need, however I also have Luminar, and since I was viewing some images today I figured I'd play with sunrays

 

Joel,

I was aware of that DXO acquired NIK, but I moved on at least a year before that happened and I'm not looking back. Besides, most of what I used NIK for I can easily replicate in Capture One Pro v11.

Regards,
Bud James

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Drew,

Happy to read your experience. If I understand several other's comments, LUTs problems were laid at the foot of Fuji and the X-Trans and loading RAF files; I do not think the sensor or file type has anything to do with the LUTs. I checked just now and the LUTs sets named Fuji XTransIII (full Fuji suite), cube extension, work fine in PSCC2018 on RAF, NEF, JPG, etc. files. The same for Adobe's Fuji ETERNA LUTs, again .cube extension, set. I cannot say with certainty but I believe I'd used these same LUTS with the pre-update Luminar version.

Also, seems the majority of respondents are Mac users, and I wish them well. I can only say my poor experiences with On1 and Lunimar will cause me to look very carefully at going down those paths in the future. AlienSkin Exposure X3 - no problems as with LR and PSCC2018.

Bob

 

Joel, On my Macbook Pro I am able to view my RAW files to sort through them, but tedious is a major understatement. 20 images would take 1/2 hour. It takes forever for each .raf file to show itself so sorting through which file I want to process is impossible. Without a DAM I am guessing at which file is which, before I can decide which file to open. Yes, Luminar can be used as a stand-alone if I want to drive myself completely crazy. Neither IOS nor Luminar give me a way to sort through and see which files I want to process. Until Luminar has a DAM I find it is only available as a plug-in, at least in my case. Right now about the only thing for me to do is use Lightroom or ACDSee to view/sort my files and then transfer them to Luminar when I see which file I want to process.

I REALLY look forward to the DAM, overall I prefer Luminar. It renders my images much better than any other software I have tried - and I believe I have tried all the contenders. But until it has a usable DAM, I will consider it a plug-in, as on my system at least I need something to sort through my images to know which ones to open with Luminar.

 

In spite of having LR & Exposure X3, I'll often use FastStone Viewer to drop single images onto a pp app. I suspect I'd be accused of being a hoarder so staying with one at a time helps keep clutter down.

Bob

 

From what you are saying using Luminar as a plug-in is clearly the way to go. I also use other software as a DAM to manage images and go into Luminar for specific purposes. Typically I start in ON1 for my base RAW processing and then use Luminar for its many great filters that no one else has. There were 3 main reasons I didn't previously use it as a primary launching point for raw images: 1. No DAM, 2. speed 3.Lens corrections. No. 2 has been fixed on the Mac side. Number 3 has been improved and I have some thoughts on that (see my Please login or register to view links.)

I'm curious though why it's not working faster on you MacBook Pro. I have a MBP also (2014) and it's nothing special in terms of specs (3GHz i7, 8GB RAM, Intel Iris 1.5GB) but I have gotten some pretty major speed improvements. Being able to use Luminar on my laptop made it more viable for me. It was fast enough before on my desktop but I use my laptop a lot too. I assume you saw Please login or register to view links? If you get a chance, see if your times are close. If not maybe there is something to be done.

Cheers,
Joel

 

Out of curiosity, dropped a jpg on Luminar, loaded in ~ 7.5 sec. ACROS LUT still produced a white screen.

A RAF took ~ 16 sec, a NEF ~ 12 sec to load.

 

I got a message from support today to say there will be a hot fix available very soon. They also said the developers were already working on the Affinity LUT issue. I'm sure they will get to the bottom of the crashes as well, hopefully.

 

Thank You,

We can hope...

 

My load times for JPG, DNG and RAF files are about half the time of what you have stated. Am using the stand alone version of luminar since I don't have a working copy of LR or another app it will run in as plug in. Not having any issues thus far using LUT's either thus far. Tried a few different images. Also tried some LUT's from Lutify.me and seem to work just fine along with the built in LUT's. Using a MBP mid 2015, 16GB ram and 2.5 GHz Intel Core i7.

 

Mine a WIN 10 machine - all other apps load fine, and more quickly.

 

Joel, It's not Luminar that's slow. Luminar works fine on both my Mac and my PC. What is slow is the Operating System. I shoot Fuji so have the Fuji .raf files. Windows won't open them at all! I think there is something I can download to allow Win10 to open them, but I prefer my Mac anyway. The Mac IOS will open them but it takes forever for each file to view - thus my need for a DAM.

I find myself debating on what I prefer. Lightroom, ACDSee, or On1 seem to work best. Lightroom with the latest upgrade works nice, but then it's Adobe so guaranteed to irritate me again in the future. ACDSee is a DAM that I really like, but only used as a DAM, the rest leaves a bit to be desired. On1 is likely the best choice - I just need to get used to using it. I'm just a hobbyist so I can keep playing with it until I find what I like. I suspect Luminar will be it, if they can come up with a decent DAM.

 

Was experimenting a little further with Luminar. Using the stand alone version to work on a raw X-H1 image or two. When I went to adjust the curves it would crash. It happened several times with different images. Not sure if it was the fuji file or the new version of Luminar? I changed the LUT's a few times with no issues at all. Just with the curves it crashed and with raw images. Working with jpg's from X-H1 and gopro seemed to work just fine so far.

 

Update and Fix for LUTs in Luminar Jupiter (Mac)! ...well mostly

When I opened Luminar today I was greeted with an update notice. It still says "1.2.0" but it will do an update with a fix for loading LUTs. The full version name is Version 1.2.0 (4245). If I remember correctly the previous revision was (3720) although there may be some revisions between these two. This is all on the Mac side. It seems that the LUT issues were mainly on the Mac side.

If you're not greeted with the update notice, just go to Check for Updates... under the Luminar menu.

I hope this works for the rest of you that were having LUT loading issues. I will say that the ones I tried (Fuji film simulations, Tritone, Smokey) all appear noticeably more contrasty than (I remember them) in Luminar v1.1.0. I haven't had time to scrutinize this and see if anything more than the LUT contrast slider is needed to regin them in.

Happy shooting,
Joel