What are your thoughts on Luminar AI?
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I've been wanting to enhance my postwork for awhile now (looking at talented other artist's abilities is a great motivator). And I'm just not happy with PaintShop Pro, which I've been using for the past decade. I stumbled upon Luminar AI, and was blown away by what it can do. However, watching tutorials on YouTube, I'm like, "Oh wait, PaintShop Pro can do that. Oh, it can do that as well." And of course, there are things that PaintShop Pro cannot do, like the amazing sky details and such. And that's what I want to be able to do with my artwork. My landscapes are so drab after they are rendered in DS. I know people put a lot of effort into their postwork to make their artwork pop, and that's what I want to do.
That being said, if you've used Luminar AI, what are your thoughts? What sets it apart? Is it good for postwork for DS renders?
Thank you for your feedback!
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Comments
I am downloading Luminar, so can't comment on that yet, but seems like a good all round photo retoucher that takes work out of your hands.
I think Affinity Photo is more of an allround package if you are looking for something more modern than Paintshop Pro. I used Paintshop before Affinity Photo and Affinity is just a lot faster and more stable, it works a lot more like Photoshop which I was used to as well. Certainly worth a look for its price point of $55.
It also gets a lot of upgrades without paying extra (which Paintshop seems to push a lot more)
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I use Luminar AI for some time now, in fact the past iterations of Luminar also. I like it a lot. I use it for photographt only so far, though I think it could be really good for CGI.
I've tried the trial twice in its current form and the last version (wish the trial was longer) and for me I find that I have better luck/results using Lightroom. I like that Luminar is a one time payment but Lightroom+PS for final edits works better for me. I think though if I didn't use Lightroom the Nik Collection would be my alternative along with Affinity Photo. Next time Nik goes on sale I might move over completely from PS+Lightroom to Nik+Affinity Photo. To be fair I don't think I used Luminar to its full potential but both Nik and Lightroom were a lot more straightforward in how to use them that I felt immediately more comfortable using both. Good luck with the editing!
The deal with Luminar the new one is AI enhanced. The new version, 2022, of PSP also uses AI ..hey, its the new push button art flavor. I have v4.3.3 of Luminar. I like it for sure, and not just for sky but also portraits. What is cool you can change out the sky using a click ... lots of options and a whole lot more for purchase.
A quick edit in Luminar. it obviously needs a bit more work, but gives an idea anyway.
I've used both Luminar 4 and Luminar AI as part of my workflow (and before Luminar 4 I used Creative Studio, which was made by MacPhun before they became Skylum and is essentially the ancestor of Luminar). My usual approach involves using these apps as a Photoshop plugin: I load up a render from DAZ Studio, duplicate the layer, then apply an effect from Creative Studio ... or Luminar 4 ... or Luminar AI ... and then use Photoshop's blend modes to merge it with the base render to get the effect I want. With the right choice of presets and judicious blending, the results sometimes look better than raw DAZ renders.
Recent versions of Photoshop are incompatible with Creative Studio and Luminar 4, so that they can't be used in plug-in mode (you could still use the standalone versions, but using them as plug-ins tends to trash the image). I reported this to Skylum and they acknowledged the bug, said that they won't fix Creative Studio (it's 5 years old, so that's perhaps not unreasonable), but might fix Luminar 4. So far as I know, they haven't yet.
That leaves Luminar AI. I have fairly mixed feelings about this. It comes with a lot of 'templates' -- their name for presets -- but I find that very few of them actually give results that I really like. I do find myself coming back to the Rembrandt template, which does a nice job of enhancing skin, but otherwise I find the results are fairly 'meh'. Luminar AI, like Luminar 4, does have a Sky Replacement feature -- I've used Luminar 4's Sky Replacement in a couple of images, with OK results -- so it might be worth looking at for that.
The thing that drives me crazy about Luminar AI is that some of the icons in the Templates palette don't link to templates that you actually have installed; they link to Skylum's online marketplace. So as you click around trying to find a template that works for you, you can end up being suddenly sent to their website where you can spend $$$ on more templates. I am not a fan of tools that try to sneak a storefront into your workspace. The first graphics app I encountered that did this was Vue, but at least there you could switch off the marketing feature. That's not the case with Luminar AI, and Skylum tell me that they have no intention of changing this behavior. Their business model seems to be very much based on trying to sell you add-ons, and Luminar AI may be the perfection of that model.
Overall, Luminar AI can do some neat things. It's possible that if you take the time to configure it and customize it to your own preferences, you could make it a really useful tool. Personally, though, I'm not overwhelmed by what the so-called AI can do. I'd rather have less 'intelligence' and more control. If I had to choose between Luminar 4 and Luminar AI, I'd pick Luminar 4 ... but I don't know how much longer that's likely to be supported.
Incidentally, Luminar 4 often shows up in special offer 'bundles' from places like Humble Bundle or BundleHunt, so if you time it right you may not need to pay the full asking price.
I got my Luminar 4 for free by buying something ... Oh, when I bought a camera lens from BH Photo out of NYC.
The deal with buying templates is in 4 as well. I was trying to find some templates one day and that is exactly what happened, sent me off to their store.
Just to add, Skylum have now released Luminar Neo. It's not been entirely clear to me whether Neo is now the official 'does-everything' app from Skylum, or whether the goal is to keep selling Luminar Neo and LuminarAI side-by-side (the current situation), with LuminarAI targeted more at people who want one-click fixes for photos, and Luminar Neo as more of a 'pro-level' tool with greater control.
I have Luminar Neo, but haven't really had a chance to play around with it much yet. What I've seen looks very nice, though.
Of course everything is up in the air at the moment, because Skylum are based in Kyiv, and so they have other things on their minds. I actually met a bunch of people from the company, including the CEO, earlier this year, and they were all super-nice. I'm very sad to think of them having such a dangerous and uncertain future.
I use Photoshop and the NIK plugin for my postwork. Once in a while I also use Topaz if I want to add a painterly effect.
I tried Luminar...wasn't impressed...and they make it a pain to figure out how to cancel your subscription.
I have started using it a lot. Granted, if all you want to do is use templates, it can become expensive very quickly. I use a quick cycle through the templates as an inspiration of what I want then go into edit mode to achieve what I want. I used Photoshop professionally for a few decades and am aware that other programs can accomplish what I want but it becomes the knife versus food processor question (I use a knife when i want to cut up something precisely and I don't have a lot of them and a food processor when I have piles of stuff to chop). A plus for Luminar (I am currently using Luminar Neo) is that some of the tools are more "granular" than other programs (especially the tools for Face light, eye sparkle etc). If I had a complaint is that I wish they wouldn't introduce a new version instead of upgrading the previous ones but that is a minor complaint.