New Luminar- Pleasant surprise, free sharpening preset

[AZWolf]

Hi All,

 

Macphun sent me their Luminar update a few days ago for me to evaluate. I told them truthfully that I have have always loved the interface but that previous incarnations of Luminar didn't do an acceptable job processing Fuji X-Trans files. So I tried it, was pleasantly surprised and posted this article.

 

At first the images looked too soft but then I experiemented with all different kinds of images and sharpening and developed a custom preset for sharpening the images (link for free download in my article.)

 

So far, they look great. If any of you want to try Luminar and my preset or your own sharpening and let me know, I will be happy to provide the feedback to my contacts at Macphun.

 

Hope you enjoy the article.

 

Cheers,

Joel

[Haswell]

Thank you very much for the use of your sharpen preset.  It is subtle yet positive without any tell tale halo's.  I have been a Luminar Jockey since it first surfaced and I love it's new incarnation. I use it exclusively now, I stopped my subscription to Adobe and I find Luminar offers more than enough options to work with.

 

I have attempted a few presets in sharpening; yours is superb. Thanks once again.

[AZWolf]

You're welcome. Glad you find my preset so useful!

 

Cheers,

Joel

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Plaatje]

Don't use Luminar anymore . . . . I saw you mentioned in your article the lack of lensdistortion control. For me that was and still is a big downer. If you sell it as a rawconverter and you don't even have the possibility to change it by hand, than it's useless. Why? Because Fuji make some in camera changes and even these are not or not good recognised by Luminar. They have promised to work on it and it might be in their autumn update. So my advice would be to wait and use something else, or simply use the filters, if you like them . . . 

Let's be fair, even Mac Photo's does a better job on rawconverting

[AZWolf]

Don't use Luminar anymore . . . . I saw you mentioned in your article the lack of lensdistortion control. For me that was and still is a big downer. If you sell it as a rawconverter and you don't even have the possibility to change it by hand, than it's useless. Why? Because Fuji make some in camera changes and even these are not or not good recognised by Luminar. They have promised to work on it and it might be in their autumn update. So my advice would be to wait and use something else, or simply use the filters, if you like them . . . 

Let's be fair, even Mac Photo's does a better job on rawconverting

 

 

I agree that Luminar would not make a good primary raw converter at this point without lens corrections.  The idea behind my article was to show that they are on the right track and compared to a few months ago there is a big improvement in Fuji files. So for you and many Fuji users out there the best workflow is my Fuji Option 1. That is if you want to make use of all the useful filters in Luminar.

 

I think the important thing to remember is that there is no one processing solution to fit all situations. It's OK to use multiple products, especially in light of how inexpensive many tools are now. I use ON1 and Lightroom for raw processing along with some other adjustments. But I also make use of the specialized and time saving tasks available in Topaz products, Luminar, etc.

 

It's interesting you mention Apple Photos. I've only been using it to store my iPhone photos. But you've piqued my curiosity so when I get some extra time (haha) I'm going to do a comparison with it.

 

Thanks your your comments!

 

Joel 

[Plaatje]

Thanks for your advice (Fuji option 1) but for now I simply don't need Luminar. Not that happy with their filters too but YMMV . . . 

For now I really like the Fuji JPEG's. If they need some changes Apple Photo's is fine for me. I shoot RAW and JPEG so if something goes terrible wrong my escape is the RAW file. For that I use mostly Picktorial and sometimes Affinity. 

BTW Rumors says that in the next update Photo's is updated too . . . .

 

Good light!

 

Jos

Edited July 12, 2017 by Plaatje