Since the announcement of MacPhun’s photo-editing tool in October, our team has been looking forward to today’s release of Luminar. We tasked our Digital Designer, Jake Huddart, with the arduous task of playing with the final release version for a few days, we can easily say that for many photographers, this will be an early Christmas surprise.
The thrust of MacPhun’s pitch for this release has not been Luminar’s raw power (though it has RAW support), but it’s intuitive interface. In that respect, it does not disappoint.
Blocky, but easily recognisable settings surround the horizontal/vertical edges of the default workspace. This means that making immediate changes is quick and simplistic, avoiding the hassle of navigating menu clusters. What speeds up this process even faster is MacPhun’s much lauded presets. Working on a portrait or a landscape? Click the preset for it and the most likely settings you’d want to play with are right there in front of you, allowing you to tweak to your heart’s content in an instant.
Tweaking is indeed the name of the game here, with a filter section so vast that in Jake’s opinion, “It’s up to the level one would expect of Lightroom and definitely well beyond Photoshop. ” Amateur Instagrammers and pro-photogs alike will feel like they’re in an Aladdin’s cave of wonders with what’s on offer in that regard. The comparing and contrasting between any of these choices is also something we found a joy rather than a bother – due to a built-in before and after slider. Without a doubt our favourite toy to use, Jake commented that something like this “Is usually only offered in post-production, as opposed to an integral part of the editing process. ”
Just as it is present in Adobe Suites, there is a layers system in Luminar and there are options for blending between different images. However, chalk it up to a first edition issue or our unfamiliarity with the software, but there was a fair level of clunkiness using it in comparison to Photoshop’s more fluid experience.
In general Luminar does suffer from some problems when greater manipulation functions are stacked up against Lightroom or Photoshop’s. Luminar’s masking brush for instance, is awkward to use, due to a lack of versatility. Though there are settings to change how it works, it cannot hold a candle to the fine tuning available in Adobe’s packages.
In addition, those aforementioned presets (though useful for regular edits) can hide functions you may want at hand when something unexpected comes up. We are unable to say if it exists, but we weren’t able to find any kind of “display all” button to expand the toolsets. Perhaps its location will be made apparent in an updated user manual because currently the only one on offer on the MacPhun website is woefully missing any diagrams, images or visual aids at all.
These quibbles may sound like we disliked or found terrible faults in Luminar, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, for what it was designed for, Luminar is simply superb. This is not an editor for graphic designers creating entirely new content, this is a photo editor for photographers. While other programs may attempt to provide a complete breadth of functions, Luminar is proud to simply be amazing at additives.
In our opinion, this is a piece of software perfectly suited for image enhancement and low to medium post-production. When doing so, it can allow for an extremely fast workflow speed due to the range of presets, filters, and a clean-cut interface. This may not be a tool equipped for the high level of expansive manipulation needed for professional-level digital-art generation but we can easily recommend it as a must-have for any keen enthusiast who needs to perform modifications to their shots without getting bogged down.
This recommendation is even easier to give at the very reasonable price of US$59. Though wallets may be tight at Christmas, this may be the season for any shutterbug to treat yo self to a new toy.
. digitalrev.com2016-11-19 03:00