# You can now get Skylum Luminar 3 for free



## Canon Rumors Guy (Apr 21, 2020)

> Skylum Software is now giving away Luminar 3 for free.
> *About Luminar 3*
> Luminar 3 is a full-featured photo editor for Mac and PC. It brings over 300 robust tools and features, including fast RAW support, layers, custom brush for selective editing, masking, dozens of photo filters with custom adjustments, Luminar Looks and a lot more.  Luminar features advanced controls that are easy to use. Intelligent filters like Accent AI 2.0 makes it easy to get a great looking image in seconds.
> *Download Luminar 3 Now*



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## elephant-19210 (Apr 21, 2020)

I wouldn't touch Luminar again even for free. It's a dodgy Ukrainian software with tremendous performance issues, poor file handling and absent color science.


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## olympus593 (Apr 21, 2020)

elephant-19210 said:


> I wouldn't touch Luminar again even for free. It's a dodgy Ukrainian software with tremendous performance issues, poor file handling and absent color science.



Well, Adobe Creative Cloud and its countless "support" services and executables are even more dodgy.

I partially agree with regarding to performance issues as I had some of them with Luminar 2018 and the first release of Luminar 4, but otherwise, it's pretty ok. File handling it's still not in the same level of LR as a DAM tool.

I always used it as a external editor to LR, so can't really complain regarding color science.


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## herein2020 (Apr 21, 2020)

I tried it hoping for a LR replacement; I'm just as tired of paying Adobe's subscription fees as everyone else...But this software wasn't even close, horrible performance, RAW conversions revealed bad color science, noisy shadows, and artifacts, and basic functionality that I had come to expect from LR was lacking.

I have replaced PP with Davnci Resolve, but am still suck with LR and PS.


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## privatebydesign (Apr 21, 2020)

herein2020 said:


> I tried it hoping for a LR replacement; I'm just as tired of paying Adobe's subscription fees as everyone else...But this software wasn't even close, horrible performance, RAW conversions revealed bad color science, noisy shadows, and artifacts, and basic functionality that I had come to expect from LR was lacking.
> 
> I have replaced PP with Davnci Resolve, but am still suck with LR and PS.


Do you use Adobe products in a professional environment? How much do you pay a month for your phone, cable TV, internet, etc etc, is $8 per month really that onerous for pro grade software that is constantly updated?

I am quite happy with the $8 a month price of the Photographer suite as opposed to the older license.


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## herein2020 (Apr 21, 2020)

privatebydesign said:


> Do you use Adobe products in a professional environment? How much do you pay a month for your phone, cable TV, internet, etc etc, is $8 per month really that onerous for pro grade software that is constantly updated?
> 
> I am quite happy with the $8 a month price of the Photographer suite as opposed to the older license.


I get what you are saying, and yes I use it professionally, however I was paying for the full suite at the time since I needed AE, PP, LR, and PS since I offer both video and photography services which was adding up to around $600/yr.

You could still argue that that is not much; but those "updates" you mentioned were neither desired nor in most cases beneficial; every PP update was more like a beta test that broke everyone until the update to fix the update came out. LR and PS are the same way, so unstable after updates that I stopped updating until months after the update had been out and even then sometimes something would break in the middle of a project due to an update (mainly performance issues but sometimes crashing).

DR on the other hand is fantastic, this pandemic gave me to the time I needed to learn how to replace AE and PP with DR (I have already downgraded to the photographer only suite), and it is rock solid stable compared to PP. I wrapped up all of my outstanding projects using DR and it is a one time cost of $300 with updates for life. DR 16 has really come into its own as a full fledged NLE and now that i am familiar with node based editing AE seems like an ancient way to do things.

So yes, if there was a DR equivalent for LR and PS I would absolutely switch in a heartbeat. I know $8 does not sound like much ($52 in my case) but I estimate that I spent over $4,000.00 on Adobe over the past 6yrs for features I neither asked for, needed, or in the end even used. I really don't do much beyond basic layer masking, color grading, skin retouching, blemish removal, flambient, etc. to the images that I take for customers; that is not $4,000 worth of software in my book.


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## kten (Apr 21, 2020)

herein2020 said:


> I tried it hoping for a LR replacement; I'm just as tired of paying Adobe's subscription fees as everyone else...But this software wasn't even close, horrible performance, RAW conversions revealed bad color science, noisy shadows, and artifacts, and basic functionality that I had come to expect from LR was lacking.
> 
> I have replaced PP with Davnci Resolve, but am still suck with LR and PS.


Not tried CaptureOne? Be worth it if thinking of going adobe free. I'm stuck with them (adobe) due to not being able to find replacements, years of retraining to get to proficiency level I am in them and their integration with other apps/each other (mostly use Bridge, PS, PP and AE with some indesign and illustrator). As for money we pay even more in Europe and I dislike the rent model, plus I have historically skipped a version so saved more. Too many bootlickers let adobe off the hook for gouging folks as much as they do, they are not the worst but I certainly wont defend them and fear what would happen if they had no competition.

I do like CaptureOne for the one off payment buy not rent model as well as the tethering is still the best imho, plus the skintones tools are pretty nice.


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## herein2020 (Apr 21, 2020)

kten said:


> Not tried CaptureOne? Be worth it if thinking of going adobe free. I'm stuck with them (adobe) due to not being able to find replacements, years of retraining to get to proficiency level I am in them and their integration with other apps/each other (mostly use Bridge, PS, PP and AE with some indesign and illustrator). As for money we pay even more in Europe and I dislike the rent model, plus I have historically skipped a version so saved more. Too many bootlickers let adobe off the hook for gouging folks as much as they do, they are not the worst but I certainly wont defend them and fear what would happen if they had no competition.
> 
> I do like CaptureOne for the one off payment buy not rent model as well as the tethering is still the best imho, plus the skintones tools are pretty nice.



I looked into CaptureOne, but it seemed to have performance problems as well, and if I recall it had no file organization features. I really wanted to like CaptureOne but it felt too much like Photoshop and too little like Lightroom. I probably did not give it enough of a chance but it just did not appeal to me. Also, saving changes took forever in the version I tried and since you had to edit one image at a time it really would not work for my workflow where I get a starting point for hundreds of images, sync the initial color grade to all of the subsequent images then just make small adjustments on a per image basis.

I may try Darktable next, I have been watching videos on it and it looks like a possible LR replacement.

It sounds like you use way too many of Adobe's products to be able to switch, their integration is nice, like roundtripping footage through PS for a few advanced edits then batch exporting all of the finished images from LR, or editing AE titles from right within PP, but that rental fee just does not match the few features that I use.

Out of 6 years of paying for an Adobe subscription, the ONLY feature they have added that I actually use is the Texture slider in LR which is a nice addition but definitely not worth $4,000 USD.

So far I have tried:
Luminar
CaptureOne
ON1 Photo RAW
Corel PaintShop Pro
ACDSee (Uninstalling this one was the worst..broke my Windows 10 install)

Every piece of software just made me realize how good Lightroom really is.


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## kten (Apr 22, 2020)

herein2020 said:


> I looked into CaptureOne, but it seemed to have performance problems as well, and if I recall it had no file organization features. I really wanted to like CaptureOne but it felt too much like Photoshop and too little like Lightroom. I probably did not give it enough of a chance but it just did not appeal to me. Also, saving changes took forever in the version I tried and since you had to edit one image at a time it really would not work for my workflow where I get a starting point for hundreds of images, sync the initial color grade to all of the subsequent images then just make small adjustments on a per image basis.
> 
> I may try Darktable next, I have been watching videos on it and it looks like a possible LR replacement.



You can set up recipes and workflows to do that in captureone, although admit it isn't as intuitive compared to lightroom and certainly not as simplified thus you do need to spend time with tutorials to really get to grips with use where lightroom folks don't really need that imho. I haven't had major performance issues generally but may be dependent on folks hardware somewhat. That said it can be clunky at times and the interface is very different and does things different to most things, one of the reasons I like Canon and Adobe is they both have strong focus on exceptionally intuitive user interface.

Darktable I tried years ago (on my slackware machine not on my windows box) and found it was OK but wasn't amazing but it was some time ago so may be different now, plus my needs are may be different so I'd still recommend trying it. One thing I found a lot of the cheaper or free alternatives lacked is ability for integration into existing workflows and colour management (or lack of) issues related to workflows that have something other than web display output as their endpoint.


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## ildyria (Apr 22, 2020)

Luminar 3 does not support the CR3 files. So not even bothering installing and trying it.


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## C Tographer (Apr 25, 2020)

I don't like paying Adobe monthly rent.

Especially in these challenging times. In many countries, the media industry has been absolutely devastated by the novel coronavirus. Many people have had their incomes reduced or obliterated.

So any alternative products to avoid Adobe's rent are welcome. As others have mentioned, DaVinci Resolve is a brilliant video editing package, available for free.

If only there were also good alternatives to Photoshop.


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## SteveC (Apr 25, 2020)

C Tographer said:


> If only there were also good alternatives to Photoshop.



I manage with Gimp, but then, I don't do a lot of postprocessing.


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## herein2020 (Apr 25, 2020)

SteveC said:


> I manage with Gimp, but then, I don't do a lot of postprocessing.


For me Lightroom is far more important than Photoshop, I spend 95% of my post processing time in Lightroom and occasionally need to go to Photoshop for things like large item removal, content aware scaling, layer masking, etc. I rarely need PS, but the times I do it is usually for a major client who needs a quick turnaround. LR and its batch processing abilities is my core software though and so far nothing else comes close. If Adobe would let me purchase it outright and occasionally pay for a RAW camera list update I would be perfectly fine with that. I don't need a single new feature in LR to do what I need to do with it.


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