![]() ON1 has a good, but not brilliant selection of develop filters (though I particularly like the blur filter which has lots of different options). In fact, on only one photo during the trial did I find that a preset (HDR filter) managed to get a better result than processing manually in Lightroom (apart from terrible noise reduction). ON1 has a large library of presets, but I found that most were not useful for light painting. ON1 also has lots of display layouts that you also change on the fly during different parts of the post processing workflow. There is plenty of training material available online to assist with the learning curve. Just like Luminar, it is easy to get it to find your existing photo library. ON1 Photo RAW has also had a lot of recent improvements. An annoyance is that you cannot do any other tasks during photo export. I didn’t experience any crashes during testing. Since the review, version 3.1.1 has been released which has promised significant performance enhancements. Performance (on my late 2013 MacBook Pro 13”) was OK, but not as fast as Lightroom. One annoyance though is that when opening a seperate image (rather than adjustment layer) for the second layer, you have to find the file through a OS file browser rather than via the DAM. There are brush, radial, gradient, and luminosity mask options, but not edge aware masks. This has a bit of a learning curve, and a few user interface quirks, but once you know how, is quite useful for digital artists. Luminar also has layer / composite functionality. Virtual copies are not available, but are on the product roadmap. Spot removal tools were OK, but again, not as accurate as in Lightroom. If you are often pushing your noise tolerance limits you may need to consider an external noise reduction application as well. The only filter that could be improved is Noise Reduction, which is OK, but not as good as Lightroom’s. Using the range of filters, I would say I have a 50/50 mix of getting better images out of Luminar than Lightroom, though if I wasn’t directly comparing, I would be happy with the results from both. If there a set of filters you often use, then you can create a customised workspace which displays your default filter set (you can still add more as required). These cover the usual, such as HSL, sharpening, but also some other interesting effects such as Colour cast correction, Orton effect, and Sunrays filter. Luminar has an excellent range of develop filters, which can be applied globally, as an adjustment layer, as a brush, gradient, radial, or luminosity filter. Luminar’s recent Accent AI 2 update allows it to detect human skin (in portraits) and process it differently to the rest of the photo. Other presets are available, and I found that in some cases I could get an image I’m happy with much faster than in Lightroom. Sometimes the results (light painting or not) to look a bit over-processed, but this can be scaled back with a single slider if required. I found this to work very well in some cases (so well that limited further editing was required), but fall flat on its face with other photos. One of Luminar’s selling points is its Accent AI filter that can quickly, and automatically optimise a photo. ![]() There are plenty of online videos, a manual, and instructional web pages to help with learning how to use the software. When first starting up Luminar you just need to point it at the relevant location (or locations) of photos – easy. This finally gives a Lightroom style management of photo files. You can’t have failed to notice the heavy advertising for Skylum Luminar (who also make Aurora HDR) on social media, but does the advertising live up to the hype? After a long wait, digital asset management (DAM) functionality was added to Luminar 3 in December 2018. ![]() This review looks at my recent experience with trialling Skylum Luminar (2×14 day trials), and ON1 Photo RAW (31 day trial), and how they performed when developing RAW files from light painting photography sessions. ![]() ![]() However many photographers have a dislike of Adobe’s business practices (notably the subscription only model) and are looking for cheaper, but still capable alternatives. Adobe Lightroom is one of the most popular RAW converters for good reason. Light painting photography can require RAW processing software to be pushed to the extreme, as dynamic range often needs to be maximised, shadows and highlights recovered, and colours controlled. ![]()
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