Luminar Neo - Thoughts?

JohnN

JohnN

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Hi,
As the discount runs out on preordering Neo, what are your thoughts?
All the vids on YouTube essentially seem to be someone looking over the website and waffling, so not much I can't read but I guess if you use AI you may have an insight.

Do you think its worth jumping in - would it replace On1 RAW or is it mostly gimmick?
Also, I'm presuming it sues some sort or side car, or does it (AI) keep everything the the catalogue?

Speaking of the catalogue I watched something on AI and it seemed very basic - is it still a simple folder/album/filename search offering or has it matured to include other items like tags, locations etc?

BTW only asking about AI as I presume the foundation of Neo will be AI but with more precise editting.

Cheers
 
The company keep changing their name and their apps name and claiming all sorts of new features. IMHO it's the same stuff re-packaged. It's more about marketing than new meaningful features. I do still use one of their old original products Macphun "Creative Kit" which I bought way back in 2015 and it is still an amazing app. The new renamed versions do nothing that is of any benefit that I cant do with their first app.

So bottom line I will pass.
 
Cheers David, from what I'd seen there certainly seems to be resentment around their release policy and marketing which is a factor for me.
 
I won’t buy their software anymore. Any normal software company will release an update and give it to existing users for a discount ted price. Skylum get around this by repackaging and claiming it’s brand new software so you need to pay full price again.

personally, I’m not interested in AI stuff anyway. I think their target market now are the instagrammers that want quick, easy, fake edits.
 
lol, I'll not bite at the instagrammer and fake edits - but I get what you mean - certainly not a ringing endorsement for the company.
 
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I bought Luminar AI for about £24 with one of the many 'influencer' discount codes knocking about. I actually really like it, but it's nowhere near fast enough to be working through 100s of images at a time. I had a very, very powerful PC earlier this year and it ran like treacle, but having moved to a MacBook Air M1 it's like a completely different package, far more usable.

I still use Lightroom for the bulk of my event editing, but for day to day shots, landscapes etc I find Luminar very intuitive with some pretty powerful features.

They do very much work on a business model of new customer churn, typically signed up by paying each and every YouTuber/Instagrammer they can to promote the product. Pre-release of Luminar 4 they had 100s of people 'reviewing' the software, if memory serves we even had someone on this forum who was clearly pushing it. Not one mentioned the many, many, many issues the software had at launch (funny that!)

If you can verify it works ok on your system, find a decent deal on a one-time purchase, and go in knowing the software will be replaced next November, then it's worth a try.
 
In the end I did get it, or rather will, £40 and 30 day money back I figured it was worth a look, though I do note a couple of features are coming later.... After the 30 days I suspect.
 
JohnN said:
In the end I did get it, or rather will, £40 and 30 day money back I figured it was worth a look, though I do note a couple of features are coming later.... After the 30 days I suspect.
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Those features will never materialise, we’ll not in Neo anyway. They promised all sorts of features in 3 then 4 and every time they abandoned those users to release new software and charged full price again.
 
I have little faith in the company but will see what its like in the first 30 days
 
ecoleman said:
Those features will never materialise, we’ll not in Neo anyway. They promised all sorts of features in 3 then 4 and every time they abandoned those users to release new software and charged full price again.
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That is very concerning. They still have months to shipping date and already tell you that x, y or x wont be there in the small print. Wow. Did they ever implement sky replacement in the reflections? I doubt but let's find out. It wasn't in when I test driven the early AI version.

The only thing I like was the fog effect. I've applied it to all 5 images I could think of in my library. That was it. I was done with it. They would do well to reassure customers there would be continuity and upgrade pathway. I am like even if they carry some great features, the packaging and management is very repulsive.
 
With software like this, it's best to buy it on the basis of what it does now, rather than what it may do if there's an update. If it doesn't do what you need then look elsewhere.
 
LongLensPhotography said:
That is very concerning. They still have months to shipping date and already tell you that x, y or x wont be there in the small print. Wow. Did they ever implement sky replacement in the reflections? I doubt but let's find out. It wasn't in when I test driven the early AI version.

The only thing I like was the fog effect. I've applied it to all 5 images I could think of in my library. That was it. I was done with it. They would do well to reassure customers there would be continuity and upgrade pathway. I am like even if they carry some great features, the packaging and management is very repulsive.
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Yeah, they did, have a quick poke around YouTube, it's actually pretty good, in the vids anyway, looks like theirs is better than the competition
 
JohnN said:
Yeah, they did, have a quick poke around YouTube, it's actually pretty good, in the vids anyway, looks like theirs is better than the competition
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They had a package a few years back when they called themselves Macphun that was supposed to replace things. The videos were astonishingly impressive, but it just didn't do what it said on the tin, and any kind of clone-stamp tool worked better. I bought it at a time I couldn't really afford to waste money on stuff that didn't work - I've never forgotten their false advertising.
 
I use Luminar AI and actually really like it. I don’t edit large numbers of images and my cataloguing is done primarily on external SSDs anyway. I purchased Luminar AI about 1 week prior to the announcement of Neo, and I got an email from Skylum telling me that I would be getting Neo for free ( I guess as I had only just purchased AI) so I can’t really grumble at that. From what I’ve heard explained about Neo, it does at least sound pretty good, so I’m looking to trying it out.
 
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