Luminar 2018
This image editing app gives Photoshop a run for its money. $99 | SKYLUM.COM/LUMINAR
Skylum, which was formerly known as Macphun, likes to take a different approach to photo editing. Its Luminar app is often compared to Lightroom, but it doesn’t have the asset management abilities of Adobe’s software; Skylum is working on this, however.
Luminar is a non-destructive editor — your original image file isn’t changed by the edits you make, and instead they’re only applied when you export your edited photo as a new file. Effects are added as filters, which can be faded out, layered on top of one another or applied selectively. There are cropping and rotation tools, along with Lightroomlike sliders to alter exposure, contrast, saturation and the like.
New features in this 2018 release include lens correction tools to even out the distortions introduced by camera lenses, particularly wide-angle ones, plus increased speed in the raw file handling and noise reduction systems. The updates make the app more attractive if you use interchangeable lens cameras, since it can correct for every quirk and fly through the processing of large raw files. Raw processing depends as much on your Mac’s Intel processor as the software you’re using, of course, but every speed improvement helps.
Luminar separates its one-click edits into presets and filters. The presets live in a bar along the bottom of the interface, while filters have their own section in the editing sliders on the right. New filters in the 2018 edition include Sunrays, which sends beams of light from a user-defined centre, and Dodge and Burn, which lets you paint areas of darker or lighter tones directly onto your image. Luminar’s way of working can take a while to get a handle on, especially if you’re used to Adobe products, but it’s a well thoughtout process married to an interface that’s maturing nicely. It has its quirks, such as the buttons spread thinly across the top and filters that are applied at 0%, so you wonder what they do, but with Luminar 2018, Skylum proves it’s a real force in the software world.
With no subscription and a price lower than that of Photoshop Elements, aspiring photographers should turn their lenses on Luminar. It’s a fully featured image editor, with more functionality being worked on.