Skylum Software News

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Skylum Software latest free update for Luminar 3 (v3.1.0) with Accent AI 2.0

Hi everyone,

Here it is the latest update for Luminar 3 including the new Accent AI 2.0 feature. and a host of other new useful features. I’ve been fortunate to have been testing a beta release of these features for a few days now and they are great.

You’ve got to love these guys 🙂

Changelog:

Luminar Updates for Windows Users

The Windows version of Luminar receives several updates with version 3.1.0 We hope you enjoy this new release of Luminar and appreciate your feedback and reports.

New features

IMPORT IMAGES. You can now import images from a memory card or hard drive and copy them to a folder. You can also choose to include subfolders when importing

SMUGMUG SHARING. The ability to post images to SmugMug has now been added to Luminar for Windows.

SHORTCUTS. Folders and user albums can be added to the Shortcuts list. Just right-click for a context menu or drag & drop them into the list.

IMPROVED SELECTIONS. Want to choose a range of photos in the Gallery view? Try the Shift or Ctrl key to select a range or group of images. You can also deselect images from a multiselection by Ctrl+clicking on an image.

ROTATE IN GALLERY. Images selected in the gallery can be quickly rotated left or right by 90 ̊increments with no need to switch to edit view. Just use the Image > Rotate menu or just right-click.

PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS SUPPORT. We’ve added Photoshop Elements support to the Windows platform. Just choose the Install Plugins command if you want to load Luminar as a plugin. For future versions of Luminar, plugin users should switch to Luminar Flex.

Performance Improvements

Get additional speed and performance from the Luminar update.

IMPROVED HISTORY. Undo a Sync/Copy/Paste adjustments with one step in the History list.

HIDDEN FILES. Luminar does a better job of filtering hidden folders and photo. Additionally, unwanted items like Backups, History, Previews, and Caches won’t be shown when opening Luminar Catalogs.

Luminar Updates for Mac Users

Several performance improvements, as well as new features, await Mac users. We hope you enjoy this new release of Luminar and appreciate your feedback and reports.

PROGRESS BAR. Keep better track of what’s happening when working with Luminar. You’ll see a progress bar when using tools like Erase or when running Luminar as a third-party filter.

Skylum Software have a new product, Luminar Flex plugin a version of their Luminar software for Adobe Lightroom ®, Adobe Photoshop ® and Photos for MacOS ®.

Hi everyone,

Skylum have a new product which could be of interest to anyone involved with drone photography.

Kind regard

A few videos:

Hi everyone,

I though I’d share this with you, hope it is of interest.

From Skylum Software:

“We’ll give away Photolemur 2 for free for three days once this video gets 100,000 VIEWS!

All you have to do is follow these 3 simple steps:

1. Watch this video.
2. Share this video with your friends on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) to get more views.
3. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay tuned.”

Additional I got quite a nice photo tutorial e-book by e-mail after subscribing to their channel. I know this is an advertising campaign by them but free is free 🙂 .

Kind regards

leigh sig 2

Skylum software US$10 off coupon code and Luminar 3, ver. 3.0.2 update 19/2/2019

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links which means that I may receive a commission if you click on one of the product links and make a purchase. I only share products that I personally use and that I believe will be valuable to my readers. All opinions are my own.

Hi everyone,

I have setup a permanent US$10 off coupon code – LEIGH10SKYLUM which you can use if you are interested in purchasing their software. Remember that they have 30 day trials of their products available on their website and a 60 day money back guarantee. If your are interested in their products please use my affiliate links on the right or as below:

Aurora HDR 2019

Luminar 3

Please note that the above coupon code cannot be used during the sale but can be used at other times.

Luminar 3, ver. 3.0.2 update

Many thanks to Skylum for the opportunity to test the new version in advance of release. They have added some great new features. Thanks to the team at Skylum for all their hard work on the new version and for listening to their users.

New Features:

Take advantage of these new features.
* SUBFOLDER MANAGEMENT. Subfolders make it easy to further organize your image library. These are folders nested inside other folders in your catalog and directly tie back to real folders on your hard drive.
* Subfolder creation. You can create a new by right-clicking on an existing folder in your Library.
* Subfolder deletion. It is possible to delete a subfolder as well by right-clicking on it in your library.
* LOCATE FOLDER. Have you moved or copied media to a new location? You can right-click on an offline folder and choose Locate Folder to select and reconnect files.
* ADDING FOLDER IMPROVEMENTS. Change your mind when adding a folder? Just click Cancel to stop the current task.
* OFFLINE FILE ALERTS. See a visual alert indicating unavailable files and folders.
* IMPROVED NAVIGATION. Quickly switch between Gallery and Single Image view with dedicated toolbar buttons.
* SHORTCUT KEYS. Take advantage of new keyboard shortcuts for View, Looks Navigation, Masks, Tools, and Edit.
* NEW LANGUAGES SUPPORTED. Use Luminar 3 in more languages with new localizations:
* Chinese Simplified
* Chinese Traditional
* Korean
* Portuguese
* Russian
* Italian

Performance Improvements
Get additional speed and performance from the Luminar 3 update.
* FASTER ADDING. You’ll see much faster load times when adding new photos and folders to the Catalog.
* FASTER LAUNCHING. When you return to Luminar 3, launch times are improved when reloading your Catalog.
* STABILITY. Thanks to our users for reporting different issues. This version of Luminar offers general stability improvements.

New Cameras Added
The following new cameras are supported by this recent update:

* NIKON
* Nikon D3500
* Nikon P1000
* Nikon Z6
* Nikon Z7

* PANASONIC
* Panasonic Lumix DC-LX100 II

* FUJIFILM
* Fujifilm GFX 50R
* Fujifilm X-T3

* SONY
* Sony RX100VA
* Sony RX100VI
* Sony DSC-HX99
* Sony DSC-HX95

* LEICA
* Leica M10-D
* Leica M10-P
* Leica D-Lux 7

Luminar 3

Luminar 3 screenshots as supplied by Skylum. Click for bigger images.

Luminar 3 Top 10 Benefits (PDF File)

Luminar 3 Guide (PDF File)

Hope this is of interest to you.

Kind regards

As I sit here looking at my modern digital cameras I’m reminded of my first camera and, in particular, the first photograph that I ever took. Nowadays we take cameras and camera technology pretty much for granted but when I was a child I can’t remember many photographs. The only time our camera saw the light of day, and it had to be the light of day, as there wasn’t a flash, was on a few family occasions, the usual thing, school sports days, birthdays, etc.. My interest in photography didn’t start until my grandfather “loaned” me his camera to take with me on a week-long school trip, sleeping under canvas, in Snowdonia, North Wales. It was a somewhat battered old twin-lens reflex camera in which one looked downwards in to the viewfinder when taking a photograph.

I remember being very excited at being entrusted with the family camera, film wasn’t cheap and I had very little to no idea how to use it. The experience must have made some kind of impression on me as, after all these years, I still remember taking my first photograph. The coach stopped en-route at Blenheim Palace, the ancestral home of Sir Winston Churchill and it became the subject of my first photograph. Although, sadly, like my other photographs from the trip, it has long since disappeared, however, I really don’t need the photograph to remind me as the experience is indelibly etched on my mind. I wonder if this is perhaps where my interest in landscape photography stems from but that’s probably too much of an assumption. As far as I remember I was the only kid on the trip to have a camera, that’s how different things were, nowadays, just about everyone has a camera of some sort built in to their mobile phones. It also taught me to be disciplined to the point of being frugal when taking photographs as the trip was for one week and I only had a 12 exposure black and white film in the camera.

Some years later I really got the photography bug and bought my first camera, an Olympus OM-1 35 mm film camera and I went on to own their OM-2 and OM-4ti cameras and a range of lenses. Film was still pretty expensive considering I earned about £20 a week in my first job so I got in to developing and printing my own black and white and, later, colour films to help keep the costs down and make things more affordable. Not only did this experience teach me an awful lot about image-making start to finish, many of the techniques and skills that I learned in my makeshift darkroom, a small room adorned with genuine World War 2 blackout curtains fitted to keep out the light, another hand-me-down from my grandfather, these skills would re-surface and be invaluable some years later when I started working on processing my digital images.

I put myself through University as a mature student and I badly needed the money so I had to very reluctantly part with all my photographic equipment, but needs must. After I graduated I bought my first digital camera, a small fixed lens Kodak compact camera, reduced in a sale. It had, by today’s standards, a laughably small maximum image resolution of 640×480 pixels or, to put it another way, a stunning 0.4 Megapixels!. For all of this and further equipped with screw on wide angle and telephoto lens attachments, it proved to be a fabulous little camera which I took all over the place with me. Put simply, digital photography was a revelation, to me, no requirement for film, no real running costs and a lot of image capacity on a small memory card which I found absolutely liberating.

A few years before that I had discovered some free graphics editing software on the cover disk of a computer magazine and that started off my real passion for working with graphics and, ultimately, photo processing. So I then had all the tools I required to develop, pun intended and further, my interest in digital photography. Processing is where the magic starts for me, I am totally absorbed in and fascinated by the range of options that digital processing affords me. It encourages me, if, that is, I ever need encouragement, to constantly experiment with new styles, new techniques and is such an important part of my enjoyment and interest in photography.

I went on to own several DSLRs but, as I got older I began to find that they were simply too heavy and bulky. I switched over back in 2013 to Micro Four Thirds cameras and lenses. My choice of MFT system was heavily influenced by my experiences with my Olympus film cameras, maybe it was, in truth, part based on nostalgia that I decided on their OM-D system. As a landscape/travel photographer I have to carry my gear around all day and the weight and bulk saving is highly significant. I’ve been very impressed with the image quality of my Micro Four Thirds equipment, it has traveled with me extensively, never let me down and I have never had cause to question my decision to go over to that format.

So my 50-plus year photographic adventure has led me from twin-lens reflex and single-lens reflex film cameras to digital cameras, from stumbling around in a dimly-lit darkroom to working with my images on my computer. I’ve heard it said on occasions, including a comment I read some while back by a very famous photographer, that cameras being so much an every-day item now and available in mobile phones etc. devalues photography. I feel quite the opposite, I firmly believe that it empowers everyone with affordable technology to take photographs and enjoy photography and that, in my opinion, is fantastic. Although I’ve very much enjoyed my personal photographic journey I do confess to feeling a slight tinge of regret that the technology wasn’t available when I started out but one can’t put the clock back and I intend to keep on embracing all these great technological advancements, experimenting and enjoying my work.

Cameras:

Olympus: OM-D E-M5 Mk II (titanium) & HLD-8G grip, OM-D E-M1 Mk I (black) & HDL-7 grip, OM-D EM-5 Mk I (silver) & HDL-6 grip, PEN EPL-5, PEN EP-5 (silver) +VF-4, PEN E-PL8 (Silver) +VF4, Tough TG-5 (red), PEN-F (silver), Canon Powershot G10, Nikon Coolpix A100

Lenses:

Olympus: M.Zuiko: 12 mm f/2, 17 mm f/1.8, 25 mm f/1.8, 45 mm f/1.8, 30 mm f/3.5 macro, 9 mm f/8 body cap fisheye, 15 mm f/8 body cap, 9-18 mm, 12-50 mm, 12-40 mm f/2.8 PRO, 14-150 mm II, 40-150 mm II, 12-45mm f/4 PRO, MCON-P02.

Sigma: ART 60 mm f/2.8.

Samyang: Manual focus 7.5 mm f/3.5 fisheye.

TT Artisan: Manual focus 17mm f/1.4, 35mm f/1.4.

Panasonic Lumix: 14 mm f/2.5, 20 mm f/1.7, 12-32 mm x2 (black and silver), 12-60 mm, 14-42 mm II, 35-100 mm, 45-150mm.

PEN E-P5, 9-18mm,12-32mm, 40-150mm II. A lightweight kit with virtually continuous coverage from 18mm wide angle to 300mm telephoto.

OM-D E-M1 I, 14-150mm II, 12-40mm PRO. . Heavier than my other kits but with complete weather-sealing. Coverage from 24mm wide angle to 300mm telephoto with some overlap for backup.

OM-D E-M5 II, 17mm, 35mm, 12-60mm. A balance of two fun manual focus lenses with a weather-sealed body and zoom lens.

PEN E-PL5, 9mm, 15mm, 25mm, 60mm, 12-50mm. Another lightweight fun kit with a zoom option.

TG-5, OM-D E-M5 mk1, 7.5mm, 12mm, 17mm, 45mm, 30mm macro. M-CON.

PEN-F, 14mm, 20mm, 12-32mm, 35-100mm. Probably my favourite lightweight day-to-day kit. Two fast primes and two zoom with almost continuous coverage from 24mm wide angle through to 200mm telephoto.

Software:

Corel: Paintshop Pro Elite 2020 & Video Studio 2019.

Skylum Software: Aurora HDR 2019, Luminar 4, Luminar AI and Luminar Neo.

DXO Labs: PhotoLab 5 Elite, Viewpoint 3, NIK Collection 6, Film Pack 5 and PureRAW.

Anthropics Technologies: Landscape Pro Studio 3 and Portrait Pro.

EyeQ: Perfectly Clear

Topaz Labs: Studio 2, Sharpen AI, A.I Gigapixel, AI Clear, AI Adjust, DeNoise AI and Various legacy plugins.

Adobe: Lightroom.

GreenScreenWizard Studio Pro.

Serif: Affinity Photo

Microsoft: Image Composite Editor (Free).

Darktable (Free).

Olympus: Olympus Capture, Olympus Workspace and Olympus Webcam (Free to Olympus owners).

Sony: Movie Studio Platinum.

Lighting Gear:

Godox TT350o flash, Godox X1T radio flash trigger, Godox Lux Junior flash, LED ring flash, GVM RGB LED light, Olympus MAL-1 Macro Arm Light. Two Godox LED36 lights, Godox Litemons LED6R light. Three Bowen studio flash heads, barndoors, honeycombes, umbrellas and flash meter.