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The RAW files I tried also looked very good, although I haven’t done a massive comparison with Lightroom or Capture One results yet. You can apply a set of changes to a batch of images fairly easily. However, you’re only a click away from diving into either a large variety of Presets called Looks or using the manual editing tools to work on your photographs. The Quick & Awesome workspace features the Accent AI Filter automatic image enhancer as well as a sky-specific version. Of course, you can create your own custom workspaces to meet your needs. Once you go to edit an image, you’ll see that Skylum has added a thoughtful set of default Workspaces to help you configure your editing tools to the specific task you’re performing. On the right is the Library Panel, where you can both look at and organize your images using simple drag and drop between folders and Albums. The first thing you’ll notice when you open it is an attractive “photo wall” of your images (which will look even better when it has your images in it instead of some samples). Version 3 is a substantial update to Luminar from the 2018 version. Luminar 3, which is now available for pre-order, adds both the beginnings of an image management capability and a lot of powerful new image enhancement filters and presets.
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It does have all the tools most photographers need to work on their images. Like Lightroom, it is fully non-destructive, so it doesn’t need to modify your original image, but it also doesn’t have all the power of Photoshop CC or Photoshop Elements when it comes to composite images, text overlays, etc.
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Over the last two years Luminar by Skylum (formerly MacPhun) has moved from being a boutique photo editor for Mac loyalists to a well-designed, cross-platform, non-subscription, alternative to Adobe Lightroom.
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