12/07/2018
Luminar 3 comes out in a couple of weeks, and is a free upgrade to Luminar 2018 users. Skylum claims it has a digital asset manager, but that depends on what one defines as a DAM. It's really a browser, not a DAM. A true DAM would allow you to search photos using keywords or other search criteria. Lightroom and Capture One both have DAMS. DxO PhotoLab 2 has a DAM, and ON1 Photo RAW 2018 has something approaching one. Luminar 3's browser is a help, but Skylum is still playing catch up on that score. For me, it's not a big deal, but for others it can be.
I do like Luminar 2018 (and its sister HDR software Aurora, which is second to none in its specialization). I'm including here a before/after pic. Luminar has a really good RAW converter, better than Lightroom or even Capture One in my estimation.
Where it is lacking is in masking. I think it is woefully rudimentary. You can brush in a mask, but there's no equivalent to Lightroom's auto masking brush or ON1's perfect brush. Masks made this way are very dirty.
You can create luminance masks in Luminar. Sort of. But it's nowhere near as refined as Capture One or ON1. (Lightroom doesn't have any capability here.) And all software can do gradient masks, so that's no big deal.
Even so, I really like Luminar. It creates very nice images. For the price it is fantastic. Capture One is great, but the price is outrageous. I mean REALLY outrageous. One of the problems with Lightroom is the subscription model. It's great that you continually get the latest version, but not owning your software doesn't sit well with many photographers. (I include myself amongst their number.)
But Capture One is TWICE the subscription price of Lightroom. Absurd! It makes no sense to pay that much for a glorified RAW converter that can't even do more than one image layer! At least subscribers get Photoshop CC with Lightroom! I hardly ever use Photoshop, and I'd be perfectly happy with Lightroom alone. About the only thing Photoshop is useful for is luminosity masking, but ON1 is quite a bit better at that than Photoshop and a lot cheaper. (Especially if you wait till it's on sale, like it was for Black Friday.)
Anyways, the photo below is one I took a few years back and processed (mostly) in Luminar, showing the before/after. It's hard to see the lack of contrast in any photo till it's been processed a bit, but shown like this it becomes obvious.
