Regular blog readers might remember me talking about Macphun’s excellent Aurora HDR and Luminar software over the past year or so, and I’ll tell you right now that you’re going to be hearing a lot more about Luminar from this point onwards. Luminar 2018 will be launched on November 16th (pre-order), but I’ve had a copy for a few weeks now and it has me very excited.
To start with, PC users can rejoice because Luminar 2018 will be available on both the Mac and the PC, and with it Macphun will be changing their name to Skylum Software – makes much more sense.
If you’re not familiar with Luminar, the quick version is that it’s a little bit like a mashup of Lightroom and Photoshop. It has the editing options, presets and RAW processing of Lightroom, but it also has layers, layer masking and blend modes like Photoshop. What it doesn’t have at the moment is any asset management, but Macphun have confirmed that this will be added in 2018 and it will be a free upgrade for anyone using Luminar 2018.
With this new Luminar 2018 update, there’s a massive jump in performance from the previous version, and for me this is a tipping point. Luminar Neptune was awesome, and I’d use it on occasion when I wanted to do something a little different, but it wasn’t all that fast. Luminar 2018 (Super Nova) is much faster, and now I find myself using it WAY more. In fact, pretty much all the images I’ve finished in the last couple of weeks have been done in Luminar.
This new release adds a ton of new features too, such as the ability to load LUTs, correct lens distortion and aberrations, and even add realistic sun flares to your images with just a few clicks. (see my new tutorial below)
Luminar 2018 is in the pre-order phase right now until November 16th. If you pre-order, you can lock in a lower price, and of course you’ll get a free upgrade next year when Luminar gets updated to include full folder and image management features.
Price (USD): Pre-order(Nov 1st to Nov 16th)
- Current users of Luminar may upgrade at a special pre-order price of $39
- New users can purchase Luminar at a special preorder price of $59
Pre-Order Bonuses:
- A Pack of signature presets and textures fro pro photography Nicolesy
- An Exclusive pack of LUTs
- 1-year Power plan from SmugMug ($72 value). For new accounts only
