REVIEW – Recently, I had the opportunity to review Skylum Software’s Luminar Flex photo editing plugin which offered much of their full Luminar product’s AI-based (Artificial Intelligence) editing available in Photoshop or other supported software.  Skylum has been in the lab and has released Luminar 3.1.0 with their new Accent AI 2.0 logic for one-touch photo editing.

What is it?

Luminar 3.1.0 is an update to Luminar 3, a full-featured photo editing package with tools like clone and stamp, cropping, transformations, layers, lens correction, color adjustments and so on.  So what, you say?  There are a lot of tools like that, you say?  Yup – I agree with you.  They’re a dime a dozen. Just pick the one with the interface and price that make the most sense to you and cents to your bank account and edit away.  Of course, you will take a lot of time editing your photos, tweaking curves, balancing exposures, adding layers in various opacities to get the look you want.  Or…you can use Luminar 3.1.0.  Its full plate of AI-based looks makes one-touch image enhancement stupid-simple for those of us that don’t have the time to fiddle.  OK – I’m retired, so I have the time, but I have far better things to do.

Fair warning – this review is about photo editing software, so this is going to be photo-heavy.  Also, I left the photos large-ish, so you can get a better look at the results.

Design and features

Let’s get this out of the way right now – Luminar is a full-featured photo editing package.  It does all the things other editing packages do and does them all well.  It can add layers.  It can blend effects in a multitude of ways.  It can adjust exposure, color balance, contrast, brightness, tint, and so on.  It can crop, clone, transform, skew, and basically do anything to your images that you could want. Its interface is fairly good, but like Photoshop or any other heavy-duty tool, there is a lot to it and it will take some learning to get good at it.

Photoshop has several “automatic” fix tools that are pretty good at one-click image improvement.  Luminar takes that up a notch, or ten notches, with their AI-based one-touch tools. And, they provide a ton of ’em.  That’s what this review will focus on since that’s what sets Luminar apart from the competition.

Setup

After downloading the software, I installed it on my Microsoft Surface Book.

The installation was pretty standard until it asked for my photo library.  Since it asked, I pointed it to my library. Big mistake,  I have my photos on my Drobo 5N2 storage robot.  I currently have it populated with 5400 RPM disks.  Given that it is network-based, and has relatively slow disks, it simply isn’t that fast.  Add to that that I have over 160,000 photos on it, and I had to sit for a couple of hours while Luminar spun through them all, building a catalog.  Note to self: point it a small folder and add catalogs for specific subjects!

Once it finished, I created a new catalog for images for this review. As you add new images to a cataloged folder, Luminar automatically adds them to the catalog, so they show up the next time you open Luminar.

Here are the minimum requirements:

System Requirements for Mac OS

• MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, iMac Pro, Mac Pro, Mac mini
• Processor Intel 64-bit Core 2 Duo or better
• Memory 8 Gb RAM or more
• macOS Mojave 10.14, High Sierra 10.13.1, Sierra 10.12.6, El Capitan 10.11.5
• Hard disk 10 GB free space, SSD for best performance
• Display 1280×768 size or better

System Requirements for Windows

• Windows-based hardware PC with mouse or similar input device
• OpenGL 3.3 or later compatible Graphics Cards
• Processor Intel Core i5 or better
• Memory 8 Gb RAM or more
• Operating System Windows 7 (only 64-bit OS), Windows 8.1 (only 64-bit OS), Windows 10 (only 64-bit OS)
• Hard disk 10 Gb free space, SSD for best performance
• Display 1280×768 size or better

I ran tests on my Microsoft Surface Book with 8GM RAM, Core i7-6600u 2.6GHz processor and Win 10 Pro 64-bit. Based on the requirements, my laptop is at the bottom in terms of RAM, but better than the minimum processor speed.  While I have an SSD, as stated above, my images are on network attached storage, so I pay a performance hit there as well.

Performance

When I chose images for this review, I decided to grab a selection of pretty good images, and some pretty bad ones, in terms of lighting and contrast.  If we’re going to have AI do the heavy lifting here, let’s see how intelligent it really is.

I created a new catalog for these images and let Luminar grab the images once I copied them into the catalog.  Luminar has a complete suite of image management tools that include folders, where Luminar can manage your image folders and albums, where you can put similar images from different physical folders – think playlists in iTunes.

I also decided to try the batch processing option to get an idea of how practical that process is.  If Luminar really bills itself as easing photographer’s workflow, it should actually make that workflow easier!

The batch processing window has a couple of default options to export images for email or the web.  You get to decide what family of “looks” filters, and the specific AI filter to use when each image is processed as well as the level of the filter’s strength, from 0% to 100%.  You pick the output destination, naming options, output file format, quality, and color space.  Finally, you can resize the images with a variety of sizing or edge-binding options.

Given the limitations I have on my laptop, after grabbing eleven images for this review and choosing the Essentials collection AI Image Enhancer look at 100%, high-quality JPG output, setting an 800-pixel long-edge resizing and firing it up, I was prepared to sit and wait.  I was pleasantly surprised when just about 90 seconds later, my images were all exported.  Let’s see how they turned out.

Image 1

Let’s start with a shot of my wife & me in front of the London Eye.  The lighting was horrific and the image was dark and flat. We were in shadows and are quite dark.

After processing, you can see how much richer the sky looks and we are brightened considerably.

To my eye, our shirts are a little over-boosted and have a bit of red tint added to our faces.  This is easily controlled by dialing back the filter from 100% to perhaps 75%, but since I processed this all in batch mode, it was what it was.

Image 2

Here we are at the Tower of London on a cloudy day.  We are backlit and pretty dark and the overall image is flat with little contrast.

After processing, contrast is up and everything looks much sharper. The traces of blue that were actually in the sky are now visible and our faces are brighter but like Image 1, have a red tint.

There was only so much Luminar could do lightening our faces. I would have to spend time in a new layer and process that layer with our faces independent from the rest of the image.

Image 3

London Bridge on a beautiful day.  Colors look pretty good, but a little flat, compared to what the eye sees – a typical limitation of cameras.

After processing, everything is boosted and richer. This should be a postcard!  The algae just above the waterline is now visible, where it fell off in the shadows in the original image.

Image 4

Stonehenge. Another partly cloudy, low-contrast day.  Colors are all muted and the stones look flat and featureless.

After processing, contrast is improved and colors are boosted.  I’m not as thrilled with how the stones were rendered as they are now darkened and some detail is lost.

Image 5

Here we are on a formal night on a cruise.  Overall, I thought this looked pretty good straight out of the camera.

After processing, I do like the brightened shadow area in my tux, but I think some of the colors in my wife’s dress are a tad over-boosted.  Like other images, there is a bit of red introduced in our faces.

Image 6

Another horrible image out of the camera.  These Barbary macaques on Gibraltar were posing perfectly but there was no light on their faces.

After processing, the detail in their faces comes out as well as detail and color in their fur and detail on the wall

Image 7

This is a bull ring in Malaga, Spain.  Straight out of the camera, colors are flat and the image is pretty low contrast.

After processing, the image pops. I really like how this turned out.

Image 8

Here we are, overlooking the marina in Monaco. This image looks pretty good out of the camera as the lighting was good and the sun was high, providing good contrast.

After processing, the sky and water are enhanced but my shirt, that was pretty darn bright already, is a bit overblown. The red tint we have been seeing on skin is there, but not as pronounced in this image as in previous ones.

Image 9

This is a view of Cassis, France from a bluff.  There was a bit of light haze that day, making it difficult to get a really great photo.

After processing, the filter took care of the haze and really made this look great!  Look at how it pulled the light purple out of the shadows on the plant in the lower right.

Image 10

Here we are in the Caves of Drach in Porto Cristo, Mallorca, Spain.  This is underground with limited lighting and no flash.

After processing, everything is lightened up.  While there is red/yellow tint, that is mainly due to the incandescent lighting, not the AI filter.  I would take more time to edit this image, removing the color cast in Luminar – a very simple task.

Image 11

We had yet another beautiful sunset a couple of days ago, so I ran outside with my phone and took this. My Galaxy S9+ did an admirable job but failed to really capture the depth of colors I saw with my eye.

After processing, I now see pretty much what I saw with my eyes outside that evening.

I want to reiterate that all examples here were processed with me doing exactly no work at all.  I just put them in a folder, chose a couple of options and came back two minutes later to complete, resized, processed images. Even with multiple images with really poor lighting and exposure, Luminar did a pretty good job rendering usable images, and in the worst cases, would only take a tweak or two to finish up.

What I like

• A plethora of included, AI-based looks – about 70 different looks
• Comprehensive manual image tools
• Complete control over how much each look adjusts the images
• Beyond simply scaling back on the filter, you can also tweak how it gets applied with the updated Accent AI 2.0 slider
• Comprehensive file naming tools for batch processing

What needs to be improved

• The interface takes some learning, but that’s pretty much the case with any image editing tool with this much power.  Overall, Luminar does a good job being easy to use once you spend some time with it.
• Filters at 100% seem to over boost pretty regularly
  • This can be mitigated by scaling back from 100% filter application
• When exporting images, either directly or as a batch, there is no option to save the file in its original folder – that would be a nice option, especially with all the batch renaming and overwriting protection options

Final thoughts

Overall, I am pretty impressed with Luminar 3.1.0 and its ability to improve images with a single touch.  In addition, the variety of provided looks, from artistic to dramatic to simple to complex is impressive.  The amount of power it brings to improve your images is terrific, especially at its price point.

If you are looking for a tool that can definitely help you process your images to get them to look like what you envisioned when you hit the shutter release, Luminar 3.1.0 should be on your short list of tools to consider.

Price: $60; $69 with a Photography 101 online class; $129 with the Photo 101 class plus Aurora HDR editor
Where to buy: Direct from Skylum Software
Source: The sample of this product was provided by Skylum Software.

Filed in categories: Reviews

Tagged: Photo editing software

Skylum Software Luminar 3.1.0 with Accent AI 2.0 photo editing software review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on May 7, 2019 at 12:00 pm.

Note: If you are subscribed to this feed through FeedBurner, please switch to our native feed URL http://the-gadgeteer.com/feed/ in order to ensure continuous delivery.

REVIEW – When taking outdoor pictures, you are generally limited to several conditions such as the weather, the lighting, and even the environment itself. You might have your camera and tripod ready but the conditions can become unfavorable. Sometimes, it’s like mother nature just isn’t co-operating when you want to take those landscape pictures. With Landscape Pro Studio Max 3, now you can tweak your landscape photos to compliment or help fix your image to really make them stand out.

What is it?

Landscape Pro Studio Max 3 is a creative editing software for photographers of any level to help enhance and process their landscape photos.

Installation Requirements

• 1GHz processor or faster recommended.
• 2GB RAM minimum recommended.
• Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Vista or macOS (10.7 or later)

Design and features

What Landscape Pro from Antropics Technology can do for you is help spice up the landscape pictures you take and make them more dramatic by adjusting specific areas in your pictures such as the sky, grass, ground, mountain, water, and more. This software allows you to individually manipulate and fix the selected areas and helps give them a little punch to brighten, sharpen, or add color. Landscape Pro can also straighten images as well as add watermarks and it can also add realistic atmosphere like fog or rain. There is also a feature to remove unwanted objects in your photo, as well. I am very impressed with what this software can do.

If you are not familiar with Anthropics Technology, they are the makers of Portrait Pro which is a powerful editing software for portrait photography. I had a trial of an earlier version of Portrait Pro a few years ago and although it had a few small bugs,  it is very impressive, to say the least. So, it is only natural that Landscape Pro is just as intuitive as Portrait Pro and just as impressive.

Landscape Pro uses advanced image recognition technology to target certain areas that you select on your image. In conjunction with the image recognition, Landscape Pro has many included Presets for the selected areas along with a slider interface to make adjustments and fine tune the areas. It’s all very responsive when making the adjustments and the results are instant. One of the popular features is the Sky replacement with 150 built-in Preset skies to choose from. Believe me when I tell you that there are plenty of skies to select such as clear and cool cloudless skies to dark and dramatic cloud-filled skies. You even have the option to import your own sky picture, too.

To begin editing, you just drag Labels onto specific areas of your image. For example, if you want to change the look of the sky in your image, then you would drag the Sky Label onto an area of the sky in your picture. If you want to adjust the water in your image, then you would drag the Water Label onto the water area in your picture. Want to edit the trees in your picture? Just drag the Tree Label to a tree. Drag the Mountain Label to a mountain in your picture, and so-on and so-forth. There are plenty of Labels for areas in your picture that you can use.

As soon as you are finished labeling the selected areas that you want to edit, then the real fun beings. Whether you choose the Presets or just go straight to manually adjusting your image using the Sliders in the Side Panel. Keep in mind that you will eventually be using the Sliders in the bulk of your edits to fine tune your image. The Side Panel is where all the options to edit your image are grouped. The one-click Presets get you started with a certain look in the areas you selected and then you can go in with the Sliders to tweak the Presets you selected.

Landscape Pro does a great job of reading the elements in your photo like the sky, water, sand, trees, people, etc. to help analyze the scene. And not only can Landscape Pro adjust isolated areas in your photo but it can change the overall mood and feel of the entire image. One of the main features that Landscape Pro has is its Lighting feature. What it does is analyze your picture’s scene and the elements within your photo so that it can make the proper natural 3D adjustments to the lighting as it would be in real life. So, as you move the light source in the picture, the corresponding highlights and shadows move when you adjust the light source. This can add some really nice dynamics to the overall look, mood, and feel of your photo.

Depending on how much editing you want to do to your picture is up to you. You can use Landscape Pro to just tweak a little bit to enhance your photo or you can go overboard and totally change your entire image to make it look like a fantasy dream world. It’s all up to you and what you want to create.

Landscape Pro can be either used as a stand-alone program or as a plug-in filter in Photoshop or Lightroom. I prefer using Landscape Pro as a standalone program because when I used it as a Photoshop plug-in filter the export seems to take a fairly long time for the edits to render out. Whereas, when I use it as a standalone, the export was significantly faster. However, keep in mind that unlike some third party plugin exports, Landscape Pro’s edits don’t show up in a separate layer. The edits were applied directly to my original image. If you are like me and prefer to do non-destructive editing in Photoshop, then it’s probably best to make a copy of the original image and use that one to edit with Landscape Pro. It’s just good practice to never edit the original image.

I noticed that when I used Landscape Pro as a plug-in that the rendering from the Save and Close option is super slow versus if I just did the editing inside Landscape Pro as a standalone program.  When I used Landscape Pro as a standalone program, there was virtually no render time like there was when I use it inside Photoshop. Now, keep in mind that there may be factors on your computer such as RAM, processor, graphics card, etc that may affect the render speed. However, as far as I know, it just may be something in Photoshop that may be the culprit because everything was working just fine except the render speed after I clicked “Save and Close” in Landscape Pro. It literally takes two to three minutes to see the filter applied to my image. Now, the processor on my computer is an Intel i5 2.70 GHz with 8 gigs of RAM and my Dell All-In-One computer may not be the fastest out there but in no way is it slow.  I normally can edit all day with Photoshop and Capture One and never experience any lag.

There are two other versions of Landscape Pro: the Standard and the Studio. Below is a chart that compares the two versions to the Studio Max.

Installation

Installation was very easy. I just downloaded the software from the Landscape Pro website, installed the software and then input the token (activation code/license) that I received. Software installed without any problems. Landscape Pro Studios max 3 is available for both Mac and PC.

What I like

• Very responsive and fast edits.
• Numerous Presets to incorporate into your photos.
• Instant preview inside the Sections of the Side Panels.
• High Resolution Output Images
• Works with RAW and DNG formats.
• Can be used as stand-alone or a plug-in.
• Video tutorials available on the Home page.

What needs to be improved

• Couldn’t find a setting to turn off the Help dialog box which pops up when you are in the Side Panel area.
• Smaller detailed areas are difficult to select and edit.
• Filter rendering in Photoshop was very slow.

Final thoughts

As someone who takes plenty of landscape photos, whether traveling on vacations, road trips, and even in my hometown, I always want to take the best photos I can right out of the camera. But sometimes I can look at an image I took and decide that I wish it had a little more to it; maybe a little more pop to the picture. Whether I want the image to somehow jump right out into the viewers face or if I just feel like the image needs some tweaking, I found that using Landscape Pro Studio Max 3 is a great tool for enhancing my landscape photos. Using this software was fairly quick and easy. Plus, I really liked seeing the different modifications of my images inside the program so I can make choices right on the fly. I know I will be using this software now and in the future for many of my photos.  Not only will I be editing some of my older landscape photos but I can’t wait to get out there and take more landscape photos. I definitely know that I will have more landscape photos to print and hang on my walls after a little tweaking from Landscape Pro.

Price: $119.95
Where to buy: Landscape Pro Website
Source: The sample of this product was provided by Anthropics Technology.

Filed in categories: Reviews

Tagged: Photo editing software

Landscape Pro Studio Max 3 photo editing software review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on April 21, 2019 at 8:20 am.

Note: If you are subscribed to this feed through FeedBurner, please switch to our native feed URL http://the-gadgeteer.com/feed/ in order to ensure continuous delivery.

REVIEW – Photo editing can be drudgery unless you were raised as a graphic designer using Photohsop (like me). Even then, it can be tedious. Today we’re checking out the Wondershare Fotophire Image Editing Software, which combines a whole bunch of image editing features in one package. It’s simple to use, automates a bunch of the work for you, and has a ton of features that don’t require deep graphic experience to execute. Let’s learn more. To the review!

What is it?

It’s a set of tools that allow you to edit & manipulate your photos including filter effects, image enhancements, color correction, background removal, cropping, and the ability to remove unwanted objects.

Software specs

There are three tools included in the Fotophire editing toolkit:

• The Photo Editor provides basic editing (like cropping, flipping), 200+ filter effects, focus blurs & vignettes, color correction, and more.
• The Photo Cutter enables you to remove or replace backgrounds in pictures with a set of smart tools that automate the process.
• The Photo Eraser automates the process of removing unwanted objects from your photos, including watermarks and date stamps.

I’m testing the Windows-based version of the package, but an Apple OS version is also available.

Design and features

The Wondershare Fotophire Image Editing Software kit provides a suite of tools that allow you to manipulate your photos for professional quality results using a series of easy to use, intuitive interfaces that don’t require extensive graphics experience to master. You’ll start by firing up the toolkit launcher, which gives one-click access to each tool:

The first tool is the Photo Editor, which offers a HUGE range of filters and effects. Your photo is presented in an interface that uses a combination of intuitive icons, menus, and excellent help tools guide you through their use:

The effects menu provides over 200 canned filters you can apply for different photo treatments. I chose a random effect to give the whole photo a purple filter here:

The cropping function, available from all three tools, provides a set of pre-packaged sizing/aspect ratio options, which can then be dialed in with on-screen controls:

If you want to do your own color adjustments, you can forego the pre-selected filters and create your own. There’s a whole subset of tools to adjust color balance, tone, contrast, color saturation, etc. You can save these preferences for future use, and even apply them for batch processing later.

Blurs and vignettes enable you to create focus areas in your image. I added a creative blur here, setting the radius and depth of the filter with my mouse to focus on the parrot and blur the rest of the image. As with other effects tools in the package, everything works with friendly and self-explanatory sliders and onscreen tools that are quick and easy to master.

After making those adjustments, I added a frame from another preset menu of options, and then applied a texture to the whole picture.

These samples only scratch the surface of what the Image Editor can do. Color management and tone controls are really deep. You can add text, flip photos, add blends, and more. You can also set the view mode to arrange the desktop with before and after previews if you like, and save your settings for future use or batch processes. It’s an impressive set of features compared to many photo editing apps out there. And the speed is excellent. I ran my tests on an older Windows 10 machine, and saw virtually no lag from application to execution of any of the effects.

The Photo Cutter tool employs a simple, user-friendly automated feature to remove background elements from your photos for isolating the main subject matter. There’s a handy tutorial that takes you through the process the first time.

To use the tool, you’ll start by drawing lines on your image through the areas you want to remove. As you add these lines (shown in red below), the preview shows you what areas are being eliminated from the photo. If you lose too much of the key image, you can go back and highlight areas to include in the finished piece (shown in green). Adjustment sliders allow you to refine the selection process to accommodate the depth and complexity of the original image.

Once you are happy with the preview, press the “erase” button and the background just… disappears.

The finished art is rendered on a separate layer, and you can add in a different background if you like:

In my previous life I spent many, many late nights doing detailed image cropping and background removal in Photoshop… I can tell you that I would buy this package just for this tool. The automation is really good. You will always have challenges with images that have very similar tones, but most of my testing was spot-on in one or two attempts. And the speed is, once again, excellent for a complex task like this.

The Photo Eraser is the final tool in the package. Basically, it acts like an automated “clone” tool used in other photo editing programs to remove unwanted objects. The “Erase” tool lets you set the size of spots on the screen (in red below), and the software will basically blend the surroundings to eliminate the image in the spots. Like so:

You can also do your own cloning, basically copying an area of the image to another to blend out unwanted objects. I removed the buildings behind the monument hereby extending the foliage in the picture. I exaggerated it a bit so that you can get an idea for how it works:

Of the three tool sets in the Wondershare Fotophire package, this is probably the weakest one in my opinion. The interface is great and responsive, but I found that the automated cloning feature is not always as accurate. It’s nice to have in the package, but doesn’t need to stand on its own… this tool could probably be worked into the Image Editor as opposed to standing as its own app.

While the Wondershare Fotophire package isn’t as robust as a fully-functional commercial image editing tool like Photoshop, I think it ticks off just about all the boxes if you are actively publishing photos online on a regular basis. It does each job very efficiently, and it doesn’t require a steep learning curve to produce professional-looking results.

What I like

• Simple, well designed, intuitive interfaces
• Snappy performance
• Excellent help and tutorial support
• Robust feature set for a photo editing package

What needs to be improved

• The Photo Eraser tool could be improved, or even integrated in the Photo Editor tool for simplicity

Final thoughts

I think the Wondershare Fotophire is a good value for what you’re getting. A lot of photo editing tools are extremely limited in scope and capability, requiring you to buy a combination of tools to get what you need if you are frequently posting images. The Fotophire package gives you just about everything you need for essential image manipulation in one package, and you don’t need deep graphics experience to use it.

Price: 1 year license for $49.99, lifetime license for $79.99
Where to buy: Download the demo and purchase at the Wondershare Fotophire web page.
Source: The sample of this product was provided by Wondershare

Filed in categories: Reviews

Tagged: Photo editing software

Wondershare Fotophire Image Editing Software review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on August 29, 2018 at 11:00 am.

Note: If you are subscribed to this feed through FeedBurner, please switch to our native feed URL http://the-gadgeteer.com/feed/ in order to ensure continuous delivery.