Luminar 3 too little, too late... again
31/12/18

Skylum, formerly known as Macphun, promised a DAM for Luminar 1 after its release. Than they promised that it will come with Luminar 2 but first you had to buy Luminar again... Now, its two years in and finally with Luminar 3(!) we got the DAM and Skylum somewhat learned from some mistakes and didn't force people to spend money again for a feature that should have been there from the start.

So we waited two years, founded the development with a second purchase and stayed with Luminar besides the trolling marketing people telling you that new features are around the corner for the last fifty corners... Finally the DAM is here and after all this time it is awesome, right? Wrong! This is no DAM, it is a filebrowser bolted onto Luminar. On the plus side it is decently fast but on the other hand it doesn't do a whole lot, so why should it be slow. Sadly that fact was only true for the first few days. It is slower than Lightroom 5 after two weeks. Both programs working on the same 18000 images.

You can rate your images, color label them and do selects and denials. You can then sort them after those markings in the browser but you can't create intellegent albums to gather them automatically and have an updating folder for your projects. Keywords are missing alltogether and the Infopanel is a joke, no IPTC, just basic exif and no copyright to just name a few things.

Import, if you can call it that at all, is just the possibility to copy files from inside the programm, rather than doing it via the Finder. You can't name or rename, you can't add information, Keywords are missing alltogether as stated. On the plus side, if you change something in the Finder (filenaming, location on the harddisk), the browser responds and shows the changes in the "catalogue" immediatly.

The big problem in this case is, that the browser would have been a nice thing and something to get developed if it would've been there from the start. Today the alternatives to the big players Adobe, phaseOne and formerly Apple, like On1 PhotoRaw and Alienskin Exposure have managed to build DAMs with smart Albums, importdialogs, usable Exif Data, Keywording and so on.

Sadly, I really like the UI design in Luminar much better than the competition. I just don't understand why a software UI has to look like a hardware machine that never existed. All that brushed metal and over the top saturated colors just don't work for me. On1, are you listening?
It has just been two weeks with Luminar 3 but I'm not eager to invest a lot of time into something that is missing basic must haves for me, when other programms deliver. The missing features, unreliable roadmap, trolling marketing people and lack of speed in every department are enough to make me spend my money on something else when my Lightroom 5 dies in the end.