DXO Photolab 6 was a game changer for me and my Fuji files. I tested the 40mp XT5 vs the 45 mp Z7II and it was 50/50. Nobody could tell any difference between the 20x30 prints from each side by side.
@@AndyMumford DXO's Pure Raw 3 is a plug in for LR that does the de-mosaicing and gives you a DNG file which is the part that DXO does best. The DXO Raw processing really increased the quality of my Fuji X-Trans files by a considerable amount. Worth a look, they have a 30 day free trial.
Not better, but it's probably a little easier to get images that pop. However I think Lightroom has a lot more depth and is well worth learning for anyone serious about editing their photos
Hello from Vancouver 🇨🇦 very good summary of Neo thank you - just a quick thought on it vs Lightroom. Lightroom’s catalogue may have its detractors however it’s far superior to Neo - which is essentially non-existant. If one did not want to sign up for Adobe’s pricing-program (in perpetuity) I’d suggest looking at “Exposure x7” I shot about 200 images for friend’s wedding and with “star rating” I whittled it to about 25 keepers which I brought into Luminar Neo. I was then able to colour correct, skin issues very quickly and pleasantly. I actually like using it.
I haven’t really played around with the HDR, but the pano stitching and noise reduction seemed as good as LR, although LR does give you more options for the pano stitching
Nice video Andy. I have Luminar Neo stand alone with most of the extensions. I'm relatively new to editing and want to keep things as simple as possible as I don't want to get bogged by it. I find it very simple to use. At first I felt I had to use every tab. It was taking ages and the images looked unreal and overdone. I now do things in a very similar way to how you showed in the video. My images now look more 'real' and I'm very happy with it.
Thanks for the comment. It’s easy when you start editing to overdo it. I think it’s important to keep checking with the original RAW to see how far away your moving from the original capture, and to always walk away and come back the following day to look at it with fresh eyes
Really fantastic video showcasing the program. It's been on my radar a long while but just never pulled the trigger on it. You've given me food for thought with your examples shown here. Lovely images too! 🤗
Andy, love your videos and photography. My question is do you actually use it? As there are so many tools atm. Buying basically too many and not using them. What’s your opinion? Do you use it or start using it? Cheers.
I think for me it’s going to be a tool in the same way that the Nik software (Color Efex Pro) Is a tool. LR is always going to do my heavy lifting….I’ve been using is so long that it’s just super intuitive to me now, but there are always things that it doesn’t do so well that it’s nice to have plug ins for. I don’t need them on every image, but for certain stuff there’ll certainly be times when I’m glad I’ve got it
It's interesting that you mentioned that it takes time and you don't like spending time on editing I would suggest the time flicking one photo to another program is where the time is being consumed I do not understand why people cannot just use one photo editing tool to edit a raw photo ?. Landscape photographer in Australia and yes I sell lots of images and I only use one program because that program do everything unless I'm doing a Focus stack lenses are so good now I don't feel like I need to do focus stacking anymore because the lenses are so sharp. I just don't like flicking photos back and forth between two programs. For me the Lightroom masking is perfect with raw files and I use Fuji and I know that people say that fugee files are no good in Lightroom. That simply hasn't been my experience. I did enjoy the video though and I'm not being critical but I just find flicking photos back and forwards is tedious time consuming and mostly unnecessary
Well, I’ve been doing this for a long time….a good 16 years as a professional, and I’m pretty comfortable with my workflow and where the time goes. I spend around 3 months a year travelling and shooting, which typically will come to around 10000 images a year. Obviously the majority of them are never edited, but the time isn’t spent switching between programs at all, this adds seconds to the process. I know Lightroom pretty well, and while it’s improved significantly in recent years there are still quite a few things that it simply doesn’t not do well. Access to the mid tones, sharpening for both web and print, are just two examples that take me considerably longer if I attempt workarounds in Lightroom, and then of course there’s focus stacking, which really has nothing to do with sharpness at all, it’s do to with depth of field. If you’re just using APS-C you can almost certainly avoid it as the smaller sensor has a lot of depth of field, but with full frame or medium format it’s a necessity on a lot of images. It’s fine that you prefer to use one program, but there really is no best practice and different people do things differently.
@@AndyMumford yeah thanks I'm using a fuji xt5...love it ..I switched from a Nikon D850. Lighter hear means I carry a drone now too. I use lightroom and not lightroom classic on a macbook pro. Yes agree this where apc has small advantage but loss is dynamic range. The xt5 has amazing dynamic range for APC. I understand why you do that though. I'm going lighter now because I'm 53 and lugging big bags and heavy fear isn't fun. Thanks for the video and thoughts. The Fuji XT5 is so sharp I often have to reduce sharpening not increase. I use 8-16mm ...23 f2...75 1.2 and nikkor 70-200 2.8 with an adapter which is 130 to 300 I did consider GFX but the xt5 is good compromise. Thanks
Hello Andy. I've luminar AI and neo and use them as plugins to ps. They are good. I haven't bought extensions but still good. Must've made Adobe sit up and think. I use acr raw as much as possible then open in ps and will run luminar for final touches. But I may Go full luminar if they can get a proper print module. Regards
Thanks for the comment. Like Topaz Software, they’re certainly bringing some innovations to the area and Luminar has some nice tools. Personally, I don’t think it replaces Lightroom yet, but it’s nice to have some of the tools as a plug in
