Neo's Sharpening Tool is one of the best I've used (although every now and then it's a complete 'miss', with weird artefacts). Sometimes I round trip just for that. Though it is a lot of fun to use, I think.
You are absolutely right. The different examples are very telling. I must say that I also use Luminar neo in this way. (Or radiant photo ;-)) Thank you for this reminder... which makes me want to look back at Luminar Neo.
Thanks for this. Like you Scott I use a number of different editors. I use ON1 Photo RAW about 90% of the time for basic RAW editing and effects. Its masking tools are excellent but it's not so good for multi image blending such as HDR, and focus stacking (that's truly awful in ON1) so that's when I export to luminar Neo for superior results. Topaz AI does the best job of sharpening and enlarging. Photoshop of course has all the generative bells and whistles and is great for object removal and then "tidying up". If there were only one editor to rule them all I would save a lot of money!
I suppose Photoshop is the only potential "one to rule them all" ... you can do anything in PS ... though it's more of an "expert friendly" piece of software for a lot of things.
I’ve been a Luminar subscriber for a few years now (through a few software changes and names!) and really loved how well they did sky replacements before everyone did say replacements. Lately I’ve been using On1 more, plus Radiant Photo and Aurora HDR (which is supposed to be built into Neo now) but when I go back to LR, the photo doesn’t come with me and I have to go import it from my RAWs. Am I missing something with that? I asked them for a solution but they didn’t have a good answer for me! Thanks for sharing your knowledge Scott!
If you're round-tripping from LR Classic, it should "just work". I usually bounce my edits through Photoshop as a smart-object, so I have a level of re-editabiilty. scottdavenportphoto.com/blog/using-photoshop-smart-objects-for-round-trip-edits-in-lightroom
I am in the camp of On1 (+affinity for HDR/stacking/Pano). Should try Neo again and see how it has progressed. Recently was on lookout for other apps to try and switch to...primarily Lightroom, but it was a no go since I couldn't get look/feel as I could in On1 and just not as much fun to use [to me]. I think what you hinted at may be a better mindset on how to look at image editing...not as a one app to do it all (what I keep looking for), but as a progression of different apps working together to reach the end-goal. As always, fantastic video!!! I am curious however how you handle your images... Saving the edited image from other apps next to original? Do you give each a different name and/or label so to know which app you edited or finished it with in case you want to reedit in future? Keep finals separate or export only when needed?
My workflow starts in Lightroom, and I've developed the habit of bouncing all my edits through Photoshop. PS is largely an intermediary. I do this to leverage PS smart objects, which offers a level of re-editiability. When I use a plugin, in my library I end up with the RAW and a TIFF file, the latter is what went through PS and may have visited several plugins. I don't bother tracking what apps I used to edit the photo.
