
Computational Photography with Luminar 4 - deathtrader666
https://skylum.com/luminar
======
bmarquez
If you're thinking of pre-ordering Luminar 4, I'd strongly urge you to wait
for actual reviews or try the demo yourself.

I purchased Luminar 3 and it was a sluggish, unstable mess, especially on
Windows. They promised many features like a DAM, which was still missing
features like the ability to edit metadata. But hey, it checked off the
marketing checkbox, right?

They're prioritizing adding new features to generate publicity and hype while
ignoring actual speed, stability, and usability.

Only the comment sections of photography websites actually comment on speed,
example:
[https://www.dpreview.com/news/3286739394/luminar-4-available...](https://www.dpreview.com/news/3286739394/luminar-4-available-
for-pre-order-comes-with-new-ai-features-and-revamped-ui)

~~~
harshalizee
Yup, listen to this guy. I have the top of the line MacBookPro and Luminar is
not even barely usable even with nothing else running on it. The features are
ok, but it's basically an unusable product.

~~~
missosoup
I mean, if it's using DNN then you're going to be pretty much shit out of luck
for perf unless your machine has an nvidia graphics card right?

~~~
eeeficus
If you’re using pretrained models then they should run ok. It’s the same
reason why Tensorflow runs on phones: to run models, not necessarily to train
models. DNNs take a lot of time to train.

~~~
missosoup
TF runs at seconds-per-frame speeds on phones without dedicated accelerators.

Even inference is going to be slow when working on a 20 megapixel image.
That's as much work as a 1220 sample batch at 128x128 resolution.

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WhiteNoiz3
Does this qualify as 'computational photography'? My interpretation of that
term is that it is more about using non-standard optics processed with a
computer, than it is about applying deep learning and other AI based
techniques which seems to be what this is. Otherwise, this looks cool ;) I am
glad to see AI image processing becoming more accessible.

~~~
GuiA
Any digital photography is by definition computational.

You can make an argument that using deep learning to affect the sky is “more
computational” in a way than a “basic” CCD to JPEG pipeline, but the
boundaries become fuzzy and arbitrary.

~~~
CharlesW
> _Any digital photography is by definition computational._

That's not what "computational photography" means to most. For example, the
QuickTake is not considered to have done computational photography.

Computational photography uses computation to go beyond what a simple lens →
sensor → sensor-to-image algorithm (like a demosaicing algorithm) can do.

~~~
balls187
Certainly most digital cameras use far more sophisticated sensor-to-image
algorithms.

Not to be outdone by in camera processing, photographers will opt to shoot in
RAW and have PC's do the conversion/post-processing, which in many cases is
even more sophisticated algorithms.

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vanniv
Luminar is really neat. I've been using Luminar 3 for awhile, and it does some
really cool stuff -- but 3 didn't really live up to it's hype.

Don't get me wrong, I use it sometimes to clean up and enhance my images, but
really it's not so dramatically different from other tools.

Some of the AI features are really slick, but not quite as magical as the
demos suggest. Or maybe you just have to actually spend 100s of hours to learn
to use it effectively, and I'm just a n00b.

~~~
GuiA
A big problem with these new AI techniques as applied to photography is that
the algorithms tend to be very opaque, and typically gives very little control
to the user.

You can get better over time at using the dodge/burn tools, or selection
masks, or color curves, etc in Photoshop - and use them at very granular,
minute levels. If the final result is not up to your expectations, you know
that it’s due to your own doing and you can try again, get someone to help
you, watch a tutorial, etc.

However, all these magical AI sliders give you very little insight about
what’s actually going on behind the scenes, and typically only expose a few
vague sliders for the photographer to manipulate, often in an all-or-nothing
fashion. If you like what cranking up the "AI Skin Defect Removal" slider does
to the texture of the nose but not the tone of the cheek, there's no much you
can do to address that.

While it makes for cool demos, and the appeal of “one click and your boring
sky becomes picturesque” is clear for an entire category of users, this makes
them pretty boring and limited as creative tools.

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dmos62
I've used Google's Snapseed, which has very similar controls and aims to
streamline a lot of "photoshopping". It's free (though mobile only) and works
great, I've had _a lot_ of fun just playing around, changing the distance
between my eyes, giving myself an ogrish forehead, turning a smile into a
frown, and in general changing anything and everything about the photos I
played with.

~~~
sorenjan
If you want to change the shape of a face Photoshop has face aware liquify
since a while back. I'm guessing a lot of photographers already have
Photoshop.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zhgvNfJTnM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zhgvNfJTnM)

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blackhaz
Am I alone thinking the originals are way better than the processed versions,
even in the demo on that link? Somehow all this excessive tone filtering,
"smart" unsharp masking, artificial noising and noise-filtering - all that
computational stuff - takes the life out everything? The dynamic range is
narrow. Stuff is compressed into flat mess of colors, similarly to how they
compress audio these days. Huge "ringing" artifacts on contrasting edges.
Gross. How is that elevated photography?

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Exuma
Very cool concept, but the video copy made me laugh out loud.

"Hours of learning" for your hobby.... God .... anything but that!!

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m0zg
My experience with Luminar 3 was weird. It was one of those pieces of software
which looks great in screenshots and promo materials and then disappoints you
profoundly when you try it out. It just didn't produce the same quality of
results as Lightroom, nor was it as easy to work with as Lightroom. I really
wanted to like it too, I'm not a fan of subscription software, and the best
alternative to Lightroom (Capture One Pro) is either $300 for a license, or
$20/mo, both of which sound pretty pricey for hobbyist use. After a couple of
weeks of trying I was back to Lightroom.

So before you rush to plop down your credit card for Luminar "preorder", I
encourage you to wait for a trial version and try it out. There, I saved you
$99. You're welcome.

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hn_throwaway_99
I know this is just automating how people have been touching up photos for
decades, but IMO it is still a bit sad, especially when it comes to touching
up people's faces. God forbid we should see each other as we are, slightly
yellowed teeth, pores and all.

Again, I know this has been going on for decades, but I still worry that by
automating more of it, it will lead to a bigger degree of "sameness" in
photos.

~~~
jxcl
I used to think this way too, but I’ve since come around to a different way of
thinking.

Unless photos are taken for documentation, it’s more important for the photo
to capture the _feeling_ they photographer is trying to convey. 5 minutes
after you talk to someone, you’re not going to remember every single blemish
on their face; you’ll remember the general shape and a few distinguishing
features. I would much rather the photo match the memory than the fact.

Of course, this can and has been taken too far in some instances, but I see no
problems with removing a pimple and whitening teeth to more warmly represent
(and therefore remember) my subject.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
I think the problem is that since portrait retouching is usually so subtle,
you actually start confusing it with real life. People start subconsciously
thinking that this falsity is how you _should_ look.

And to clarify, it's one thing to hide a pimple, but when it comes to the core
features of one's face (e.g. "face slimming", pore smoothing, even undereye
color IMO) you start distorting who that person actually is.

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boromi
Is Luminar 4 a suitable Lightroom replacement?

~~~
CharlesW
The "Luminar Libraries" feature provides Lightroom-like photo management, but
based on Luminar 3 reviews it's probably not going to be as rich as
Lightroom's. (I've pre-ordered Luminar 4 in hopes that it's good enough that I
can ditch Lightroom).

~~~
CWuestefeld
There's a big vendor lock-in thing going on, isn't there? I've got 10s of
thousands of images cataloged in LR. It would be hard to move away from that
and re-index all the images again.

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carlosgg
Also Computational Photography: [https://www.udacity.com/course/computational-
photography--ud...](https://www.udacity.com/course/computational-photography--
ud955)

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simonw
Not great that the demo video makes a portrait "more beautiful" partly by
lightening the skin tone (at 43 seconds in).

~~~
gedy
I think the effect is really about improving contrast to make features stand
out. It's effective even if someone is already lily white. Nothing to do with
race imo.

~~~
Rotten194
Unfortunately a lot of these models are trained more on white faces and end up
lightening _everyone 's_ skin as a result. My photographer friend is
constantly fighting with photo-retouching tools to not whitewash their
subjects.

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jermaustin1
At the presale price, its worth the $99, even just to experiment with it and
see how well it does.

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itronitron
ugh, horrible, this is as bad as LED stage lighting

~~~
dang
" _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A
good critical comment teaches us something._"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
willis936
It’s interesting that most of the demonstrated applications are examples of
how to lie with photos. Images alone can’t be trusted, but it makes me a
little sad the more readily these tools are made available. Oh look, a program
based around making photos that lie that’s cheap. I suppose I’ll have to start
defaulting to trusting nothing even more. It’s not really a direction I’d like
public discourse to have to go in, if we could collectively agree to behave a
little.

~~~
CWuestefeld
It's almost impossible to draw a bright line here. All photography, even film-
based, involves some amount of interpretation. Different choices of film, or
various options in Lightroom, Luminar, or whatever, entail changing the
appearance of the output at least in the dimensions of brightness, contrast,
saturation, white balance, and so forth. You can't _not_ make a choice, you're
always going to be imposing some artistic interpretation.

~~~
willis936
Even if a thin, strong line can’t be drawn, it appears that this software is
clearly on the wrong side of the line. It isn’t leveraging AI to create detail
not captured by the camera that should be there. It’s using AI to alter the
captured content to not be representative of what was there, ie lying. Context
is important. A photo is expected to be the truth in most contexts.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_A photo is expected to be the truth in most contexts._

"What is truth?"

I shot a music festival this past weekend, and I'm in the process of
processing it in Lightroom. Part of what I'm doing is to make images that the
artists can use for their own marketing. So I'm making various refinements to
the images like making face a bit brighter and sharper, and smoothing out skin
blemishes, and maybe whitening teeth.

Am I lying to people by creating an image that is brighter and sharper? Is it
going too far to make the skin look smoother?

And even if we grant that I've changed beyond what the optics delivered,
that's only part of the experience. Is it out of line for me interpret a bit
to try to carry what's being lost from the rest of the senses - the fact that
there was fantastic music all around, friendly people, and all that? Maybe a
brighter, sharper face is a legitimate way for me to depict the gestalt of the
experience.

~~~
willis936
It’s not only a lie, it’s a lie made for profit. Someone looks at that photo
and thinks “this is what it was like”, because that is what the photo is
supposed to convey. Instead it’s an oversold fantasy. Is something okay just
because everyone does it?

~~~
CWuestefeld
_Instead it’s an oversold fantasy. Is something okay just because everyone
does it?_

I suspect you didn't even read my reply.

First, I never made any argument along the lines of "everyone does it". I
don't know why you include that in your reply to me.

Second, the final paragraph of my reply specifically addresses whether it's
"oversold". There's much more to an experience than can be seen from a
photograph of the scene, and I think it's fair to try to capture some of that
in the final image.

Finally, "it’s a lie made for profit." No, this is outright false. In fact,
the music festival I was shooting was entirely free. Nobody paid a penny to
see the performances. And the musicians performed because they love music and
want to share it; they weren't paid a penny either. You're letting your own
prejudices bias your judgment.

EDIT: and just to round out the not-for-profit thing, I was a volunteer, too.
My own time, my own camera, my own computer and software. I love the music and
I love photography. I do this because I want to give something back to the
artists who are giving me their music.

