pshane

Hello, Fellow Hoggers, - I am considering adding to my Photo-Editing tools for my Win 10, PC.
I have One Terrabyte 'C' drive, 48 GB RAM, (per Hoggers advice), + an NVIDIA 2060 RTX SUPER Graphics Card on my Newish, (Nov.'20) Dell PC, so figure that I have enough 'Beef' now.
My Q is if there is advice on Topaz, and Luminar. - Any preferences on this subject?
(Already Installed: Google Photos, Photoshop Elements 2021, Lightroom 6 (Disk).
The other Q is whether there is an 'All in One' version of either of these, - -
(so I don't have to buy 10 different programs in order to have all that is offered by these Editors?)
And, of course, any other advice as far as Editors & Organizers will be Welcomed, (incl. 'None of the Above')

Thanks in Advance, Pat!

newsguygeorge Loc: Victoria, Texas

I can't address Luminar, but I have Topaz Sharpen and Denoise. I subscribe to Creative Suite so I have Photoshop 2021, which accomodates the Topazes as filter plug-ins. I don't know if they would work the same with elements but you can do a trial of Topaz to see (maybe). ON1, which for me was a waste of money) is also a plug-in, but I don't use it.

By the way, I love Topaz; I also have Gigapixel, which works wonders.

Good luck.

Cwilson341 Loc: Central Florida

I have an earlier version of Luminar but I never really used it much. Topaz, on the other hand, is great. I have Studio 2 and several of the AI Apps and use them a lot. I consider Topaz Sharpen AI as a necessity! Topaz can be installed as plug-ins to Photoshop Elements or used as stand alones. I use Topaz as plug-ins to Affinity Photo.

I think Topaz offer free trials of all their software. The aI apps can be purchased at a discount as packages. For creative editing, check out Topaz Studio 2. It does not include the new ai apps but does have a lot of different apps for all sorts of creativity. Historically, Topaz has always had good sales around the holidays.

twosummers Loc: Melbourne Australia or Lincolnshire England

Luminar AI is a very good application. I now only use this one application for all my R/E work. You should give it a try - they offer a money back guarantee. It's a one-off purchase so no ongoing subscriptions. It's very easy to learn with an intuitive interface.

yssirk123 Loc: New Jersey

Luminar AI is an all in one program, and Topaz is a collection of different filters that must be purchased individually although they often offer a discounted package of multiple programs. Both are excellent, although there are many complaints about Luminar's catalog.

ronichas Loc: Long Island

I have both, I am an affiliate for both. I use Topaz most of the time. I do have Topaz Studio but I prefer to use DeNoise & Sharpen directly from Photoshop CC 2021.

I do have discount codes for both luminar and Topaz products. PM me
for the info.

joer Loc: Colorado/Illinois

I use topaz DeNoise AI and Sharpen AI as part of my normal bird work flow...excellent plug-ins.

I also have Luminar AI. It is excellent for people portraits, landscapes and just fooling around processing.

They are different programs and not alternatives for each other.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Equus Loc: Puget Sound

I am using Affinity Photo with the Topaz plugins. A lot of my photos are shot under low light conditions and hand held so exposure is often a bit off and a lot of noise. Topaz DeNoise AI does a great job of cleaning the noise up. I am experimenting with Sharpen AI. It generally does a good job but I prefer getting the sharp right in the camera.

xt2 Loc: British Columbia, Canada

Topaz is a great collection of many software programs that you can buy individually or as a suite. Luminar 4 & Luminar AI are single all-in-one (do it all) programs. Luminar AI suffers from a DAM that is not the best, hence I use Capture One 21 Pro for cataloguing and some other work in post. I love Luminar 4 & AI for what they do best...fast, intuitive (read easy) and comprehensive editing with special effects that would take me hours to replicate with Capture One or Adobe. Both Luminar products are inexpensive and are updated regularly (often for free as in the last two updates this year). Topaz is good also, however, I prefer the simplicity and speed of Luminar for what it is worth.

Cheers!

David Martin Loc: Cary, NC

Then I assume that you have your camera set to save images as jpegs.
Shooting images and saving as RAW files, still requires sharpening in post processing.
A RAW file is data, not an image.
When you shoot RAW but view your image on the rear screen, you are looking at the jpeg created by your camera to which some degree of sharpening has already been applied.

And when you open a RAW file in software, some degree of default sharpening may have been applied.

To quote just one source: "RAW files on the other hand do not have any processing done to them in camera so although they are initially rendered it is up to you to apply the post processing. Therefore ALL RAW files need to have some degree of sharpening applied to them as well as tone, contrast and saturation. If you have been shooting RAW files and have not been applying any sharpening then you are not optimizing your image."
https://www.yvonneberger.com/post/2018/03/11/should-you-be-sharpening-your-images

Equus Loc: Puget Sound

I generally shoot RAW. So much of what I shoot is less than optimal conditions and RAW just gives me a little more flexibility. Until recently I did all of my sharpening in Affinity but I decided to try the Topaz products and denoise and sharpen.

Of course if I had any sense (my wife will tell you that is lacking) I would save as both RAW and JPG.

PCL92

Why a choice. Both are great programs. I have both along with the Creative Cloud.
The plug ins work fine. The support from Luminar (Skylum) is also great.

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

The full suite of Lightroom/Photoshop is the place to start. I also have the full Topaz suite of products and Luminar 4. Lightroom, Photoshop and the Topaz suite get a lot of use. Luminar has some nice tools but I don't use it much.

I also like Affinity Photo for certain tasks which it handles better than (my knowledge of) Photoshop does.

To the best of my knowledge there is NO do-it-all image processing package. Each has its pros / cons.

bwa

mmills79 Loc: NJ

Luminar versions through Luminar 3 showed lots of promise but every version had bugs. These were fundamental bugs by the way. Luminar users were promised and fully expected the developers to fix all the bugs but they never did. I've said it before and it is well documented that Luminar is basically unsupported, there is zero customer support despite what someone else claimed earlier. The bugs and the hundreds of unsolved complaints are well documented. Luminar 3 was pre catalog. Luminar 4 added the catalog functionality which had it's own new set of bugs that never got fixed and also now exist in Luminar AI. All that said, if you have an older version like Luminar 3, you can do some really nice things easily, especially using masks. So if you want to adjust white balance, luminescence, adjust color & saturation, adjust contrast, adjust detail, do some top/bottom balancing of the aforementioned, Orton effect, do some masking - these are a few of the really good things you can do with Luminar 3 (no catalog). However, if you play with cropping, transformation, or rotation or the erase function, and some other fundamental functions you would expect to work, you are asking for trouble and you could end up with a corrupted file that won't open (and this is true of any version since Luminar 3 too - you have to look at the myriad of complaints to understand all that doesn't work). In summary, the pre-catalog versions of Luminar work well with certain adjustments and give good results but the newer versions are not close to being ready for prime time. They are simply hyped up by the marketing team for features (like sky replacement) to get users to buy but which are lacking basic edit features & support that most good photographers really need from a prime time edit tool. So with Luminar, understand you have to be very selective about which features you use and you have to be careful with how much you do because at some point you either run into a function that doesn't work properly or you over extend the resources of the program which cause it to corrupt the project file or crash.