Essential Apple Podcast 152: Looking forward to Luminar 4 with Alex Tsepko

This week Apple said iOS 13 reached 50% adoption, Apple TV appeared on Roku, iPhoto finally reached the end of the road. Google told us why the Pixel 4 isn’t 5G, Adobe say Photoshop for iPad will appear this year, and Pebble watches are still living on due to the “Rebble Alliance”. Meanwhile the US finally gave up on 8“ floppy disks…
But more important than all that stuff Simon is joined by Alex Tsepko, CEO of Skylum, to talk about what’s in store for Luminar 4 due for release November 18th.

GIVEAWAYS & OFFERS

  • We had four licences for BeLight’s new vector application Amadine to give away. Names out of the hat were:
    • Alan Vickers, Dan Murphy, Bart Busschots and Guy Serle!
  • Listeners of this show can claim $10 off purchases of Luminar and/or Aurora HD 2019 use the coupon code EssentialApple at checkout for your extra discount!
  • Get Donny Yankellow’s 2FunDads iMessage stickers for FREE

Why not come and join the Slack community? You can now just click on this Slackroom Link to sign up and join in the chatter!

Slacker @MacJim has started up a family friendly Flickr group for listeners to share photos because the Darkroom channel in the Slack has become so popular – if you’re interested head over to to the Essential Apple Flickr and request an invitation.

Continue reading → Essential Apple Podcast 152: Looking forward to Luminar 4 with Alex Tsepko

Skylum Software present: 100+ plugins for Photoshop

A guest posting by Skylum Software

Before launching Luminar Flex a few weeks ago, Skylum did a little research to see what plug-ins for Photoshop are currently available on the market. They’ve collected over 100 different plugins that might be useful for photographers, designers and anyone who works with Photoshop.
Based on it they’ve prepared an organised and numbered list of plug-ins from photo editing and noise reduction helpers, to those that work with icons, fonts or mockups. Please, feel free to share this list or give them a hint if they’ve forgotten to add any plug-in worthy of being on the list.

Luminar Flex (Luminar as a plug-in) by Skylum Software

A review by Donny Yankellow (@rtteachr)

If you enjoy editing photos on your Mac, but Photos is not enough power for you, and you don’t like having to use an external editor to edit photos in, Luminar Flex might be what you are looking for. It has the power of Skylum’s Luminar in an extension that can be used in Photos. If you prefer Photoshop, Lightroom, or still use Aperture Luminar Flex installs a plugin for those apps too (yes, it even supports Aperture!).

Flex is very easy to set up and use for the most part. I would be remiss not to talk about an installation issue I had. The installer could not connect to the Skylum server (something with my router blocking it) and I ended up hotspotting to my phone to get the installation to work. Your mileage may vary, but I think this is worth bringing up. Through the installation plugins and extensions are installed for the apps you have installed on your computer in addition to the standalone app in your applications folder. For me, I only use Photos so I had to go into system preferences and enable the extension through the Extensions preference. After that I could easily use the software like any other extension in Photos.

Continue reading → Luminar Flex (Luminar as a plug-in) by Skylum Software

Essential Apple Podcast 114: Luminar 2019 with Libraries Launch

This week Amazon announced the Apple Music service will be available on their devices by Christmas. Amazon also announced it is going with custom designed ARM Graviton chips for AWS servers. The iPhone Xr is declared best selling iPhone, Apple offers increased trade in values on old iPhones and Apple supports anti AIDS efforts. PLUS our guest this week is Alex Tsepko of Skylum who returns to the show to tell us all about Luminar 2019, its Libraries features, free updates, forthcoming additions and lots more.

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Aurora HDR 2019: A Review by Allister Jenks (@zkarj)

Let me start out by describing myself. I am a keen amateur photographer and I love to play with technology. I am expert in neither discipline, but I’ve been doing both for quite a lot of years now. As such, software like Aurora HDR 2019 is right up my alley — cool technology applied to photography.

I’ve dabbled in HDR photography in the past and know the basic principles of tone mapping, but I’ve not spent a lot of time making HDR images. I own a license for the original Aurora HDR Pro, now referred to as Aurora HDR 2016, and I’ve used it to create a number of pleasing results such as this vivid shot of one of my favourite buildings, made from 5 bracketed exposures.

AH2019 0 Aurora HDR 2019: A Review by Allister Jenks (@zkarj)

So when the opportunity came up to review Skylum’s Aurora HDR 2019, I was keen. I wondered how far the product had come in the intervening three years.

Continue reading → Aurora HDR 2019: A Review by Allister Jenks (@zkarj)

Press Release from Skylum: Aurora HDR 2019

HDR Photography Takes a Quantum Leap Forward with Skylum’s Aurora HDR 2019 and New Patent-Pending AI Technology

Enhancements to Apple’s reigning Mac App of the Year delivers an HDR photo editor that blends power and intelligent tech with intuition and seamless workflow

Bellevue, WA – October 4, 2018 — Skylum Software is now shipping Aurora HDR 2019, its fourth generation, high dynamic range editor, whose predecessor is the current Mac App of the Year. Skylum’s goal is to give photographers a powerful tool to create vivid, captivating, and true-to-life high dynamic range images. Skylum’s AI Lab analyzed thousands of images from professional photographers to create a custom algorithm that would deliver optimal results automatically, drastically reducing editing time. In addition to landscape photographers, real estate, architecture, environmental portrait, food and street photographers will all benefit fromAurora HDR 2019.

“Aurora uses its Quantum HDR Engine with AI technology to analyze and extrapolate the best details from each bracketed image to create a single file that renders more details in the shadows, highlights and midrange than ever possible before,” explains Alex Tsepko, CEO of Skylum Software. “Leveraging advances in RAW file technology, photographers who create single exposures can also recover hidden details from their photos using Aurora HDR.”

HDR Smart Structure is a new feature that lets users add contrast, depth, and definition to areas in an image using a single intelligent slider. And, it does this without creating unwanted halos, noise, color spotting or artifacts most noticeable in areas of sky, clouds, and smooth surfaces.

Aurora HDR 2019 also incorporates LUT mapping, an industry standard in photography, cinema, and television to help photographers jumpstart their creative color process by allowing them to apply color grading and film stock simulations.

Aurora HDR Looks is another new feature that allows photographers to use their own combination of filters and LUTs to quickly fix or adjust their images. It also enables quick edits and batch processing of images shot under similar lighting conditions. Skylum partnered with top pros to create signature Aurora HDR Looks to inspire professionals and help new users easily achieve finished images.

Continue reading → Press Release from Skylum: Aurora HDR 2019

Essential Apple Podcast 94: Talking Photolemur, Luminar & Aurora HDR with Skylum

I am joined by Alex Tsepko the CEO of Skylum Software to talk about Photolemur, Luminar, what happened to the DAM module, and Aurora HDR… Actually the interview was done in two parts because we had issues trying to record while Alex was driving across the Ukraine… (who’d have guessed that?) But regardless of that we got a really great interview. Also Suffolk Pete (@hermboy) and I chew over the news of the week.
Why not come and join the Slack community? You can now just click on this Slackroom Link to sign up and join in the chatter!

Continue reading → Essential Apple Podcast 94: Talking Photolemur, Luminar & Aurora HDR with Skylum

Press Release from Skylum – Who appeared on the show 1st July.

Update to Skylum’s Aurora HDR 2018 Brings New Tools, Faster Performance and Loupedeck+ Integration

Aurora HDR 2018 now up to 2x faster on MacOS and compatible with the brand-new Loupedeck+ photo editing console

Bellevue, WA – June 20, 2018 – Skylum Software today released the latest update to its award-winning photo editing software, Aurora HDR, bringing improved performance, new features, and updated tools to both MacOS and Windows versions.
Aurora HDR is now faster across the board with a massive boost in performance on both Windows and MacOS computers. Specifically, performance on MacOS computers is up 180% when working with bracketed shots and 175% when working with single images. On Windows computers, Aurora HDR is now 500% faster when working with bracketed shots and 400% for single images. Aurora HDR also makes better use of memory, with more intelligent management and improved stability.

Essential Apple Podcast 63: Skylum’s the Limit with Kevin La Rue

This week we are joined by Kevin La Rue of Macphun – now renamed Skylum Software, to talk about Luminar, Macphun photo software,the change to Skylum Software, Dark Castle, Silicon Beach and and as usual any other stuff that cropped up in the world of Apple and tech over the last week or so. It’s quite a long show as Kevin was keen to share with us, so get a brew, settle down and prepare to hear all about things he’s been involved with all the way back to the dawn of the Mac!

Continue reading → Essential Apple Podcast 63: Skylum’s the Limit with Kevin La Rue