Anyone with Skylum/Aurora 2018 experience?

[alphaomega]

With the impending 40% left after all the hard work I thought I could save money long term by switching from Adobe Cloud monthly to Skylum new issue with 10% off or less that £50. Looked good but concerned about the lack of lens profiles and suggestions that the colour management is a bit strong i.e. exaggerated colours. I tend to shoot raw and some of my lenses definitely need a lens profile, which are all covered in Camera RAW.

Skylum certainly looks attractive, but I do not think that the perspective aspects are as well cared for as in LR/PS. I am not keen on strong colours as I tend to do images that look 'realistic'.

Anyone with experience of both products who would care to comment?

[Colin Woods]

I use the Skylum on my arty pictures but have never used its RAW conversion. If you are looking for an LR alternative, do test drive DxO PhotoLab. I have used it for ten years or so now and its excellent. Its automated lens corrections are excellent and its noise reduction is also superb. 

[alphaomega]

Thank you for your reply Colin. There is a hype just now about Aurora competing with LR. I think that there is too much emphasis on exaggreating colours. Not my cup of tea. I have read about a lot of satisfaction with DxO. Actually I am happy with Adobe Cloud technally and find their lens corrections acceptable.  Between luminance and colour corrections in Camera RAW I am able to control noise so I think I will just stay with Adobe Cloud for the time being. I think that even the new version of Aurora is not for me. I might look seriously at DxO if Adobe increase their prices again in January.

[M.Chapman]

I'd also like to get away from the Adobe subscription. I tested the 2018 version of Luminar. I found it (in general) fast and responsive and liked it. But it had a few "showstoppers" for me.

 

1) Automated CA removal only removed 50% of the CA in my test image (LR removed 100%) and there wasn't a manual CA adjustment to fix it that I could find.

2) There's an automated defringe, but again it wasn't 100% successful and there was no manual defringe (unlike LR)

3) Healing and cloning seemed slow and cumbersome

4) Results from "eyedropper white balance" tool very erratic

 

It's unclear whether the 2019 version will fix the above. I'd wait until the 2019 version is available as a trial download before parting with any cash...

 

Mark

[Martin Carlsson]

1 hour ago, alphaomega said:

Thank you for your reply Colin. There is a hype just now about Aurora competing with LR. I think that there is too much emphasis on exaggreating colours. Not my cup of tea. I have read about a lot of satisfaction with DxO. Actually I am happy with Adobe Cloud technally and find their lens corrections acceptable.  Between luminance and colour corrections in Camera RAW I am able to control noise so I think I will just stay with Adobe Cloud for the time being. I think that even the new version of Aurora is not for me. I might look seriously at DxO if Adobe increase their prices again in January.

 

- Aurora HDR 2019 is excellent, even for just it's ability to extract (perceived) natural looking enhanced dynamic range from one single image.Top notch piece of software.

 

- Skylum 2018 completely useless for professional use as there is no color management - although that has been promised to be implemented for quite some time apparently.

[alphaomega]

Thanks for your comments above. I think that M. Chapman correctly highlights the kind of issues that put me off Luminar. The four points are key to me. You cannot submit images to Alamy which show fringing or CA. I am also concerned about the lack of effective colormanagement and lens profiles.