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@martha-lapp, @jamesstaddon
Having used both extensively, Luminar I don’t think is quite fully developed yet if you’re looking for a serious editor. I really hoped the new “libraries” feature would help with image browsing… and I bought the program expecting something solid… unfortunately, it was really, really slow. On my computer, I had to wait about two seconds for each image to see if it was in focus. Maybe it’s better now, but I didn’t want to spend the money on the upgrade. I ended up shooting RAW+JPEG to go through my pictures, looking at the JPEGS in a different browser and making notes on which ones I wanted to edit. There were also a few bugs.
That said, the editor in Luminar is very good, and there are a ton of really cool artificial intelligence sliders that make editing a breeze. Just browsing was a big pain, and fairly unusable.
Having used ON1 for nearly a year now, I can say I won’t be switching any time soon. The browsing is fabulous, organization is on par with Lightroom from what I’ve seen in tutorials, and the editor is great as well. There are some AI sliders, but it’s not quite as easy as Luminar.
All that said, my hands-down recommendation between the two programs is ON1. It’s just a more fully-developed program with a more practical features a lot less bugs and annoyances. I’ve actually stopped shooting JPEGs as RAWs are easy enough for me to work with now and I can check for focus near instantly.
Good luck!
—Logan