Skylum Announces Luminar with Libraries & More Will Be a Free Upgrade

From Skylum:

We made some important decisions this week concerning Luminar, and we think you’ll like them.

We’re always working hard to take our products to new heights, but this last year has been special. We’ve been intensely working on new tools that will elevate Luminar from a supercharged photo editor to THE home for editing, organizing and enjoying your images. It’s been a long time coming, but it will completely change the way everyone uses Luminar. I’d like to give a preview of the big things that are coming… Starting with Luminar Libraries in December, we've got a series of huge updates coming over the next year. A much anticipated addition to Luminar, Libraries will allow photographers to organize, browse and edit images the fly. Libraries will be powerful right out of the gate, but it represents the first of many photo organization and management updates launching over the following months.

From Libraries to other killer features, these updates are so powerful, that we want them in the hands of as many photographers as possible. To this end, we're going to do something unprecedented. Through late 2019 (at least), we're making every new feature available to all Luminar 2018 users - at no cost! While software companies typically roll out paid updates every year, there will be no paid updates for Luminar until late 2019 at the earliest. From Libraries to innovative new editing tools, every monumental advance and every new feature will be provided as free updates for Luminar 2018 users. This is a reflection of how much we value our customers, and how confident we are in the incredible value of the features we've got coming! With so much on the horizon, communication is key! Check the blog regularly for updates on all the exciting upcoming features. We look forward to your feedback and support. Thanks for taking this journey with us!

Luminar with Libraries.

As mentioned last week, the new version will be released later this year. Anyone who owns Luminar will get the new update for free in December, if not earlier. This new version is now in a closed beta testing, and the feedback we have been getting so far has been overwhelming.

The first version of Libraries in Luminar is all about these main points: performance, comfort, and a complete user experience. This means the new version will give you speed to browse & organize images without the extra wait time. This means that you’ll enjoy your photos moments after you start the software.

Here’s a short speed test I did last week. Take a look and stay tuned for more videos, webinars, posts and live sessions about other features.

Most importantly, with the new version of Luminar, you’ll be able to conveniently group photos into albums, rate pictures, sync edits between hundreds of images, and do more without the need to check back a manual every time.

We spent years, studying the needs, workflows, and preferences of different photographers. So in the new Luminar, you get a truly great viewing/browsing experience that draws you in and helps you enjoy and organize your photos without extra distractions.

And since Luminar is already packed with dozens of innovative tools to edit, enhance, and share photos, you will soon get the most comprehensive and well-rounded photography experience available in a piece of software.

No paid upgrade. You will get all the great stuff for free.

Alongside the new Libraries feature, we also poured a lot of hard work, time & research to bring you new editing tools for portraits, landscapes, aerial and other genres of photography; new features powered by Artificial Intelligence, new looks and styles, and more.

We have initially planned to release those features in Luminar 2019, as a paid upgrade, just like we usually do. However, this week, we made a decision to forgo any paid upgrades at least until the end of 2019, and add those features to Luminar 2018 for free.

We will incorporate the new tools and features in the latest version of Luminar instead of asking you to pay for the upgrade. Expect first updates as soon as this year. And throughout the next year we will be frequently rolling out more free updates to make Luminar Libraries, and its Editing & Sharing tools faster, better and more powerful for you.

A new price for a limited time.

Skylum's software are priced so that everyone can afford them and designed so that everyone can easily use them. We do this because everyone takes photos, not just experienced and pro photographers. We do this because photos are more than just the captions they come with.

We believe that every single person deserves to make his/her photos look their best without the extra hassle and without having to study and master all those photo editing tips the pros use.

So for a limited time, Luminar will be available for just $59 for new users who have yet to purchase the software. For this price, you’ll get the current version of the software, the free update to the new version that boasts Libraries, and free updates for the new features we initially developed for Luminar 2019.

No subscriptions. No upgrade fees. No extra charges.