- Joined
- May 1, 2006
- Messages
- 2,082
With the North Wind, called in Arabic simply as "The North", "Shammal", starting to blow and bringing relief from the oppressive heat of summer here and with confirmed sightings of seasonal migratory visitors, tourists off cruise ships (Yep, they actually do exist), it is time to wrap up summer projects, and start to give an autumn cleaning to camera gear in advance of that glorious time of year, winter! Incidentally, the North Wind, called in Hebrew simply as "The North", "Mezareh", is oft mentioned in the Old Testament as a bringer of relief. Go figure.
My Summer Project was not the table top stuff I had initially planned in an attempt to topple @Mike Buckley off his perch, but learning a new programing language and developing a piece of software.
In a nod to the current obsession with "Ai", especially by Skylum, Developers of Luminar, I have called it "PatchUp! Ai for Luminar". "Ai" in this case meaning "Augmented Interface" of course and not the other Ai.
So being an NX2 Refugee, I had picked up on an interesting piece of software from a company called "Macphun" which they called "Luminar" back in 2016 (We now know that was Luminar 1.0).
It had a few issues but looked very promising. They soon released "Luminar Pluto" (We now know that was Luminar 1.1) and later, "Luminar Neptune" (We now know that was Luminar 1.2).
They seemed to be working their way in from the edge of the solar system and next planet was Uranus. I was eagerly waiting to see if they would actually go there.
Alas! they didn't. They released Luminar 2018 instead (We now know that was Luminar 2.0). They changed a lot of things and didn't fix many of the issues but despite a slightly botched release, they sort of pulled it together later and we had something to look forward to in future iterations. But instead of building on Luminar 2018, Macphun, by now called "Skylum", threw out everything and decided on a total rewrite culminating in a steaming pile of doodah released as "Luminar 3". Cue a withering barrage of criticism on their forums to which they responded by doubling down on advertising and getting talking heads on YouTube to sing its praises ... although to be fair, they did sort of stabilise the software (the bar was low), at the cost of several items pending from "Luminar 1".
Now, "Luminar 4" is due soon. Once again, Skylum has decided to change direction and focus on "Ai".
In three years, they have changed direction three times. It is frustrating but the basic promise is still there. I haven't signed up for Luminar 4 as deeply suspicious of the "nirvana" of the one slider / button solution promised.
Anyway, I spent the summer rooting through the Luminar 3 library setup, learnt Xojo / Realbasic programming and put PatchUp! together.
It is good to go for Mac but while the Windows code logic is there, several features are disabled on Windows pending tests. If you wanna volunteer to beta test on Windows, please PM me.
It is donationware but some features are locked. Windows Volunteer will of course get full unlock.
It does two basic things:
"Level 3" Optimisation is disabled on Windows which requires a 3rd party external dependency, ImageMagick, to do the Tiff Compression.
All Macs since OS X Panther, come with a little known utility, SIPS (Scriptable Image Processing System), which allows this task to be done natively.
Both Windows and Macs require a 3rd party external dependency, ExifTool, to do the Library Metadata Fixes.
Library Metadata Fixes are also currently disabled on Windows pending verification.
I don't seem to be able to upload images for some reason so links to some screen shots:
#01 About Screen
#02 Selecting "Level 1" Optimisation
#03 Selecting "Level 3" Optimisation
#04 After Evaluating for "Level 3" Optimisation
#05 After Clicking "Optimise" Button with "Skip Backup" Selected
#06 After Clicking "Optimise" Button with "Create Backup" Selected
#07 After Optimisation
#08 After Reverting
Any Volunteers?
My Summer Project was not the table top stuff I had initially planned in an attempt to topple @Mike Buckley off his perch, but learning a new programing language and developing a piece of software.
In a nod to the current obsession with "Ai", especially by Skylum, Developers of Luminar, I have called it "PatchUp! Ai for Luminar". "Ai" in this case meaning "Augmented Interface" of course and not the other Ai.
So being an NX2 Refugee, I had picked up on an interesting piece of software from a company called "Macphun" which they called "Luminar" back in 2016 (We now know that was Luminar 1.0).
It had a few issues but looked very promising. They soon released "Luminar Pluto" (We now know that was Luminar 1.1) and later, "Luminar Neptune" (We now know that was Luminar 1.2).
They seemed to be working their way in from the edge of the solar system and next planet was Uranus. I was eagerly waiting to see if they would actually go there.
Alas! they didn't. They released Luminar 2018 instead (We now know that was Luminar 2.0). They changed a lot of things and didn't fix many of the issues but despite a slightly botched release, they sort of pulled it together later and we had something to look forward to in future iterations. But instead of building on Luminar 2018, Macphun, by now called "Skylum", threw out everything and decided on a total rewrite culminating in a steaming pile of doodah released as "Luminar 3". Cue a withering barrage of criticism on their forums to which they responded by doubling down on advertising and getting talking heads on YouTube to sing its praises ... although to be fair, they did sort of stabilise the software (the bar was low), at the cost of several items pending from "Luminar 1".
Now, "Luminar 4" is due soon. Once again, Skylum has decided to change direction and focus on "Ai".
In three years, they have changed direction three times. It is frustrating but the basic promise is still there. I haven't signed up for Luminar 4 as deeply suspicious of the "nirvana" of the one slider / button solution promised.
Anyway, I spent the summer rooting through the Luminar 3 library setup, learnt Xojo / Realbasic programming and put PatchUp! together.
It is good to go for Mac but while the Windows code logic is there, several features are disabled on Windows pending tests. If you wanna volunteer to beta test on Windows, please PM me.
It is donationware but some features are locked. Windows Volunteer will of course get full unlock.
It does two basic things:
- Recovers inefficient space use by Lunimar as it creates resources in support of edits
- Fixes gaps in metadata in the library
"Level 3" Optimisation is disabled on Windows which requires a 3rd party external dependency, ImageMagick, to do the Tiff Compression.
All Macs since OS X Panther, come with a little known utility, SIPS (Scriptable Image Processing System), which allows this task to be done natively.
Both Windows and Macs require a 3rd party external dependency, ExifTool, to do the Library Metadata Fixes.
Library Metadata Fixes are also currently disabled on Windows pending verification.
I don't seem to be able to upload images for some reason so links to some screen shots:
#01 About Screen
#02 Selecting "Level 1" Optimisation
#03 Selecting "Level 3" Optimisation
#04 After Evaluating for "Level 3" Optimisation
#05 After Clicking "Optimise" Button with "Skip Backup" Selected
#06 After Clicking "Optimise" Button with "Create Backup" Selected
#07 After Optimisation
#08 After Reverting
Any Volunteers?