We are pleased to announce Luminance HDR 2.3.1, an improvement release for Luminance HDR.

It’s a long time since version 2.3.0: unfortunately 2012 has been a really busy year for all of us in the development team, so we couldn’t dedicate much time to the project. However, we are now up to speed and we will try to push releases more often, with new features.

This release introduces some work made by Franco on the antighosting mask: he is absolutely looking forward to receive your feedback on that, so that he will improve it even further.
There are also other improvements in the processing engine (a long refactoring that has been my – Davide – company for almost a year, and will continue probably as much as that). Ideally, a new processing engine will allow more flexibility, hence new functionalities and improvement to be release more often. At least, this is the aim.
On top of that, Daniel is continuing his amazing work on Windows, with the introduction of a portable mode (yes, put your Luminance HDR on a USB drive!) and an update checker, to notify all the user a new release is available (we just make sure you don’t miss Luminance HDR 2.3.2!).

Minimum requirement for Luminance HDR is a CPU that supports SSE2.

For Mac OS X users, Luminance HDR has been compiled on Mountain Lion (10.8), so it might not work on early systems. I am currently try to build a virtual machine based on Snow Leopard, where I can build Luminance HDR also for older systems: I’ll try to make it happen as soon as possible, promise!

If you spot any bug, or you want to suggest a new feature, please use our Tracker.

You can download Luminance HDR 2.3.1 using one of these links:

[ Windows (64-bit) setup ][ Windows (64-bit) 7z ]
[ Windows (32-bit) setup ][ Windows (32-bit) 7z ]
[ Mac OS X (64-bit, Intel) - Mac OS X 10.8 ]
[ Source Code ]

If you appreciate Luminance HDR, please consider a donation (there is no minimum amount!):

If you want to share with other users your results, you can use our Flickr group and Facebook group.

From a personal prospective, last year did not exactly go as I wanted, and this year is not starting better. Working on Luminance HDR was much simpler when I was a PhD student: I could manage  my time, and allocate my resources as I wanted. I could even sit  in front of Luminance HDR’s code for a couple of days in a row and code what I wanted, without even showing up in the lab for my PhD. However, since I start working, I have to find pieces of spare time here and there and try to get the maximum out of it. On top, most of my 2012 was allocate to finish my PhD thesis, something I really could not procrastinate.

Don’t get me wrong: I have no intention to leave the project. There are still so many things spinning through my head that I haven’t had the time to code: in the last few weeks I’ve worked a lot on the underlying engine (which I see like the foundation for the 3.0)  and I have ideas for the GUI as well. In the meanwhile, we are ready to release a 2.3.1 in a few weeks: we are just waiting a new version of LibRAW to be out, so that we can give you the wider RAW support in Luminance.

So something is moving. Slowly, but moving.

Thanks to the important work made by Franco and Daniel, this new release brings into Luminance HDR a brand new colour management system, improved JPG, TIFF and PNG readers and writers and a new image alignment tool for RAW files as well (plus many other small changes). Since the beta1, minor flaws and bugs have been fixed. Moreover, we ported the new colour management system from LCMS to LCMS2.

Thanks to the work of our contributor Tino Kluge, Luminance HDR 2.3.0 has now got a size independent implementation of the Fattal operator. I would never thank enough Tino for this patch!

Minimum requirement for Luminance HDR is a CPU that supports SSE2.

If you spot any bug, or you want to suggest a new feature, please use our Tracker.

You can download Luminance HDR 2.3.0 using one of these links:

[ Windows (32-bit) setup ][ Windows (32-bit) 7z ]
[ Windows (64-bit) setup ][ Windows (64-bit) 7z ]
[ Mac OS X (64-bit, Intel) ]
[ Source Code ]

If you appreciate Luminance, please consider a donation (there is no minimum amount!):

If you want to share with other users your results, you can use our Flickr group and Facebook group.

I would like to start by saying my appreciation for the work made by Daniel and Franco: they are both seriously skilled developers and they compensate my lack of time by carrying on the development. It is all thanks to their work that we have a new beta version to play with after such a short time from the release of the 2.2.1: if you are curious to test the latest progress, we will appreciate any kind of feedback.

However, a lot of work needs to be done to bring Luminance HDR were I would love it to be. When I took it from the hands of the former founder, nearly two years ago, Luminance HDR was facing a really bad moment, and it was really close to be abandon [1][2]. Not much development was going on, so  it was given to me, a person that had no clue of the internal structure of the project. But I didn’t have a build for Mac OS X and I need a copy of Luminance HDR for my pictures. So I started compiling everything on Mac. And it worked. Sort of.

Without telling you the all story (I don’t want to bug you!), since that day, I’ve started working more and more on Luminance HDR. I’ve fixed several heavy memory leaks, merged the Main Window with the Tonemapping Window and started using tabs instead of MDI containers, just to name a few. At the same time, I’ve moved the building system to CMake and the source control repository to Git (and now that I’m forced to use SVN for other projects, I cannot tell you how much I love Git!). It’s probably thanks to my first efforts that Franco and Daniel started to work again on the project, pushing myself to do even better.

But the greatest thing that happens to Luminance HDR in these two years is you. Yes, you! I’ve started a Facebook group and in a few weeks we were 100. Now, almost 300. And you are all active users, sharing pictures, suggestions, tricks and proposing ideas. Without your support and feedback, we couldn’t understand whether our work was appreciated or not (something really important when you work for free!).

And now? I think this award is not the finish  line, but more the start. While the current code is being maintained and improved, many thing are happening to prepare the next generation. It’s a complex work, that involves rewriting a large part of the underlying processing engine, but it is a challenging task that will completely change our baby. I would love to have near real-time processing, and more improved and advanced post-processing features, in order to speed up the entire workflow. The GUI needs to be polished and improved as well. And much more. So, stay tuned…

Thanks to the important work made by Franco and Daniel, this new release brings into Luminance HDR a brand new color management system, improved JPG, TIFF and PNG readers and writers and a new image alignment tool for RAW files as well (plus many other small changes).

Minimum requirement for Luminance HDR is a CPU that supports SSE2.

If you spot any bug, or you want to suggest a new feature, please use our Tracker.

You can download Luminance HDR 2.3.0-beta1 using one of these links:

[ Windows (32-bit) setup ][ Windows (32-bit) 7z ]
[ Windows (64-bit) setup ][ Windows (64-bit) 7z ]
[ Mac OS X (64-bit, Intel) ]
[ Source Code ]

Users of Fedora 16 and Fedora 15 can find pre built binaries for x86_64 and i386 here:

[ Fedora 16 x86_64 ] [ Fedora 16 i386 ]
[ Fedora 15 x86_64 ] [ Fedora 15 i386 ]

If you appreciate Luminance, please consider a donation (there is no minimum amount!):

If you want to share with other users your results, you can use our Flickr group and Facebook group.

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We are pleased to announce Luminance HDR 2.2.1, a minor release with a few bug fixes.

For all the Windows users, TIFF support is now fully working again. Moreover, we also decided to split the GUI and the CLI into two independent executable: for those who use the CLI often, you have to use the new luminance-hdr-cli executable. This choice has several positive sides: Luminance HDR starts on Windows in a blink of an eye now, while the CLI is finally available on Mac OS X as well.

Just because we had a couple of bug reports in the past weeks, Luminance HDR requires at least SSE2 to work properly.

If you spot any bug, or you want to suggest a new feature, please use our Tracker.

You can download Luminance HDR 2.2.1 using one of these links:

[ Windows (32-bit) setup ][ Windows (32-bit) 7z ]
[ Windows (64-bit) setup ][ Windows (64-bit) 7z ]
[ Mac OS X (64-bit, Intel) ]
[ Source Code ]

Users of Fedora 16 and Fedora 15 can find pre built binaries for x86_64 and i386 here:

[Fedora 16 x86_64 ] [Fedora 16 i386 ]
[Fedora 15 x86_64 ] [Fedora 15 i386 ]

If you appreciate Luminance, please consider a donation (there is no minimum amount!):

If you want to share with other users your results, you can use our Flickr group and Facebook group.

We are pleased to announce Luminance HDR 2.2.0.

A long time has passed since the last Luminance HDR (2.1.0), however we did work a lot on it, both on the user interface and on the internal engine. We do have great ideas of how to improve it even more, so we decided to give you the effort of around six months of work while we continue working on it.

If you spot any bug, or you want to suggest a new feature, please our Tracker.

You can download Luminance HDR 2.2.0 using one of these links:

[ Windows (32-bit) setup ][ Windows (32-bit) 7z ]
[ Windows (64-bit) setup ][ Windows (64-bit) 7z ]
[ Mac OS X (64-bit, Intel) ]
[ Source Code ]

Users of Fedora 16 and Fedora 15 can find pre built binaries for x86_64 and i386 here:

[Fedora 16 x86_64 ] [Fedora 16 i386 ]
[Fedora 15 x86_64 ] [Fedora 15 i386 ]

If you appreciate Luminance, please consider a donation (there is no minimum amount!):

If you want to share with other users your results, you can use our Flickr group and Facebook group.

Note [Mac Users]: As the previous version, we have phased out support for 32 bit on Mac OS X. At the same time, we phased out support for Mac OS X Leopard as well, so you will need at least Snow Leopard to use Luminance HDR 2.2.0.

We have been working on a new version of Luminance HDR since the release of the current version, trying to improve functionalities and add a few more, with the aim of giving you a better software. Our core development team now counts a new member (Bruce), that has been a patch supplier for a long time before joining our team. However, we didn’t plan yet when and how the next release will be (maybe christmas?), so it might take long. Be patient!

In the meanwhile, I (Davide) started a new side project: I am trying to make a library out of Luminance’s engine, in order to offer similar functionalities to other software of the open source community. It is a really big project, that will keep me busy for a long period. However, it is my personal commitment to not leave Luminance HDR, which I’ve been cuddling for more than a year and I am proud of!

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