Apps

LumaFusion for Android beta now available

Wednesday, November 9, 2022

As promised earlier this year, LumaFusion, by far the most feature-filled NLE option for iPad and iPhone video editors, is now available for Android and ChromeOS users. Starting today, LumaFusion is available from the Google Play Store or Galaxy Store as an early access beta for just $19.99, a 30% discount off the full $29.99 price. Once the final version ships later this year, an update will be available to early access users at no additional charge.

I’ve been a big proponent of LumaTouch’s work for a long time, and the praise has been well-deserved. Not only did LumaFusion start off strong out of the gate, but it’s continued to grow and expand and a steady clip. Terri Morgan and her team at LumaTouch have done what basically no one else has been able to do — create a competent NLE that’s capable of producing high-quality videos on a touch-first platform like the iPad and iPhone. Now the lessons the team has learned over the past few years as an iOS-only app will expand to an even larger user base.

On a whole, iOS and iPadOS are leaps and bounds ahead of the various Android storefronts when it comes to high quality apps, but attracting a desktop-class app like LumaFusion is a definite win for Android users. If users support this app, like they should, it might convince other popular developers to make high quality Android software as well.

Here’s a video preview of LumaFusion running on a ChromeBook to give you an idea of what to expect:

In addition, here are some of the features that Android and ChromeOS users can expect from this initial early access version of LumaFusion:

Editing

  • Layer up to 6 video and 6 audio tracks (number of layers determined by your device type)
  • Powerful magnetic timeline with insert/overwrite and link/unlink clips
  • Display track headers for locking, hiding, and muting tracks
  • Use preset effects or create your own
  • Add markers with notes
  • Cut, copy, paste in your timeline and between projects using multiselect

Effects

  • Layer effects; green screen, luma and chroma keys, blurs, distort, styles and color
  • Use powerful color correction tools
  • Select from included color LUTs like FiLMiC deLog or import your own .cube or .3dl
  • Animate with unlimited keyframes
  • Save and share effect presets

Speed FX

  • Create slow motion/fast motion forward and reverse
  • Create smooth slow motion using 120 and 240fps files
  • Edit with time-lapse video

Audio

  • Keyframe audio levels, panning and EQ for perfect mixes
  • Fill-from-left / right for dual-mono audio captures
  • Duck music during dialog with Auto-ducking

Titler

  • Create multilayer titles with shapes and images
  • Adjust font, color, face, border and shadow
  • Save and share title presets

Project Manager

  • Create projects with a variety of aspect ratios (including landscape, portrait, square, widescreen film)
  • Work in frame rates from 18fps to 240fps
  • Duplicate, add notes, and use color-tag projects

Media Library

  • Use media directly from your device
  • Link to media on USB-C drives – only download what you use on the timeline.
  • Import media: cloud storage (Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive)
  • Storyblocks Library (In App Purchase) includes thousands of royalty-free music, sound fx, videos, and backgrounds
  • View detailed metadata for your media
  • Rename, add notes, and color-tag
  • Sort and search to quickly find what you need

Share Features

  • Easily share movies with control over resolution, quality, and framerate
  • Create a snapshot of any frame
  • Archive projects for backup or edit on another device

Available Purchases

  • Subscribe to Storyblocks for LumaFusion to access the full library of music and clips

To learn more, and to get links to direct downloads of the Android, ChromeOS, and Samsung versions of LumaFusion, visit Luma-Touch.com.

Serif launches Affinity Photo, Designer, and Publisher V2 alongside new Universal License ownership tier 

Wednesday, November 9, 2022

Today Serif, the company behind the Affinity creative suite of apps, is announcing Version 2 of Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, and Affinity Publisher. In addition, Affinity Publisher 2 is now available on iPad after being a desktop exclusive. Serif is also announcing a new Universal License ownership tier, that gives users access to all Affinity apps across all platforms for one low price.

The Affinity Universal License will normally be available for $169.99, but Serif is offering a special 40% launch discount, affording users with access to the entire V2 suite for just $99.99. This announcement also silences fears that Affinity apps would adopt a subscription model.

Ashley Hewson, Managing Director of Serif, notes:

“The ability to buy for a one-off payment is something that makes Affinity the only viable option for many of the brilliant and inspiring creative people around the world, who would otherwise not have access to the highest-quality tools. There has been a lot of speculation about us moving to subscription recently, so I’m pleased to confirm that isn’t the case!

For our existing customers we have also been very conscious that, considering many of our sales are generated via app stores, it’s not possible to provide upgrade pricing. That’s the main reason we have decided to offer such a large launch discount – giving upgraders a chance to do so at an incredible price.”

Affinity Photo V2 for Mac

Speaking on a personal basis, Affinity Photo and Designer have been two absolute staple Mac and iPad applications that I’ve used daily for the last few years. I’ve been a huge fan of Affinity apps, not only because of the lack of an annoying and pricey monthly subscription fee, but primarily because the apps are extremely good at what they do with no compromises for my particular workflow. I think many Photoshop and Illustrator users will be surprised by just how capable the Affinity Suite is, and now with Affinity Publisher 2 coming to the iPad, InDesign users may have more of a reason to look at Serif’s apps as well.

Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad

Serif notes that users who don’t require the full package will still be able to buy each app — Affinity Photo 2, Affinity Designer 2 or Affinity Publisher 2 individually for Mac, PC or iPad with the same 40% launch discount. All products, including the V2 Universal License, are also available as a 30-day free trial.

All new Affinity releases are available now. To purchase individual V2 apps or the V2 Universal License, head over to Serif’s website, and take advantage of the introductory pricing.

Conclusion

As someone who dislikes Adobe’s subscription model, Affinity has been a huge win for me personally. Although a lot more people know about Affinity apps than they used to, I still think there remains a sizable swath of creative users who have no idea how awesome these apps are, and how viable they are as outright Adobe replacements in many circumstances.

But even if you’re educated about what Affinity’s creative apps bring to the table, I think it’s a good idea to purchase the V2 versions at this reasonable price, and support the team at Serif. Without our support, it would not be able to provide such reasonable prices devoid of monthly subscription fees. Let’s show everyone from our support that you don’t have to adopt a subscription model to be a successful software company in 2022.

Hands on: Luma Fusion 3.1 – real-time video scopes, and more

Thursday, November 17, 2022

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LumaTouch just released the latest version of its award-winning video editing software, LumaFusion. This update — version 3.1 — is huge, and brings forth scopes, featuring real-time histograms, waveforms and vectorscopes.

Scopes are handy monitoring tools that pro users have been clamoring for. Critical for measuring color, highlights, and shadows, they are especially helpful when monitoring and grading HDR content. But scopes aren’t the only new feature to come, as I showcase in my hands-on LumaFusion 3.1 video walkthrough.

Scopes!

You can find the new scopes feature by double-tapping on a clip in the timeline to open the Clip Editor. While inside the Clip Editor, tap the Color & Effects tab at the bottom of the interface then tap the Scopes button in the upper left-hand corner.

By default, LumaFusion presents all three video scopes at once: histogram, waveform, and vectorsope. Each scope features a chevron button that allows you to further customize its features.

For histograms, users have the option of displaying an overlay of all three color channels, or a horizontal or vertical parade. Users can also toggle individual red, green, or blue color channels, along with a luminance channel.

The waveform graph allows you to switch between YCbCr luma or chroma values, and RGB with options to toggle individual channels, while the vectorscope is built for color correction, and allows users to toggle the skin tone line via settings.

The video scopes panel can be enlarged by using the slider at the top of the interface, which, after a certain size, will begin to obscure the video preview.

Finally, if you long-press the Scopes button in the upper left-hand corner, you can customize the scopes view. In all there are six different views to choose from, the default 3-up view, a 2-up view, a 1-up view, and a pair of 2-up views with one large scope and one smaller scope.

Overall, the new scopes feature is a welcomed addition that allows you to gain real-time insight into color and luminance values of your footage. Of course, scopes work great within SDR color spaces, but since LumaFusion already handles working with HDR content like a champ, it comes as no surprise that scopes play nice within an HDR color space as well.

The only downside, if you can even call it that, is that scopes are only viewable while within the Clip Editor for an individual clip, and disappear when closing the Color & Effects tab. In future versions, it would be great if you could keep the scopes viewable while on the project timeline and customize their location around the interface. But as a free update for people that already own LumaFusion, it’s really hard to complain about gaining such a valuable new feature for free.

Multiple LUTs and effects

LUTs provide a great way to customize the look of your footage, but up until now LumaFusion only supported adding one LUT per clip. In version 3.1, this restriction has been removed, and users can now add multiple LUTs to a clip.

In addition to the ability to add multiple LUTs, version 1.3 makes it possible to add multiple effects, even multiple instances of the same effect. You can also rearrange the order of the LUTs and effects in effects list.

Improved drag and drop and timeline lasso selection

LumaFusion 3.1 now features a visual lasso for selecting items, making timeline selection easier than before. There’s also improved drag and drop that allows you to simply drag an item like a photo, video, title, or transition and drop it to the timeline naturally without any pauses.

Reorder audio effects

A new drag handle will now appear in the audio effects lists when adding more than one effect. With the ability to change the order of the effects, users gain more control over critical audio adjustments.

Automated Project Backups

Automated project backup management now stores current backups, plus one per day for the last 30 days, and one per month for prior months.

New Import and Restore feature

Found directly within the Project Manager interface, LumaFusion 3.1 makes it easy to find and restore automatic project backups.

Expanded keyboard shortcut support

Lots of additional keyboard shortcuts have been added to LumaFusion 3.1, speeding up editing for power users. New shortcuts are available for importing media, select and deselect all items in the browser, adding transitions, viewing clip info, zoom (!) in and out, switching to the full screen viewer, adding markers, hiding and muting tracks, and switching between any of the six available UI layouts.

Conclusion

One of the biggest missing features in the LumaFusion workflow up until now was the availability of scopes. Now that LumaTouch has added this feature, it’s become an even more compelling option for both in-studio and on-the-go workflows pro workflows.

In addition to all of the aforementioned features, LumaTouch has made improvements to the UI styling, added support for personal and team folders with DropBox accounts that have Team Spaces enabled, improved clip representation on the timeline, along with dozens of additional smaller improvements.

If you already own LumaFusion, version 3.1 is a free update that’s available now on the App Store. LumaFusion is built with the touch screen iPad and iPhone interface in mind, but is also compatible with Apple Silicon-enabled Macs. New customers can purchase LumaFusion today for $29.99, and to be honest, I simply can’t recommend it enough.

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