Luminar Neo Announced, A New AI-powered Photo Editor, Preorder Open With Huge Discount

Skylum announced a new AI (Artificial Intelligence) powered photo editing software, Luminar Neo. It will ship in Winter 2021 but you can already preorder it with a substantial discount. If you upgrade from Luminar AI or Aurora HDR you’ll save even more.

Key Features of Luminar Neo:

High Performance : We designed our new Luminar engine to allow users to apply lots of different tools to an image without significant performance loss. Luminar Neo works faster than previous versions of Luminar when importing, viewing, and exporting images, and it uses less memory all around.

Innovative technologies:

  • Transform photos with new relighting options. Luminar Neo analyzes each image to recognize the depth of a scene and its subject which allows precise control over exposure and tone.
  • Remove blemishes and distracting elements. Luminar Neo automatically recognizes and removes artifacts caused by a dirty camera sensor or lens. New tools make removing unwanted background elements easier than ever before.
  • Powerful background replacement. Take full control of the background for portrait photos by quickly replacing it with an all-new image or background.
  • Round-trip mobile image management. Our new companion mobile app makes it simple to add pictures captured on a mobile device to your Luminar Catalog. Once edited in Luminar Neo, results can be sent back to the mobile device for easy social sharing or viewing on the go.
  • Precise control with flexible editing:
    Smart, AI-based masking easily isolates elements in individual images.
    Add numerous images as layers to create entirely new art.
    Apply any tool and any mask … to any layer, in any order, multiple times.
    Use creative blending modes, guided by AI, to achieve clean, precise, composite images.
luminar neo

Improved Ease of Use:

  • Users can save their photos as well as presets for easy reuse.
    All editing steps remain editable for complete control over the final image.
    With a minimalist user interface, the whole process is enjoyable and easy.

The Early Bird Pre-order starts tomorrow! Your audience will be able to get Luminar Neo first once it’s released this winter. The Early Bird stage is for limited time (9-19/9) and for a limited number of licences (30.000). This is the best deal for new and existing users!

  • luminar neo
  • luminar neo

The Canon EOS R3 Price For Europe Might Just Have Leaked, It’s €7299

Eos R3
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A German online retailer might just have leaked the EU price for the upcoming Canon EOS R3. Thanks Yah Ben for the tip.

The price of €7,299 appeared on the website of a German online retailer. It might well be the real price and not a placeholder as happened sometimes in the past. A price of €7,299 might mean that the US price is just below $8,000, but it seems too much to me. Is this price realistic, what do you think?

The presentation scheduled for September 14, 2021, appeared as banner on the Internet (image above). While it is not stated that it is about the Canon EOS R3, we can be rather sure it will, given all the rumors so far.

The resolution of the upcoming Canon EOS R3 is no longer a mystery. It’s 24MP, and it got more than one confirmation. Oh, and have a look how impressing the 30fps of the R3 are. We expect the announcement in Fall 2021, likely in September. Here is what we know about the EOS R3 so far:

  • 24MP backside illuminated image sensor
  • Multi-Controller & Smart Controller
  • Vari-Angle Touch Screen
  • NEW accessory shoe
  • Wifi 5GHz
  • High speed 30fps electronic shutter with AF/AE tracking + RAW shooting at this speed
  • AF down to -7.0 EV
  • 8 Stops Coordinated Control IS with Optical IS and In-Body IS
  • 4K Canon Log3​
  • Oversampling 4K
  • Internal RAW video
  • Inclusion of cars and motorbikes in AF tracking technology
  • RAW internal movie recording
  • Speedlite shooting with electronic shutter
  • The same weather sealing as the EOS-1D series
  • LP-E19 Battery
  • Dual card slot SD & CFExpress

All our EOS R3 coverage is listed here, product images are here and here. There has been some discussion about who makes the imaging sensor of the EOS R3. You can get notified when the Canon EOS R3 will be available for preorder.

canon eos r3
The upcoming Canon EOS R3

The German product description from the German retailer can be found after the break.

Click here to open the rest of the article→

Canon Patent: RF 70mm F1.8 STM Lens For EOS R System

Canon Patent
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A new Thursday, a new Canon patent. Not surprising yet another one for the RF mount. The whole thing was spotted by asobinet.com.

Canon patent application 2021-131499 (Japan) discusses optical formulas for what appears to be an RF 70mm f/1.8 STM lens for Canon’s full frame mirrorless system EOS R. From the patent literature:

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED

To provide a compact, lightweight and large-diameter optical system.

Patent Document 1 describes a double-Gauss type optical system capable of correcting various aberrations with a small number of lenses

However, the double-Gauss type optical system as disclosed in Patent Document 1 satisfactorily corrects various aberrations such as spherical aberration and curvature of field when the symmetry is broken due to miniaturization. Becomes difficult. In particular, when the optical system has a large aperture ratio, it becomes difficult to suppress sagittal flare and coma flare at an intermediate angle of view.

Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide an optical system and an image pickup apparatus having high optical performance while being compact and having a large aperture ratio.

Embodiment 1:

  • Focal length 49.57
  • F number 1.85
  • Half angle of view 23.58
  • Image height 21.64
  • Lens overall length 59.59
  • BF 25.67

Embodiment 2:

  • Focal length 70.00
  • F number 1.85
  • Half angle of view 17.17
  • Image height 21.64
  • Lens overall length 83.52
  • BF 36.62

According to asobinet, the lens discussed in the patent literature has an optical design similar to the RF 50mm F1.8 STM. Maybe it is another excellent performer at an affordable price.

More Canon patents are listed here. Some particularly interesting patent applications we think might get into production are these:

Canon Takes Over Canadian Chipmaker Redlen For $270M

Eos R With Aps-c
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As you fine and well-informed folks surely know, there is a chip shortage going on. Blame the pandemic, as usual.

Nikkei Asia reports that Canon is about to acquire the Canadian chip maker Redlen. For $270M. It’s not much about cameras but for computer tomography (CT( scanners.

Canon is developing CT scanners that reduce radiation exposure to one-tenth by leveraging Redlen technology that efficiently detects X-rays.

Redlen Technologies, created in 1999, currently employs around 200 workers. It does not disclose its annual sales. Canon has a 15% stake in the Canadian company and appears to have agreed with other shareholders to buy the remaining 85%.

The acquisition is expected to be completed this fall.

Canon would be able to make the needed chips on their own.