I use AfterShot Pro 3, so I won't have a COW.
I will be test driving several applications. I looked at Luminar but my first peek left a bit of a bad taste. It looked too much Macish to me.
No matter all applications will get an intense test drive, editing applications are like lenses, you date your camera but you marry your lenses. Same for applications they will be a long term commitment.
The sharpening algorithms in Luminar are also very good indeed.
In the end how well the application works will guide me decision.
Yeah, that's what counts in the end. I did make the mistake of pre-ordering Luminar Neo before it was released. I wound up uninstalling it. If you think Corel pushes selling plugins, you ain't seen nothing yet, wow was I ever bombarded with push ads to buy more and more from Luminar! And some of it was necessary to get full functionality at the time--mind you this was a couple of years ago, so I don't know the state of it now. I already had DxO and just needed something for that last bit of processing, preferably something automated that would obey my set parameter. That's when I tried Topaz Photo AI and it blew me away. For me, the combination of DxO (which is already automated) for raw processing, then a pass through Photo AI is as close to perfection as I've seen. But of course, your mileage may vary. This is just my experience.
Yep, testing is certainly going to be alot of work