Revolutionizing Photo Editing: A Luminar Neo Review

Efficient Workflow

Skylum understands that time is precious, especially for beginners and amateurs who want to achieve great results without spending hours editing photos. Neo incorporates a streamlined workflow that enables users to process their images efficiently. From importing and organizing to applying edits and exporting the final results, the software ensures a seamless and time-saving experience. Luminar Neo simplifies the editing process, allowing us to focus on our creative vision rather than the technical aspects. With an intuitive interface and streamlined tools, we can get back to shooting. Which is what we love to do, right? 

Skylum luminar AI tools

Luminar Neo leverages the power of artificial intelligence to simplify and streamline the photo editing process. The software’s AI-driven tools are designed to assist users in enhancing their images effortlessly. Luminar Neo’s AI features make it easy for users to achieve professional-quality results by automating tasks like colour adjustments, noise reduction, sky replacement, and object removal. It’s the only photo editing software that I know of that has auto dust and spot removal.  These tools provide an excellent starting point for newcomers, allowing them to experiment and learn more about photo editing techniques.

Unlock the Power of Non-Destructive Editing

Luminar Neo provides a smooth editing workflow that doesn’t harm your original files. Users can explore their creativity without worrying about modifying the original RAW file. Let’s face it: preserving the integrity of your original images is of paramount importance.

What does this mean? When you edit a photo in Luminar Neo, each change you make is saved as a separate layer or adjustment. This way, your original image remains unchanged and can be easily modified in the future.

With Luminar Neo’s non-destructive editing, you can confidently explore different creative possibilities without the fear of irreversibly altering your photos. You can easily adjust exposure, fine-tune colours, and apply artistic effects. All modifications can be easily tweaked or reversed during the editing process. Those wanting to try out different styles benefit from this flexibility.

The non-destructive nature of Luminar Neo also brings efficiency to your workflow. It allows you to make multiple edits and adjustments simultaneously, organizing them in a stack of layers or adjustments. This layer-based approach gives you full control over each individual edit, enabling you to fine-tune and adjust them independently or in combination. You can easily toggle the visibility of specific edits, modify their settings, or even remove them entirely, all while preserving the original image intact.

Advanced Editing Features

Although Luminar Neo is designed for beginners and amateurs, it also provides an array of advanced editing features for users to delve into and enhance their editing skills.

• AI-powered tools: Leverages the power of artificial intelligence to automate complex editing tasks. Achieve impressive results with just one click using AI Sky, AI Structure, and AI Skin Enhancer. These features intelligently enhance skies, details, and skin tones in your photos.
• Relight-AI: This unique feature in Luminar Neo allows you to manipulate lighting in your photos with incredible precision. You can control light sources, adjust their direction and intensity, and selectively modify areas of your image to produce impressive and lifelike lighting effects.
• Atmosphere-AI: With Atmosphere-AI, you can easily add depth and atmosphere to your photos. This advanced tool lets you enhance fog, mist, haze, and other atmospheric elements, giving your images a captivating and immersive quality.
•  Structure-AI: Neo’s Structure-AI intelligently enhances the details in your photos without causing artifacts or halos. It allows you to selectively enhance textures, fine-tune clarity, and bring out intricate details in your images, resulting in stunning, crisp, and lifelike results.
• Accent-AI: Accent-AI is a powerful feature that analyzes your image and automatically applies intelligent adjustments to enhance colours, tones, and details. It saves you time and effort by providing instant improvements to your photos while still allowing you to fine-tune the adjustments to your liking.
• Advanced masking and layers: Robust masking capabilities, allowing you to precisely target and edit specific areas of your photos. The software provides a wide range of masking tools, including brushes, gradients, and radial masks, enabling you to create intricate and seamless edits. Additionally, Neo supports layer-based editing, giving you complete control over individual adjustments and their blending modes.
•  Customizable workspaces: Create custom workspaces tailored to your specific editing needs. You can arrange and save your favourite tools and filters, create personalized layouts, and streamline your editing workflow for maximum efficiency.
• Enhanced retouching tools: Luminar Neo offers advanced retouching capabilities, including AI-powered portrait enhancement, removing blemishes, smoothing skin, and improving facial features. These tools enable you to achieve professional-level retouching with ease, whether you’re working on portraits or other types of photographs.
• AI Background Removal: The ultimate AI tool for stunningly precise and quick background removal. With Luminar Neo, you can effortlessly isolate subjects, enhance images, and achieve professional results in seconds. Say goodbye to tedious manual selections.

These advanced editing features provide us with powerful tools to unleash our creativity. Whether you’re a beginner or hard-core enthusiast, Luminar Neo offers a comprehensive suite of advanced editing capabilities that will elevate your photography.

1 Click Luminar Neo Presets

Presets in Luminar Neo are pre-configured sets of editing adjustments, allowing you to apply a style or look with a single click. These presets serve as a starting point, saving you time or providing you with creative inspiration. There is a wide range of presets, covering various genres of photography, allowing you to quickly experiment and view different styles. They give you a head start in creating stunning photos. With just one click, you can transform your photos into works of art. 

Luminar Neo offers a wide array of AI presets that span across different genres. No matter if you’re photographing stunning landscapes, capturing the true essence of portraits, or documenting the vibrant energy of street photography, you’ll discover templates specially designed to meet your requirements. The presets have been crafted by industry experts and renowned photographers, guaranteeing professional-level results with minimal effort.

One of the greatest advantages of presets is their versatility. While they offer ready-to-use adjustments, they also serve as a canvas for your imagination. Luminar Neo allows you to customize and fine-tune to match your unique style and vision. Easily adjust the intensity of effects, fine-tune colours, and personalize each preset to create a look that truly represents you. The possibilities are endless.

In addition to their creative potential, presets are designed with user-friendliness in mind. The intuitive interface and friendly controls ensure that even beginners can navigate the software with ease. You’ll find yourself seamlessly applying presets, making adjustments, and witnessing your photos transform in real-time.

Artificial Intelligence Sky Enhancer

Skylum changed the photo world with their groundbreaking Sky Replacement feature. Skylum was the first to introduce this game-changing feature, allowing photographers to easily replace dull boring skies. Luminar Neo makes sky replacement easy and intuitive. Its AI technology integrates the newly selected sky, creating a flawless and natural-looking photo.

You have a wide variety of top-notch sky presets that are available in their library, plus you can add your own. Select from crystal clear blue skies to storm clouds and breathtaking sunsets. By using these presets, you can effortlessly change the mood of your photos. But wait, there’s more: fine-tune the sky by adjusting positioning, scaling, rotation, and blending parameters, ensuring a flawless swap. It will save you hours of process time and allow you to be more creative. 

Unlock The Beauty with Portrait Enhancement Tools

Luminar Neo includes dedicated tools for portraits offering a variety of tools for skin retouching, teeth whitening, eye enhancement, and face sculpting. Users can achieve professional-looking portraits with flawless skin, sparkling eyes, and captivating facial features with just a few adjustments. 

•  Neo’s Portrait Enhancement tool enhances the beauty of portraits with intelligent adjustments and customizable controls.
• Advanced AI technology automatically analyzes portraits and applies enhancements for skin tones, imperfections, and natural radiance.
• The tool allows for precise retouching, including blemish removal, wrinkle reduction, and facial feature adjustments.
• User-friendly interface makes it easy to deliver professional-quality results.
• Save time with automated enhancements while maintaining a natural and realistic appearance.

Luminar Neo Review: The Power of Extensions

The popularity of Luminar Neo’s extensions provides users with specialized tools that improve their workflow and unleash their creative potential. Here are some sought-after extensions in Luminar Neo, each providing unique capabilities:

• The HDR Merge: allows photographers to merge different exposures of a scene. It keeps the details from the bright and dark areas, creating impressive high dynamic range images. One of my favourites.
• Focus Stacking: This extension helps photographers combine multiple images with different focus points to create a final image with a clear and sharp focus throughout the entire depth of field.
•  Neo Upscale: The Upscale extension utilizes advanced algorithms to enhance image resolution, allowing photographers to enlarge their photos while maintaining impressive levels of detail and sharpness. This extension is particularly useful when printing large-format images or showcasing fine details.
• Noiseless AI: The Noiseless extension effectively reduces noise in photographs, resulting in cleaner and smoother images. By intelligently analyzing and removing unwanted noise, photographers can achieve higher-quality results, especially in low-light or high-ISO situations.
• SuperSharp AI: The SuperSharp extension takes image sharpening to the next level, allowing photographers to enhance the crispness and clarity of their images with precision. This extension brings out fine details and enhances overall sharpness, ensuring stunningly clear and impactful results.
• Magic Light: Adds a touch of enchantment to photographs by enhancing or altering lighting effects. This extension helps photographers bring their vision to life by creating a soft and dreamy glow or intensifying the drama with dynamic lighting.
• Luminar Neo Panorama stitching software offers hassle-free panorama creation, even for beginners. Its intuitive interface, AI-powered editing, and compatibility with various devices make it a top choice for stunning, wide-angle photography.

These extensions expand the capabilities of Luminar Neo, offering photographers specialized tools to achieve their desired effects and optimize their workflow. By integrating these extensions into their editing process, photographers can elevate their work to new heights, producing captivating visuals with enhanced efficiency.

More extensions are added all the time; check back often as I will be updating the list and Skylum releases new extensions. 

Integration with Photoshop and other software

Seamlessly integrates with other popular photo editing software like photoshop and lightroom. Enabling users to utilize its powerful tools alongside their existing workflow. You can start editing in lightroom or photoshop and then transfer to Luminar Neo for specific improvements. The software makes it easy to integrate and streamline your post-processing tasks. This integration capability provides the flexibility to incorporate Luminar Neo into your preferred editing workflow without disruptions.

Luminar Neo Trial

Skylum offers a trial version of Luminar Neo, allowing users to experience the software’s capabilities before purchasing. The trial version lets you try out most features and tools of the software to learn how it works. The trial period is a great way to assess whether Luminar Neo meets your editing needs, enabling you to make an informed decision.

Community and Learning Resources

Skylum supports a community for Luminar Neo, providing resources and tutorials to help users learn and use the software effectively. Skylum provides video tutorials, webinars, and an online user community where users can connect, share knowledge, and seek guidance. This commitment to education and community engagement is highly beneficial for beginners and amateurs looking to grow their skills and gain inspiration.

Cross-Platform Support

Luminar Neo is available for macOS and Windows operating systems, making it accessible to many users. Whether you’re using a Mac or a PC, you can enjoy the same user-friendly interface, AI-powered tools, and advanced editing features offered by Luminar Neo. This cross-platform compatibility ensures photographers can benefit from the software’s capabilities and enhance their images effortlessly, regardless of their preferred operating system.

Ongoing Software Updates and Improvements

Skylum is committed to continuously improving Luminar Neo by releasing regular software updates. These updates bring new features, enhancements, and bug fixes to ensure users have access to the latest advancements in photo editing technology. By keeping the software up to date, Skylum demonstrates its dedication to providing a high-quality and evolving platform that meets the needs of its users.

Final Thoughts 

Skylum’s Luminar Neo is revolutionizing photo editing with its intuitive interface, advanced AI technology, and powerful editing features. The software caters to beginners and aspiring photographers, offering a user-friendly platform to enhance their images effortlessly. With Luminar Neo, newcomers to photo editing can easily learn and master the tools, thanks to its clean interface and simplified workflow. It provides a range of AI-powered tools, presets, and extensions that allow beginners to achieve professional-looking results while exploring their creativity.  Most importantly, Neo makes editing easy and fun.