I’m going to start off by saying this is a sponsored post.
A little while back representatives from Skylum, the company behind the photo editing program Luminar Neo reached out to me to explore my willingness to give their software a try. Now as anyone with an online presence knows these kind of approaches are pretty regular, and generally spam, so I always look into them pretty closely. I had photographer friends who had used the program (and loved it), the email addresses checked out and the sender had a professional profile at the company. They’d also taken the time to find my name in order to personalise the approach, its not too hard to find but the spammy approaches generally don’t bother with taking the time.
When I later met with the education director for Skylum so he could take me through the software, he explained they were keen to bring more women on as creators and we talked about the company and its goals. I came away impressed by the commitment to continuous improvement on display and excited to work with the company. A photographer himself, he explained they weren’t looking to replace the software I already use, but were hoping Luminar Neo would be able to integrate into my existing workflows.
I told him I would be honest, but fair in my assessment and we both valued authenticity.
Editing software programs are time consuming to learn, and so photographers do tend to be fairly resistant to changing because of the investment required, so I also liked that they weren’t trying to convince me to abandon what I was already doing. And I am sure I have barely scratched the surface of what Luminar Neo can do because I am still experimenting and learning how to drive it, so this might end up a series as I get better at using it! So this review will focus on some of the key features I have played with so far.
AI in Photography
As a wildlife photographer it is really important to me that my photos look natural, and I still think there are some ethical concerns regarding the creative work used to train AI. I also enter competitions with my images and its pretty much universal that you can’t use images which have used AI in the processing. As such I haven’t used AI in my processing, and the level of AI in Luminar Neo was a question mark for me.
However if this is a deterrent for you also, the AI functions in Luminar Neo are clearly indicated, and there’s many other levers you can pull to edit an image.
Since AI is not something I had used, nor was it a part of the software I was already using, it is what I focused my effort on in my testing.
First Impressions
The first thing I noticed about Luminar Neo, even just from the Youtube content was the interface. It’s clean, uncluttered and not too hard to navigate around, which will make it appealing for beginners. Now when it comes to learning software I’m your classic Googler – I have an idea about what I might want to do with a photo, and I’ll google how to do it. Naturally I often end up on Youtube.
So what I really loved about Luminar Neo was its inbuilt education tools. Along with the user guide and links to the community through the help function, by selecting ‘Extras’ from the top bar you can then select Education to find links to courses, ebooks and free short Luminar Neo tutorials on performing particular types of edits. So while you still might end up on Google looking for that specific edit you want to do to an image, the inbuilt tools provide a really good place to start.
Luminar Neo as a Photoeditor
When it comes to editing software, there’s a huge amount of personal preference amongst photographers. For some it comes down to particular functionality, others its pricing model, while for others it can be a case of old dog new tricks. It can be challenging learning new ways of doing the same things in a software program, and I’ve literally heard photographers say they just don’t want to learn a new software.
As a photoeditor, Luminar Neo has the functionality, BUT new software takes time to learn and I’m probably still only scratching the surface of it’s capability.
Often photoediting software programs can do particular things really well though, and it quickly became evident where Luminar Neo could find it’s place in my editing.
Fixing mistakes.
Every photographer makes them. Whether it’s forgetting to check our settings or results (not so long ago I ran a photography event during the biggest Aurora show of the year and was so busy helping everyone else that I didn’t check my own results. I shot the first hour not realising my camera’s star mode wasn’t nailing the focus) shooting in jpeg instead of raw, something in the frame we don’t want or even too much in the frame we don’t want – no matter how much experience we have there is always something that can go wrong with a shoot.
This is where I started seeing results in Luminar Neo that I couldn’t get in my other software, or I preferred the Luminar result.
Generative AI tools in Luminar Neo
There are three generative AI tools in Luminar Neo, two of which I have played with and will provide some example images. I haven’t played with the GenExpand tool as yet, but essentially what it does is use AI to increase the pixels of an image. This is useful if you have a small sized image that you want to print a larger size and retain quality, such as a tightly cropped image or increasing the resolution of a jpeg file.
GenErase Tool
I did play with the GenErase Tool, and this is one of the tools where I preferred the result to what my other software produced.
First of all, the original, unedited image. This was taken on one of my night shoots with a Godox ring flash on my 12-40mm lens. As you can see the branch the frog is sitting on is nicely illuminated but there is quite a bit of clutter in the background. I wanted a clean, black background. While the erase function in my other software worked, it left behind evidence of something having been removed.
Now while Luminar Neo also left some residue behind, it was a cinch to obscure this with the dodge and burn tool. While I still tweaked some of the edits in my other software because of familiarity, the finished product below demonstrates the effectiveness of the GenErase tool.
Now you’re probably thinking well that’s a pretty straightforward removal because it’s just matching to the black screen, but I’ve tried when there’s more detail too!
Now this was a shot I took documenting the release of a rehabilitated animal into the wild (a joint effort between WIRES and Taronga Zoo.) Unfortunately in the big moment it chose to exit behind some foliage so my nice clear view was obstructed, and I couldn’t get a result I was happy with to remove it.
The first image below is my original edit. Note in particular the obstruction over the face which also obstructs the foliage behind the Platypus.
Now take a look at the result through Luminar Neo on just the jpeg, not even the raw!
Now while this might not be the perfect job, I still think it’s pretty impressive given the detail of the fur it’s had to replace. I’m particularly impressed by the foliage behind, the software appears to have understood what was underneath the obstruction very well. This may have done an even better job on the unedited raw.
Points to note using GenErase
- It works best if you select small areas at a time to edit,
- Its really important each time you do another bit to hit the ‘reset selection’ button at the bottom first, otherwise it will keep reprocessing the original edit and you can end up with some funky results!
- While I didn’t test this, GenErase has a tool which automatically selects powerlines to remove.
GenExpand Tool
It was this tool that probably most intrigued me about Luminar Neo’s capabilities, as it was not a function I already had available.
Now I don’t want to go to the lengths of creating an image, or adding in things that weren’t there, but being a wildlife photographer the lens that’s usually on my camera is a 100-400mm, and there are times when something comes closer and there’s no time to change the lens over. So I can definitely think of photos where I would have liked to have more space behind the subject, even though that space is just empty sky.
So here’s the photo I wanted to work on.
Now on first glance you’d think this would be a relatively easy task given the background is basically white. However you need to bear in mind that the software will expand based on the detail it can see in the image, so when a subject is close to the edge of the image it is factored into the expansion. After my initial tests resulted in the insertion of a phantom mid-air beak, Vanelli advised me to expand the image in small amounts at a time.
While this then necessitated multiple steps, the software is fairly speedy so it doesn’t take a huge amount of time.
Rather than share a finished product to compare, I’m going to share the in between one so as to show the realistic result. The below image has used GenExpand to create more space around the subjects in small increments. As you can see its not perfect, and it shows the challenges with this tool when the subject is sitting right on the edge of the frame. However, I also think it would be a fairly easy task to do a dodge and burn to correct this because the background is essentially white. This might not be an ability you have with a more intricate background. You’ll also notice in the bottom left the software hasn’t quite known what to do with continuing the branches. I think this is a tool that can work well, but for particular kinds of images.
If you don’t object to the addition of elements that you didn’t capture, in some cases you could use Luminar Neo’s sky tool to switch out the sky, which would then conceal the additional elements in the expanded image. I did this on my initial edit and the substitution was quite effective.
Points to note using GenExpand
- Expand the edges in small increments at a time
- Results may require further editing
- May not work for photos with a more complex background to the subject
Supersharp Tool
There is one other tool I want to highlight from my initial testing and that is the Supersharp tool.
Generally a sharpening tool is useful for applying those tweaks or when the focus point of the image isn’t as sharp as you would likely to be. I usually wouldn’t even bother to attempt to salvage a completely out of focus image.
As I mentioned earlier, not so long ago there was a large geostorm which resulted in a spectacular aurora in the Blue Mountains. Naturally I was there with the camera at the ready, but because I was also running an event and helping a lot of people at the time I wasn’t checking my images, instead just pressing the button and trusting the camera to do its thing.
A word of advice – don’t trust the camera to do its thing!
Imagine my dismay when I put the card in the computer to find I had shot about the first hour of the show unfocused.
Since I was testing Luminar Neo at the time I figured I may as well see what their software could do, not expecting much because as I said, I wouldn’t even normally bother trying to save it.
So, embarrassingly, here is the original, unedited image.
What was even more annoying to me was this was the first time I had captured the picket fences phenomenon so I was motivated to try and see if there was any saving the image.
So here is what I was able to do in Luminar Neo applying the Supersharp tool. Note that further editing tweaks were also performed outside of Luminar Neo due to familiarity.
Now it wont be an award winning image and thats ok, but I was pretty impressed with the job it was able to do at pulling some of that detail into focus.
Points to note using Supersharp
- Always run any noise removal first, or sharpening will emphasise it.
Final Thoughts
As I mentioned initially, I am yet to really invest the time into learning the standard photo editing tools available in Luminar Neo, and as such have not addressed them in these comments.
My objective was to understand if and how I could integrate Luminar into my existing workflows, and I think it became evident that it will be the resource I turn to to fix the things that have gone wrong in a photo.
Also important to note that when integrating Luminar into workflows that also includes other software, Luminar was unable to read the output from these programs. So any editing workflows will need to be put through Luminar first. Luminar exports to a .tiff file which I had no problems opening in other programs.
If you’re interested in checking out more about how Luminar can integrate into your workflows, check it out to learn more!