Luminar Neo Review

An advanced photo editor with a collection of Instagram-friendly, simple-to-use tools that enable beginners to add the final touches to their photographs without needing to understand luminance from levels, Luminar AI has given birth to Luminar Neo. Luminar Neo builds on the early promise of Luminar AI and is currently available in the full-release form. This Luminar Neo Review 2023 will cover the latest updates of Skylum’s photo editing software which is available for Mac and Windows.

What is Luminar Neo?

Luminar Neo is a Windows and macOS AI-powered photo editing software. Luminar Neo, which will be released on February 17th, 2022, will replace Luminar 4 and Luminar AI.
Luminar Neo is not like other photo editing apps. Although Luminar Neo includes traditional tools like white balance and tone curves, these adjustments have been replaced by tools like Sky Enhancer, Golden Hour Glow, and Skin AI. As a result, all you have to do to apply an effect is drag an Effect slider.

As a result, Luminar Neo allows you to expertly edit a photo even if you have no experience with photo editing. As a result, I believe Luminar Neo is the best photo editor for beginners.

The main selling point of this tool is that it simplifies modifications that would have required multiple sliders in Lightroom or Photoshop prior. For instance, Portrait Bokeh AI adds a realistic blur to the background with a slider, while Sky AI lets you click to replace the skies in any image. Similar modifications would require a lot more steps and Photoshop skills to complete in Photoshop.

A helpful analogy for Luminar Neo is an editing application that makes expert tweaks available to everyone. Regardless of your skill level, you can still achieve great results without needing to spend months or years trying to become an expert in the program.

And if you’ve ever tried learning Photoshop, you’ll know what I mean.

Who Is Luminar Neo For?

Let’s be very clear before you waste your time reading this essay only to find out this program isn’t true for you.

Luminar Neo Is For:

• Photographers who are willing to relinquish some control in exchange for a more streamlined editing method
• Beginners and intermediate users who find tools like Lightroom, Photoshop, or Capture One overwhelming.
• Advanced photographers seek a quicker method to complete hard tasks like basic object removal, sky replacements, and skin retouching.

Luminar Neo Is Not For:

• Photographers who believe their current editing software meets all of their needs.
• Don’t care about creative editing effects such as overlays or sky replacements.

Finally, Luminar Neo is an excellent program to have if you want to be more creative with your photo editing while also having tools to help you along the way. However, if you don’t need much more from your current editing program, you won’t be blown away by what Luminar Neo has to offer.

As someone who uses Luminar Neo as a Lightroom and Photoshop plugin, I find it to be a useful supplement to what the other programs lack. That way, I can have the best of both worlds while also streamlining certain steps in my editing process.

Luminar Neo Review

In a variety of its tools, Luminar Neo makes use of the most recent AI technology from Skylum to either automatically enhance your photographs or make it simpler for you to do it manually. There’s no doubting its power to turn ordinary images into more dramatic, spectacular, and “idealized” versions of reality, regardless of the stunning, changeable, or occasionally meaningless effects. However, its frequent upgrades, complex packages, extensions, and premium add-ons don’t provide users with a lot of reasons for long-term confidence.

Luminar Neo Key Features

There are three modes in Luminar Neo: Catalog, where you can browse your photographs; Presets, where you can edit them with built-in tools; and Edit. In the latter, there are four sections (Essentials, Creative, Portrait, and Professional).

They provide all the fundamental picture editing features you might anticipate finding in expensive software designed for non-professionals. You can utilize layers, crop your photos, adjust the exposure, saturation, smart contrast, highlights, shadows, blacks & whites, curves, color balance, contrast, sharpness, noise reduction, optics, and pretty much all the standard photo editing features.

This section of the Luminar Neo review will go over Neo’s main features. These are some examples.

• Layers
• Sky AI
• Relight AI
• Mask AI
• Portrait Bokeh AI
• Portrait Background Removal
• Face AI
• Skin AI
• Body AI

Sky AI Sky Replacement

You can take a photo, take out the sky, and replace it with a different sky using Sky AI while relighting the landscape to fit. Sky Replacement is nothing new, but Luminar Neo has simplified what was once a difficult procedure into a few simple clicks. Best of all, it’s enjoyable and extremely functional.

Relight AI

You can separately change the foreground and background lighting in your picture using Relight AI. This method of portrait correction for backlighting is effective.

Mask AI

Mask AI is an automated masking tool made to spare you from the tiresome task of manual brushing and selection. Once your subject has been masked, you can make edits that only affect the masked area of the image while leaving the rest of it alone.

Portrait Background Removal

As the name implies, Portrait Background Removal is a one-click solution for eliminating the background of your subject. This is helpful if you want to add a new background or utilize a person without a background in a visual, such as a thumbnail for a video on YouTube.

Face AI

With Face AI, you can easily redden your lips, whiten your teeth, get rid of eye bags, and much more by merely sliding a mouse-controlled slider. The Face Light adjustment is excellent for overcoming bad lighting and giving your subject a subtle glow.

Body AI

The physique and waistline of your subject can be stretched or compressed with Body AI in Luminar Neo. Even while it is simple to be critical of such features, they do function and have uses beyond mere vanities, such as reducing the distortion caused by weight-adding wide-angle lenses.

Skin AI

In essence, skin AI is what we once referred to as airbrushing. However, in Luminar Neo, it is only a slider. To even out and smooth out the skin of your subject, simply move the slider to the right.

Additionally, there is a Shine Removal tool that does just that as well as an AI program for automatic Skin Defects Removal that is worth trying despite having mixed results.

Portrait Bokeh AI

Your pictures and selfies will have background blur, or bokeh, thanks to Portrait Bokeh AI in Luminar Neo. The best part is that you can change factors like depth, blur strength, and specular highlight brightness.

As a result, Portrait Bokeh AI, one of Luminar Neo’s best features, is a terrific method to give your smartphone selfie a blur effect that costs several thousand dollars.

Luminar Neo Review | Performance

When testing on Windows 10, several of the AI tools still caused my graphics card fan to spin up, and it sometimes takes some time for an image to update after an alteration. I love to see some sort of processing indication as Lightroom does.

I also installed Luminar on an M2-powered MacBook Air to test how it worked there because it was originally designed as a macOS photo-editing program. Advantageously, the AI is carried out locally rather than in the cloud. Since memory cards cannot be imported, this is not a performance factor. Not all apps that perform high-level AI computing on big media files are as stable as this one.

Luminar Neo Price

A one-year subscription to Luminar Neo costs $59, or $79 for lifetime access. The main distinction between lifetime access and subscription access is that lifetime access only includes performance, stability, and Mask AI updates while subscription access grants you access to all future upgrades and add-ons.

Neo can be used on one or two computers depending on the number of “seats” you select. Purchase Luminar Neo for a single transaction with two seats.

The Extensions Pack, additional presets, and other plans are also available. Since the deals are subject to change at any time, press the button below to see what is now being offered.

Is Luminar Neo any Good?

Luminar Neo is a feature-rich, incredibly user-friendly, and reasonably-priced program. As a result, I believe Luminar Neo to be the ideal photo editor for amateurs and experienced users who are pressed for time.

The speed of Luminar Neo is its sole possible drawback. Luminar Neo has always seemed fast enough to me, so I say potential. Don’t believe me? Download Luminar Neo for free and see for yourself.

Try Luminar Neo for free

A 7-day free trial of the program is available if you’re still unsure about whether Luminar Neo is the correct choice for you. I’d strongly advise trying it out so you can verify all I’ve said here.

Luminar Neo Review: final thoughts

The finest photo editor available now for beginners is Luminar Neo. Additionally, Luminar Neo contains sufficient entertaining and time-saving capabilities to satisfy even the most experienced picture editor.

In fact, it can be challenging to switch back to manual brushing and tone curves once you’ve gotten used to Luminar Neo’s simple style of photo editing. This makes sense in many ways. After all, everyone is seeking an effect, and unlike conventional photo editors, Luminar Neo starts rather than ends there.