Can Luminar Neo’s Relight^AI save your landscape photos?

I’ve seen Luminar Neo‘s Relight^AI relight portraits effectively. However, I had not seen how it might work with landscapes, particularly ones with great dynamic range.

Working with landscapes in shadow

I initially chose this photograph from Iceland because of a wide dynamic range. Well, that and I love waterfalls.

This photo of Seljalandsfoss, a famous waterfall located on the South Coast of Iceland close to the Ring Road, has a very bright sky and background and a foreground in shade.

I had seen Luminar Neo relight faces in portraits. But what would it do with landscapes?

Luminar Neo to the rescue!

The photo above has a broad dynamic range. The sky — especially the clouds and the land — was quite bright. The shadows in the dark corner in particular were quite dark. Let’s see what we can do really quickly.

Develop

I opened up the Develop tool (Edit > Develop) and made some adjustments. I dipped the highlights a little while brightening the photo. That got me a little closer to what I wanted to achieve.

Relight^AI

After that, I opened the Relight^AI tool. 

I moved the top three sliders — Brightness Near, Brightness Far and Depth. Within a matter of seconds, the photo appeared more balanced. Between the Develop and Relight^AI tools, I had made the photo look much more like how we would see it if we were there in person, preserving the bright clouds. 

Sometimes if we simply dip the exposure, white clouds can look odd or gray. But here, the clouds and bright land in the distance were preserved.

Of course, we can achieve this several different ways. We could create masks in Lightroom, Camera RAW or Photoshop and achieve the same thing. However, creating a more balanced dynamic range in just a few seconds is pretty great.

Sliding the Depth slider as a part of the Relight^AI tool, I could also adjust where the relighting was. Sometimes, being able to do something quick and easy is just what we’re looking for.