This morning, Skylum introduced Luminar Neo, a new creative image editor which empowers visual storytellers to bring their boldest ideas to life. Luminar Neo builds upon the unique, purpose-driven, AI editing technologies for which Skylum has become known for.
“As the latest member of the Luminar family, we designed Luminar Neo to allow artists to take on more challenging image creation work and achieve results which often seem unattainable,” said Dima Sytnik, co-founder and CPO of Skylum.
Luminar Neo is meant to be an application that offers more customizability, and that builds upon the company’s LuminarAI software. The two programs will be sold side-by-side.
Innovative technologies that combine AI with human control
Luminar Neo will ship with several new features, including image layers, background replacement, relighting options, dust removal and more. The software analyzes each image to recognize the depth of the scene and its contents, which allows for precise control.
And best yet — all editing steps remain editable for complete control over the final image.
Layers
After being removed from LuminarAI, layers will see a comeback with Luminar Neo, helping creatives to further the boundaries of their photographs. Layers will also make adding things like watermarks easier than ever. With layers, you can apply any tool and any mask to any layer — in any order — multiple times.
Background replacement
Building upon the AI masking capabilities first introduced in Luminar 4, Luminar Neo allows for full background replacement of portrait photos. Users will be able to quickly replace a background with an entirely new image without having to manually mask out their subject.
Relight
A new relight feature will enable photographers to fix poor or backlit exposures with just a few clicks.
Dust removal
Utilizing artificial intelligence, Luminar Neo can automatically remove dust spots from your image. No more clicking and cloning out each dust spot!
Remove power lines
Perfect for architecture photographers, Luminar Neo will come with a tool that will help to automatically remove power lines in an image.
Mobile image management
Luminar Neo will also come with a companion mobile app. This will make it easy to add pictures captured on a mobile device to your Luminar catalog. Once edited, results can be sent back to the mobile device for easy social sharing or viewing on-the-go.
All-new editing engine for high performance
An all-new editing engine drives Luminar Neo, making it possible to apply multiple tools to an image without significant performance loss. The software allows for complex layering of several RAW images. Additionally, the new Luminar engine enables Skylum to further optimize and refine the entire image-processing pipeline.
While built atop an efficient new engine, Luminar Neo inherits the proven, AI-driven technologies which made LuminarAI a ground-breaking image editor.
“The goal of Luminar has always been to help everyone create images they truly love. With Luminar Neo, we empower even more artists and photographers to achieve their full creative vision,” said Ivan Kutanin, CEO of Skylum. “With new tools and a flexible editing workflow, they’ll find powerful new ways to create while being inspired to explore new ways to do so. We can’t wait to see what our creative community comes up with.”
Luminar Neo will continue to work as both a standalone application and a plugin for Lightroom Classic, Photoshop and Photos for Mac. Microsoft has also previously shown off an integration with Luminar, but no official announcement has been made about what that entails.
Our take on Luminar Neo vs. LuminarAI
The Skylum team has made it clear that Luminar Neo and LuminarAI are meant for different audiences. LuminarAI will continue to be sold and supported, but it will not obtain new editing tools. It will, however, obtain updates for OS compatibility, new camera support and other optimizations.
Luminar Neo is meant for photographers and creatives of all levels, and for those who want full control and options with their editing. LuminarAI, on the other hand, is meant for entry-level photographers and amateurs in photo editing, who enjoy a template-based workflow.
From what we can tell, Luminar Neo seems to be going after the audience left behind with Luminar 4. It is putting its focus on professionals and tech-driven creatives who like to push boundaries. Think of Luminar Neo as a sort of replacement for Luminar 4.
Pricing and availability
Luminar Neo will ship this winter, but pre-orders are currently available. Early bird pricing is available until September 19, 2021, starting at $54. Or, take advantage of a LuminarAI + Luminar Neo bundle so you can get started right away, starting at $83.
Current Skylum customers can get Luminar Neo starting at $34, or the LuminarAI + Luminar Neo bundle starting at $63.
Create the photos you imagined, with Luminar Neo
Your photos are precious. That’s why Luminar Neo puts them in the spotlight. Check out the latest in AI photo editing, with tools to make your workflow faster and allowing you to bring your unique ideas to life!
So as an owner of Luminar AI why would I buy Neo? As it is I only use Luminar for special things that I can’t do easily in LR or PS. If you talk to Skylum, what would get me to use their software more is if they would roll Aurora and Luminar, and I suppose Neo into one program. Its annoying to go from LR to Aurora for HDR, then back to LR, then to Luminar; which is why I don’t do it unless I know there is something specific I want to do like sky replacement. If they… Read more »
Luminar Neo expands upon Luminar AI’s AI toolset, adding layers, power line removal, a flashlight tool, background replacement and more. These features will NOT be in Luminar AI. But in addition to that, Luminar Neo should give you more control, whereas Luminar AI is centered around the template experience.
I totally agree about rolling Aurora into Luminar … that would be a HUGE help for me too!
The interface for Luminar Neo has not been shown yet. Hopefully we’ll get details and some screenshots about that soon.
It looks to me like Neo will be more powerful and have more creative possibilities, while still carrying over most (if not all) Luminar AI functionality. Agree with you on adding Aurora HDR merge functionality to Luminar Neo.
“Has Skylum continued the trend of making the Luminar interface even worse?”
I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Luminar AI just got the 2021 Red Dot award for outstanding user interface design. ;-)
I happen to just purchased Luminar a couple of days ago and to my surprise got an email from skylum a couple of hours ago saying i’ll get it for free.
How are images printed
We haven’t heard anything yet in regard to how printing is handled in Luminar Neo, or if it is going to be different from Luminar AI in that respect.
Most manufacturers (including Adobe with Lightroom) point you to use the software that comes with your printer. It’s ALWAYS better than what a company who doesn’t make the printers can make. Just export a 16-bit TIFF and then open the image in th printer software and let it rip.
Disappointed to see that Neo is just another tool to fine tune photos. What Skylum really needs is a product like Prisma or Becasso, iPhone apps that allow you to turn your photos into digital art. I am finding less people wanting to purchase a photo of a perfect sunset over the mountains and more that want a blend of photography and digital painting that creates more bold, colorful, impressionistic images. While there are plenty of those apps for my phone, I haven’t found any for my PC.
Tom – I’d check out the Nik Collection. That’s probably the closest thing to what you’re describing for desktop computers!
I’m not dumping any more cash into plugins that won’t run natively on an M1 mac. Running older versions of Photoshop or running things under Rosetta isn’t a solution. Until they start developing/coding their apps to take advantage of the M1 chip, I’m out.
We checked with Skylum. Luminar AI was recently updated to natively run on an M1 Mac. Luminar Neo WILL run natively on an M1 Mac as well.
They should have just rolled it into one.
It feels like a money grab. I am presently a luminar customer, but I don’t feel comfortable staying one now. They sent out polls as to what features their customers would like to see expanded into ai. They basically used those for this new software instead.
While I see your point, Luminar AI and Luminar Neo are targeting different audiences. Luminar AI is made for those who want a jumping off point, with things like templates. Luminar Neo is going to be more of what people missed with Luminar 4 — more control, layers, etc.
Agree with previous poster that this feels like a money grab. The more I look back on all the various versions of Luminar I’ve purchased over the years, the whole product seems like a money grab.
I agree with rolling these into one – even if the decision is to have tiered access to features – i.e. – basic, premium, pro. Use one interface and allow users to choose what features they are willing to pay for instead of confusing the heck out of ’em with different products
Companies stick with brand names that work
ADOBE
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop Elements
Adobe Photoshop Mix
Adobe Photoshop Fix
Adobe Photoshop Camera Photo Filters
Adobe Photoshop Express
Adobe Photroshop Touch
Adobe Photoshop Eazel
Adobe Photoshop Color Lava
Adobe Photoshop Nav
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic
Adobe Lightroom for iPad
APPLE
iPod Touch
iPod Classic
iPod Mini
iPod Nano
iPod Shuffle.
I ordered Neo from the Luminar site, how do I get the Photofocus bonus bundle?
If you go to buyluminar.com, you’ll see a pink bar toward the top of the page with a button that says “Once you’ve preordered, click here to get started.” Click that, enter your email address, and we’ll send you the bundle of bonuses once Luminar Neo ships!
I have Luminar 2018 – am I a current customer? If so, How do I apply the discount to my order?
Go here – link
Click in upper-right corner to VALIDATE YOUR SPECIAL PRICE
I hope Neo is better than 4 as my 4 keeps freezing, it takes about 90 seconds to save one JPEG with on layer using an 7i laptop, 500SSD and 16gb mem, to load up library existing or new. forget it as you can go and make coffee.
Looks like the new engine will be. They’ve been building it for a good while and early things look good.