Skylum announces the availability of its new photo editor. Based on artificial intelligence, Luminar Neo is easy to use.
Known for its Luminar 4 or Luminar AI solutions, Skylum enjoys a certain reputation in the world of photography. Last September, the editor presented Luminar Neo with the ambition to titillate the essential Photoshop. A few months later and as promised by Skylum, its new photo editor is now available. Called Luminar Neo, it is once again based on artificial intelligence and is intended for creative professionals in search of simplicity.
The presence of AI is there to assist users in their tasks. As such, Luminar Neo puts several AI technologies “unique on the market” to extol the merits of his latest solution. “There is a fine line between the captured photo and the one you imagined. Often the details make the difference. With Luminar Neo, we’ve built an editor designed to help you create the photo you envisioned.”, explains Ivan Kutanin, CEO of Skylum. This promise is materialized by the presence of a tool capable of analyzing your photos in order to offer several functions.
New AI-powered features
The first, called RelightAI, is designed to build “a detailed 3D map of the 2D image to provide fast and targeted scene lighting control”. Thus, it becomes possible to adjust lighting and color warmth independently for distant and near objects within the same scene. The function also provides “easy” correction of portraits when the subject in the foreground is underexposed.
Skylum also highlights the possibility of isolating “problem areas” to correct them, without touching the rest of the image. The editor does not stop there and offers an AI-assisted “Dusting” tool. The latter will automatically identify and remove small defects from each photo, such as traces of dust. As for the “Line removal” tool, it uses AI to identify and remove “automatically and effortlessly” electric cables in landscape photographs. The objective is to have an image free of any parasitic element.
Like a Photoshop, the layers are also on the program to combine different images and create compositions. There are also presets allowing you to apply various modifications to an image. Once again, artificial intelligence is not far to assist the user.
Among the other tools, there are also features for working on portraits. Skylum also plans to add functionality via the release of a free update. These are background removal and AIMask for advanced editing.
Skylum promises performance gains
On the performance side, Luminar Neo relies on a new engine to guarantee significant gains over Luminar AI. Users can expect the following performance gains:
- Under macOS:
- Exporting images now 86% faster
- Effect transition time reduced by 35%
- Time to switch from Catalog mode to Edit mode reduced by 15%
- Open RAW process 61% faster on average: RAF (Fuji) 75% faster, CR2 (Canon) 53% faster, NEF (Nikon) 58% faster, ARW (Sony) 51% faster
- Maximum memory consumption when exporting images reduced by 18%
- On Windows:
- Switching from Catalog mode to Edit mode now 17% faster
- Open RAW process 20% faster on average: RAF (Fuji) 24% faster, CR2 (Canon) 31% faster, NEF (Nikon) 28% faster, ARW (Sony) 42% faster
- Added a new folder to the catalog accelerated by 69%
Note that Skylum offers an optimized version of Luminar Neo for mac M1. Finally, Luminar Share is responsible for transferring photos between Luminar Neo and mobile devices.
Price and availability
Luminar Neo is now available with AI Relight, Presets and Layers functions for 79 euros as a one-time purchase. It is also possible to opt for a subscription (1 year) at 59 euros.
