LUMINAR NEO PHOTO EDITING SOFTWARE REVIEW AND PRODUCT GUIDE

Could this be the best editing software you ever use?

- Ryan Sitzman

Have you ever photoshopped a picture? The answer to that question is probably a simple "yes" or "no," but what if I asked you if you've ever "lightroomed" a picture? Or if you've ever "luminared" a picture? In the same vein, I'm sure you've probably googled an answer to a question you had, but you may not have "binged" the question.

See, while I was doing research for this article, I was also pondering how and when Photoshop became so popular and synonymous with photo editing. You can tell that a product or service has truly become ubiquitous when its name can be used as a verb. Even my computer’s spellchecker is perfectly fine with the word “photoshopped” but when it came to “lightroomed” or “luminared,” the spellchecker simply wasn’t having any of it, and it whipped out the zigzagged red lines.

At this point, you could be forgiven for thinking that I’ll be talking about a new version of Photoshop, but today we’ll actually be looking at the Luminar Neo photo editing software from Skylum. I only mention Photoshop to show how entrenched that product is in the marketplace and in consumers’ minds, and any competitor to Photoshop is bound to be facing an uphill battle.

However, I became a big fan of Luminar Neo as I tried it out, and I even purchased a copy of the software for myself after I had already finished researching for this article. That’s not something I can say for Photoshop. While I’ve only tried that program a couple times, I always found it way too bloated and confusing, and I never knew where to start. Even though I may have wanted to do something simple, such as removing powerlines from a picture or blurring an element of the background, I just couldn’t get the hang of Photoshop, and I eventually would cave and just ask my brother to do it for me.