Luminar Neo

Perform classic photo fixes or get creative in a few clicks

- George Cairns

> £59 > FROM Skylum, skylum.com > NEEDS macOS 10.14.6 or higher

Luminar Neo's Al tools work well to speed up what would otherwise be tedious, time-consuming tasks

The newly released Luminar Neo follows on the heels of its sister app – Luminar AI. The latter uses artificial intelligence (or machine learning) and one-click templates to help you perform a range of image adjustments quickly and easily. Luminar Neo doesn’t replace Luminar AI, its just targeted at image editors and photo fixers who want more control over a wider range of high-end tools (though it also offers AI assistance). Luminar Neo is a standalone app, though it does slot nicely into your existing workflows as a plug-in for the Photos app (and it can also be accessed via Photoshop and Lightroom Classic).

Use brush-based tools and masks to fine-tune the Al created bokeh in a portrait.

Luminar Neo is particularly useful if you prefer to work with uncompressed Raw files (which have more info about a scene’s colours and tones). In Photoshop you have to process a Raw file’s colours, tones and sharpness in the Camera Raw editor before bringing it into the main workspace. Then you can use layer-based tools to enhance a copy of the original Raw shot. Luminar Neo also enables you to make creative adjustments using layers but you can also access the original Raw file at the bottom of the layer stack at any time and tweak its original colour and tones. This enables you to make more of your Raw format file than you can in Photoshop. We’re also happy to see that Neo supports raw DNG files from the latest iPhone models.

Clever assistance