Luminar Neo | For Beginners AND Pros?  

I would like to use it as a plug in for Affinity Photo,but it won,t work

I am just getting into NEO as part of my Lightroom workflow and they seem to work rather well together.

Removing those powerlines a WOW moment.

Thank you! Yes - Luminar Neo is 100% stand alone or you can use it as a plug in with Lightroom Classic and Photoshop.

They aren't in Ukraine: Skylum is a software developing company that is based in Bellevue, Washington[1]. The company is most known for its photo editing software Aurora HDR and Luminar[1]. Skylum was founded as Macphun in 2008 by two gaming developers and amateur photographers, Dmitry Sytnik and Paul Muzok[1]. Initially, the company developed applications for iOS, and one of its first applications was Vintage Video Maker, which was later named Vintagio[1]. In 2009, Apple named Vintagio among Best... In 2015, Skylum released a new image noise reduction application called Noiseless[1]. Skylum has expanded its US presence with a new office in Bellevue, Washington in 2017, which is led by world-class photographers[2]. The company decided to change its name to Skylum in 2017 following the decision to develop its Mac-only software for Windows as well[1]. As of 2023, Skylum has around 150 employees[1][3] and the business location is at 1450 114th Ave Se Ste 125, Bellevue, WA 98004-6934[4].

Skylum was founded as Macphun in 2008 by two game developers and amateur photographers in Kyiv, Ukraine. Since then, Skylum has grown to be an international company. But to this day, the core development center where all major products like Luminar and Aurora HDR are created remains in Kyiv. In light of the war, we’re doing the best we can to ensure the safety of the whole Skylum team and continue to work for you as we have over the past 14 years. Our team of 130 people is now scattered around Ukraine and across the world. While it’s a challenge to keep up normal operations, the majority of the team is now working from different locations: bomb shelters, on the road, or in the homes of relatives and friends in safer locations.

Yes - Luminar Neo will do HDR merge as well. It’s a separate module though and not included in base software. You can send your edited images from LR to Luminar and back no problem. Operates like a plug in from inside PS or LR.

@@JamesParkerPhotography Thanks for getting back to me, James. If I ditch LR, are the LR catalogs still available and usable by Neo??

@@iandavis1355 No - Luminar cannot read/load the LR catalogs. However, if you quit Adobe, you are able to access the LR catalogs and export images from it (with your edits intact) forever. You just don't have access to the develop module.

Marcelo - If the one button remove power lines doesn't work as well as you need, you can try the erase tool and do just a little at a time. Make the brush just a LITTLE bigger than the width of the power line. Don't try to remove a huge width all at once (multiple lines). Hope that helps!

That didn't happen to me when I purchased my annual subscription yesterday from off their website. It was a little tricky though when downloading as it kept wanting to download it to my Photoshop, but I could never find it as a plugin in Photoshop when I opened my app. Finally I thought to go into the App Store for Apple and I saw that it had a standalone app. I downloaded it and made my annual purchase via the app and then I didn't have any issues.

Eric - I don't disagree with you at all. I do find it useful for some instances that saves me time that I would have to spend in Photoshop though. Obviously for people getting started or not a professional photographer, I think it is a decent piece of software that is a lot easier to get around in.

Yes - I saw it wasn't 100% after I went back and reviewed it. However, it did an amazing job and left very little clean up to be done. For photos where the power lines are more visible (like against a sky), it does an even better job.

Hmmm. I’m not sure as I don’t use it that way but as a plug in for specific photos. I recommend contacting Luminar support on their website.

Your edits are non-destructive while you work. You can go back at anytime and access these. However, once you export your image, it is then "baked in" to the resulting file.

Ah, thank you for your response, I use Affinity Photo atm and i can save it as an AP file and then reopen it to work on, thats why I ask.​@@JamesParkerPhotography

Yes. You can add a new background like I did in the video. As of now I do not think it allows you to cut out something from one photo and paste it into another.

No, sorry. Not at the moment.

You can easily apply presets and use the sliders - so in that sense it is easy to get started. It doesn't allow any text overlays though so I would not use it for RU-vid thumbnails.

Luminar NEO is super easy. You can apply presets and then still adjust as needed for your images. I primarily take Landscape photos and I live in the Pacific Northwest so it's generally overcast a lot and rainy, especially in the fall and winter. I do use Lightroom and even Apple's on photo editing within photos. Luminar NEO is a lot easier to use than Lightroom, but gives you more control and features than Apple provides in Photos. I take a ton of pictures as I get trigger happy LOL. But, even when I'm using a tripod, my images don't always come out super sharp, or sometimes my exposure is off. Luminar NEO has been fantastic at saving images that were not 100% correct straight out of the camera. I like it so much that I went ahead and paid for it annually vice monthly. Well worth it for this hobbyist photographer!

@@MegUSN52 You should join me on a workshop! I'm in Vancouver WA!

Luminar Neo does have a built in sharpen tool. You can also add extensions to the software (these are an extra cost and usually do specific things, like AI remove noise, or AI sharpen). No software will be able to recover extremely blurry, and some do better than others. Here's the link to the extensions: skylum.com/luminar-extensions

I am not sure as I am strictly a PC user.

I’m not aware of any codes for the plug-ins. Sorry.

Steve - you can login to your account and it should list your purchases. Or just email their support/customer service. I too have numerous software apps from them.

Have you got to have a cloud storage account to use Luminar Ai like photoshop Elements have or is it a one of payment thanks

No cloud account needed. You can buy it outright one time if you want.

@@tonyskewes9190 - no. I don't have one and don't use one.

Yes - if you watch all of my video I demonstrate it. 👍🏻

@@JamesParkerPhotography thanks for that, I cannot make my decision between Luminar neo and Lr/ photoshop. I am fairly new to this type of software.

if you notices, it removed some branches too. im not complaining, just acknowledging the limitations of the tool. for a complicated shot like that, identifying powerlines and getting close to excellent edit in the click of a button is still amazing

Yes - it did leave a few traces that I just didn’t bother to clean up. It wasn’t absolutely perfect but it was soooo much faster than anything else I’ve ever used.