Luminar AI Review Is is a real Adobe Lightroom Killer?
I had been using Luminar for a while, at first I think the program user interface is strangle, but mainly because I am using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop a lot. But after using Luminar 2018 and Luminar 4, I really find Luminar is a best option or even partner of Adobe Products, because it produce automatic image analysis and editing functions.
We all knew Photoshop is powerful from day one, but mastering photoshop is difficult, most of the photographer only use 10% of the tools in the software. For me, I mostly use camera raw plugin to open and adjust the raw file and also use healing brush to remove some of the undesirable dust spots in photos.
So, what’s wrong with photoshop? For my opinion. If you are a retoucher and powerful enough to use different tools in photoshop, Photoshop can do all your need. But the truth is, not everyone are photoshop master, you need to try a lot of setting and undo dozen of times to make an image perfect in photoshop.
There is the problem!
We don’t have time to learn and mastering all the tools in photoshop, so that’s why we need some automation of image editing which currently Adobe software did not provide.
So let’s talk about what I had learnt in Luminar AI.
Luminar AI is the latest version of Luminar, it features a new design user interface , faster and more accurate AI object recognition for improved editing when you use AI-powered tools or templates.
Perhaps the most advance features is 3D depth, it can reconstruction the image by determining the placement of objects leads to better results when refining image depth of field or adjusting the whole atmosphere of an image.
Although Luminar AI provide different tool for you to retouch image , for example , replace the sky, add a sun-ray, lighting the shadow area from software and also create a special atmosphere using the tool provided.
I think Luminar AI is best to use landscape image, with its 3D depth and AI technology. It is easy to give a professional scenery image though a few clicks.
Luminar AI is easy to use. The interface is straightforward from the Catalog > Templates > Edit > Export
The Luminar AI catalog can display both folders on your computer and custom albums you create yourself. It can also show recently added and recently edited photos, and organize photos by date. But it doesn’t offer ratings or color labels or even any search tools. Skylum simply offers ‘flag’ ratings — Favorite, Rejected, Unmarked — in a bold and deliberate decision to strip away all unnecessary complication.
Another thing you won’t find is Layers. These were a welcome and useful bonus in Luminar 4, but they have been removed in Luminar AI.
This means that if you want to mask effects, you can no longer do it with adjustment layers. You can mask almost all the filters individually, and there is a new Local Masking workspace, but it feels at least as complicated as Adjustment Layers and a little less useful.
The bigger difference is that you can no longer combine and blend different images.
All these adjustments are non-destructive, as already mentioned. What this means is that when you want to share an image you have to use the Export panel to save a processed JPEG or TIFF image — there are preset export settings here for email, messages, SmugMug, 500px or simply saving a file to disk.
Luminar AI’s results are often spectacular, particularly for sky replacement and portrait enhancement, though some of its everyday template suggestions are interesting without necessarily being exciting.
Download a demo of Luminar AI
