A brief history

Initially released by Macphun, Luminar has been around for over ten years now. The company was started in 2008 by two Ukrainian gaming software developers. As the company grew, its focus moved to creative photography. In 2015, Macphun partnered with Trey Ratcliff and developed an HDR program named Aurora. Luminar, intended as an all-in-one alternative to Photoshop, was released in 2015.

Initially, Luminar was only available for the macOS. However, in 2018 Luminar also included a Windows PC version in its release, and it was at this time, Macphun changed its name to Skylum. Luminar Ai was released in 2021, and Luminar Neo followed in 2022. All Luminar products have featured sky replacement, with each new release improving the technology. Over the years, Luminar has won many prestigious industry awards for photo editing innovation, including four gold awards at the Digital Camera Grand Prix.

Luminar Ai

Luminar Ai was a brand new product – not an upgrade to Luminar 3 or 4. Instead, it offered an entirely new approach to photo editing powered by artificial intelligence. Luminar Ai also introduced various tools for portraits and enhanced the landscape tools. The sky replacement in Luminar Ai also received a significant upgrade.

Luminar Neo

Like Luminar Ai – Luminar Neo was a new product built from the ground up – not an upgrade. The portrait bokeh is excellent, with Neo automatically masking out your subject to isolate the background. You then adjust the sliders to your liking to create a creamy bokeh behind your subject. How much bokeh remains entirely within your control. The Relight feature is another excellent addition. Neo calculates the depth of the image and creates a 3D map. You can then adjust the light naturally from front to back.

However, the sky replacement is why I use Luminar in all its iterations. Too often, I have taken a shot that I was happy with, except for the bland sky. Returning time and time again to get the shot in perfect conditions isn’t always feasible. So sky replacement saves the day. I remember when sky replacement was in its infancy, and trying to do it in a heavily treed image almost drove me to drink! In Neo, adding your own custom skies is much easier, and the replacement sky will now also reflect onto the water, ensuring your sky replacement looks more natural.

Do You Need Both?

So, the big question is, I guess, do you need Luminar Neo if you already have Luminar 4 or Ai? Well, it depends on which one you have. Luminar 4 was notoriously (painfully) slow to load and process images, so if you didn’t upgrade from Luminar 4 to Luminar Ai, I would definitely recommend you take the plunge for Luminar Neo. If, however, you do have Luminar Ai, I would still consider Luminar Neo a good investment. This is because the loading and processing of Neo are markedly faster again. In addition, the interface is more intuitive and straightforward. Plus, there are all those lovely new features.

Neo’s rebuilt engine has much better speed and performance than Ai, and with Neo, you gain the ability to add layers, much like Photoshop. Luminar Neo also has the Remove Powerlines and Remove Dust Spots. Both work with a single click without time-consuming manual masking. There is, however, a brush option to manually remove more complicated power lines and dust spots. However, at the time of writing this, only Luminar Ai has Dodge and Burn and Clone. However, neither of those tools is a deal-breaker to me, as I have them in Photoshop.

Sale Starts today!

Skylum’s summer sale starts today with a massive 60% saving on Luminar Neo. Luminar Neo is usually priced at $123 Au – less the loyalty discount if you already have a Skylum product. Both programs offer a free trial and give a 30 money-back guarantee on your purchase. Lifetime licences with standard updates are included.

• The summer sale price of Luminar Neo, a one-time purchase, is $67 for one licence or $84 for two licences(around $50 off). They are also including Aurora HDR and Nature templates for free

Click HERE for the special sale price – Sale ends June 10, 2022

Verdict

I have been with Luminar since Luminar 4. I then bought Luminar Ai as soon as it was released. The following year I purchased Luminar Neo with the early bird special – and I can say unreservedly, I love it. It’s packed with more advanced features than Luminar Ai and is faster and simpler to use. I still have Ai on the computer for when I want to access the few things Neo doesn’t have, and Skylum is still putting out updates to Luminar Ai. I do expect, however, that Luminar Neo will eventually catch up, and when that happens, I will uninstall Luminar Ai. If you own Luminar Ai, upgrading to Neo will give you a better experience, and with your loyalty discount, it’s excellent value. For me, Luminar Neo, with its superior sky replacement and faster processing, is a clear winner.

disclosure:

The links given here are affiliate links. While they won’t cost you any extra, I may receive a commission if you purchase using the links in this post. However, these are programs I bought myself and are highly recommended.

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For some time now I have been using Luminar 4 to replace skies, and it does an amazing job. This week, however, Photoshop added some new tools in the V22.0 update for sky replacement and facial editing.

New to this version is Neural filters. You’ll find them under filters in the top menu bar. At the moment there is smoothing and blur for faces, plus a host of beta filters. The smoothing and blur work great for portraits. The beta filters, however, need a lot more work. When trying the happiness filter I ended up with ghosting around the lips and double eyebrows. Trying the head direction left ghosting around the edges of the face. Great idea, and I hope once it is no longer a ‘beta’ release it will work as it should.

To use the Neural filters click on filters and the new screen will open up. Click on skin smoothing to activate it and you can then move the sliders to your liking

The beta filters are activated by clicking on the little science beaker. The first time you use it you have to download them and they are installed and ready to go in one step. They really aren’t release ready yet though. I found them highly inaccurate.

Sky replacement

The sky replacement does work a treat. It’s easy and quick to use, accurate, and saves having to go over into Luminar to perform a basic sky replacement. To change the sky you simply click edit then scroll down to sky replacement

Once you click on sky replacement the next window opens and it starts working straight away swapping in the sky that’s open at the time. You can click the down arrow beside the thumbnail to choose a different sky. Another neat feature is by clicking the little sprocket icon you have the ability to import and use your own skies should you wish to.

I found the sky replacement very accurate with no halo’s or ghosting even through the trees and fine details in the structure at the top of the silo.

The sky replacement in Photoshop would certainly give Luminar a run for its money as it works great, and for skies that don’t have water in the foreground, it will definitely save me swapping over to Luminar to change the sky. Would it not be for the new Luminar Ai coming out soon that does sky replacement and reflects into the water for more realistic waterscapes I probably would stay solely in Photoshop.

But with the added water reflections feature in the upcoming Luminar program I will still be upgrading to the new Luminar Ai. For those who don’t have Luminar, the new sky replacement tools in Photoshop is definitely a great addition.

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Layer masks are an essential tool in Photoshop to create image manipulations. Among other uses, they allow you to ‘stack’ multiple images and expose only certain parts of the image/s above the base layer, creating a composite image.  You can do this using an eraser – but that is DESTRUCTIVE. If you remove something you wanted to keep, you have to go back to it before you erase that spot, possibly undoing other work.  Layer masks allow you to work NON DESTRUCTIVELY – if you remove something you wanted to keep, it’s super easy to get it back, and you don’t lose your work.

Lets Get Started

We’re using images from our recent splash! workshops, and the first set is by Beck Faldon

Step by Step

The goal is to combine all three, so we have the iceblock and both splashes in one image.  Hence the magic of layer masks.

• Open Photoshop and go to File>Scripts> Load files into stack.  From the little window that pops up, click ‘browse’, then find and select the images you want to use.  As the images I’m working with were taken on a tripod with virtually no difference between them, composition wise, I am also going to place a tick in the box ‘attempt to automatically align source images.  Then click ok. 
• Photoshop will now open all files, and if you click on your layers tab you will see they are all there, one on top of each other. You will also see that each layer has an eyeball beside it.. when the eyeball is visible that layer is visible, if you click the eyeball it turns that layer off.  Its still there, but no longer visible.

• Click the eyeball on the top layer and turn it off for now.  We are going to work on the second layer first up. To add the layer mask, click on the second layer (the middle one) so it’s active, then look to the bottom of the layers tab. 
• Click on the white rectangle with a black circle in the middle. It looks like the Japanese flag.  You will now have a white rectangle beside your second layer.  It’s important to remember that you must be doing it on the mask, not the image when you are painting.  See below the white bounding box around the white mask that shows me I am painting on that.  If you are painting and it starts turning black or white, you are painting directly on the image. 
• Go back a few steps until you have undone that, click on the white mask to make the mask active and start again. 

To Conceal or reveal

The key to layers masks is remembering that white reveals black conceals.  The layer mask is white. So you need to paint with black. Choose your brush tool, select 0% hardness, then click the black palette at the bottom of your main toolbar on the left.  Clicking the little double-sided arrow above your black and white palettes will toggle between black and white. You see 100% opacity on the image above, bring it down to about 70%, and see the layer below – it will help you choose what to reveal.

When you are finished, bring the opacity back up to 100%. As you paint, the mask will start to show black areas, where you painted concealing the top layer and revealing the layer below. Make your brush smaller and change it to a 100% hard brush to get into tight spots. If you take off parts of the image you want to keep, go back to your palette and click on the white palette to swap to a white brush. Now paint back the area you lost.  All the images were taken on a tripod, and there are no differences except the cup. I am painting the splash above the cut to combine the splash from both images into one.

Masking

You can now see that there is black on your layer mask.  There is where I brushed over the cup. The black area of the second layer is now hidden where it’s black, revealing the splash below.  Now we want to bring the ice cube into the pic.  Turn the top layer back on by clicking the empty box on the layer (where the eyeball isn’t), and the eyeball will come back as the layer is now turned on.  Don’t panic when you see that you’ve lost the splash. It’s all still there, just hidden below.  Click the top layer to activate it, then click the ‘Add layer mask’ icon again (the Japanese flag).  You will have another white rectangle now, just like the second layer.

Almost there

The area we want to expose now is the entire cup, keeping the falling IceCube above.  Select the black brush again and paint over the cup to reveal the splash but keep the ice cube. Likewise, just change to a white brush and paint it back if you make a mistake. Once you have finished, go to layer>Flatten image and edit in your usual way.  In the case of this one, I cropped and cloned out the inside of the bag you could see in the sack. (it was there to puff the sack up and make it look fuller).  I also added a subtle vignette.  

Some More Examples

Layer masks have many uses; if you are into family portraits and shoot them on a tripod, you can layer the images and remove heads cause it’s a battle to get everyone looking at the camera, eyes open, smiling. Layer the images, and you can brush out the ‘offending’ head.  I hope you found this helpful. Feel free to leave a like or comment 🙂

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