Luminar AI
A great way for novices and experts to enhance images
$79 From Skylum, skylum.com Needs macOS 10.13.6 or higher, Intel Core i5 or better, 8GB RAM
Skylum has built on the success of its Luminar 4 photo editing software for Mac with Luminar AI, an entirely separate application that greatly expands the use of artificial intelligence to help you make quick and visually impressive edits to your images. We reviewed a late–stage beta version but found no significant issues, even with final snagging still to be done before the official release.
Open one or more images and Luminar AI’s Templates mode provides “for this photo” suggestions based on its analysis of the contents of the picture. There are template categories for landscape, portrait, wildlife, analog, and more, each with an amount slider to apply as much or as little as you like. Crucially, templates are AI–aware so they adapt to suit the nuances and content of each image, even going so far as to correct common errors in shooting like exposure. Stylistically they range from subtle to quite extreme, though there’s a great selection on offer and using the Amount slider can give you a much gentler end result.
With or without applying a template you can move to the Edit section to make further tweaks. The tools that use AI are helpfully labeled, like the first one you come to, Composition, which analyzes an image and suggests a crop based on its contents. Framing is, of course, subjective but in our tests it made a decent fist of trimming extraneous space to focus the viewer’s attention on a subject. Crops can be edited and undone. Other AI–powered tools here include Structure and Enhance, which boost clarity and depth, and you get a number of other regular editing tools like color, vignetting, detail and more, including a very effective object removal tool.
The next edit section is called Creative tools and the first three — Sky, Augmented Sky, and Atmosphere — let you replace a sky, add objects like
clouds or birds, and add haze and mist. This is all done without using layers and each tool has many options plus the ability to manually create a mask to define areas, as you can in many other parts of the application. Other tools in this section include a configurable virtual sun that can be added, and things like Mood, Mystical and Glow to variously soften and mellow an image.
The Portrait tools provide AI– powered controls for altering face, skin, and body traits. Faces and bodies can be made slimmer, skin smoothed and refined, and there are some very clever ways to change eye color and make eyes more striking. These tools only allow quite subtle changes to things like the shape of features so there’s no great risk of over–editing and ending up with odd results. The last edit section, Pro, has a handful of optics and color–based tools.
Luminar AI is easy to use, even when you dive into the more detailed editing features. But right–clicking on an image reveals extra tools like the ability to copy, paste, and sync adjustments across images; flag images; and create albums. Similarly, though the quick–export button outputs to JPEG, the menu bar Export provides users with a full range of formats including TIFF, Photoshop, PDF, and others.
The AI works well, helping less– experienced users save lots of time. For others, the detailed tools provide more creative control and end results are very good. Object detection is very effective and there’s also the option to create masks, vary effect amounts and more, all in a user–friendly package.
THE BOTTOM LINE. An excellent and affordable way to punch up and enhance your images. HOLLIN JONES