Skylum Luminar – Here is the Ultimate Review of the AI Photo Editor You Should Know
Last Updated on November 11, 2021 by Peter Wood
Luminar is a full, professional photo editing solution based on AI technologies. You can get the basic photo editing features as well as a slick interface, auto-correction tools, and plentiful effect filters. But will you spend more than $80 to purchase the Luminar photo editor? What are the differences between other photo editors? Just learn more details from the complete Skylum Luminar review before making a decision.
Part 1: What is Skylum Luminar
Skylum Luminar is a versatile, feature-rich image editing workflow with a notably modern interface, unique retouching tools, and non-destructive editing features. It has full RAW support that enables you to create some stunning photos within clicks.
Excellent Features of Luminar
- Retouch portrait, landscape, and other photographs with custom workspace.
- Provide over 60 powerful one-click presets to improve your images quickly.
- Enhance photos with 50 filters, layers, brushes, and other mask tools.
- Precise control editing with customizable brushes and a masking system.
- Support RAW, JPEG/JPG, TIFF, and other popular image formats.
- Use as a plug-in for other photo editors, such as Lightroom and Photoshop.
- Support batch processing to enhance multiple photos at the same time.
- Perform multiple un-dos quickly and easily on the history panel.
A Simple Review of Skylum Luminar
Pros
- The interface is user-friendly and intuitive.
- Fix your imperfect photos automatically.
- There are a lot of filters and effects.
- The output quality is excellent.
- Developer released updates frequently.
- It is easy to use for beginners to improve photos.
- Layer-based editing is popular among advanced users.
- It supports one-time payments.
Cons
- Some operations are slow and may freeze.
- The stability issue needs to improve.
- It lacks some features, like blur effects.
- There is no face recognition.
- Luminar cannot prepare images for print.
The Pricing Structure of Luminar
By default, Skylum offers a free trial. If you want to get the full version, the starting price is $89 for one computer one-time fee. It also provides a 30-day money-back guarantee. But when you need to upgrade from Luminar 3, you have to pay another $69
Part 2: What is New for Luminar 4
Skylum has just released Luminar 4.3. You can learn more details about the new features and improvements with the following information.
- Search photo with name, folder, date, or extension.
- Provide 500px integration to share images to 500px platform.
- Improve stability and performance for Luminar photo editor.
- Support quickly process images with faster looks.
- Improve the Crop & Rotate tool for more options.
- AI Augmented Sky tool makes creating composites.
- Offer an improved masking brush workflow.
- Support more cameras and languages than ever before.
Part 3: Best Alternatives to Luminar
Best Luminar Alternative to Touch up Portrait
When you need to polish portrait images as a Luminar alternative, WidsMob Portrait Pro is versatile portrait editing software. It not only provides a whole set of portrait editing features, such as manage the skin, enhance the portrait, and have virtual makeup, but also lets you polish the portrait with presets in a single click. Compared to Luminar, it has different templates and colors for different features.
- Recognize and touch up the faces in portrait images with AI technology.
- Manage the skin, enhance the portrait, and have virtual makeup easily.
- Customize and apply the desired presets without complicated settings.
- Support portrait images in JPEG, TIFF, and most of the RAW file formats.
How to Retouch Portrait with Luminar Alternative
Step 1: Once you have installed WidsMob Portrait Pro, you can launch the program on your computer. Click the Select Photos button and add the portrait image you want to process. The Select Folder button allows you to add all photos in a folder in a batch.
Step 2: Once you have imported the portrait image, it will scan the portrait automatically. Go to the Preset menu to select a suitable one to retouch your photos, such as Smoothing + Brighten Eyes to polish the image within one click. You can also turn on the Before/After mode to check the effect.
Step 3: When you need to touch up the portrait manually as Luminar, you can go to the Edit menu to adjust the skin area, enhance the portrait, or have virtual makeup. It not only provides the presets, but also enables you to customize the color, position, and more others.
Step 4: After that, you can click the Export button to trigger the popup dialog. Enter a filename in the Rename to box, choose the Resize to option, file format, and adjust the photo quality. Once you have a satisfactory photo, you can click the Start button to polish the portrait image.
Best Luminar Alternative to Polish Landscape
If you want to edit the landscape images, what should be the best Luminar alternative? WidsMob Retoucher is a versatile photo editor to discover the magic of artistic photo effects. It provides dozens of analog film filters, de-noise features, LOMO effects, and even the basic portrait touch-up editing tools. Similar to Luminar, you can process the JPEG files, as well as the RAW file formats.
- Provide 4 different color rendition profiles with dozens of analog film filters.
- Touch up the portrait images with skin smoothing, skin whitening, and more.
- Remove the noise of photos with luminance, chrominance, and sharpness.
- Apple LOMO effects via color opacity, vignetting, fisheye, and color filter.
Step 1: Download and install WidsMob Retoucher, you can launch the program on your computer. After that, you can drag and drop the images you want to polish into the program. Before you apply the filters and effects, you can turn on the Before/After mode.
Step 2: Go to the ADJUSTMENT menu to tweak the settings for Saturation, Contrast, Brightness, Temperature, and Tint. You can also enable Skin Smoothing and Skin Whitening for portrait images. Of course, there are dozens of analog film filters in the FILM Pack menu.
Step 3: Similar to Luminar, you can adjust the color for the sky, or add LOMO effects to get a satisfying effect. After that, you can click the Save button to save the retouched photos to your computer, or the Share button to send them to the social media websites directly.
Part 4: FAQs about Luminar
Luminar AI provides much more features than Luminar 4, such as Templates, better Portrait tools, improved SkyAI, and smoother editing experience. When you are looking for photo editors with more advanced features, Luminar AI should be a nice option.
No. The AI Sky Replacement tool in Luminar 4 doesn’t just change the sky, it just changes the lights of the photo. Then the lighting and colors of the original image match the lighting and colors of the sky. Luminar will choose the perfect sky color accordingly.
Luminar 4 is an all-in-one photo editor that enables you to touch up all images. But it only provides limited features for landscape or portrait. When you need to have more advanced features for portrait images, you should choose the alternative instead.
Conclusion
Based on the sharing above, you should understand what is Luminar, whether it is worth to buy and what it can do now. If you need a one-stop solution to edit your photos on a computer, it is a good choice. Of course, you can choose some professional portrait editors or photo editors with competitive a price. Just free download the Luminar alternatives to get a stunning photo.