The Skylum Luminar Neo photo editing app leverages AI-based features to help you improve and enhance your digital images. Among them are convincing twilight looks, photo relighting effects, a powerline removal tool, water scene enhancements, and many more. Luminar Neo’s simple interface is a pleasure to work in, and the app also includes layer support with a library of overlays and textures. You can even install it as a plug-in for other apps. For all these reasons, we recommend Luminar Neo without hesitation to creative types. However, some operations could be faster, and it isn’t a complete photo editing solution. The more advanced Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom Classic are our Editors’ Choice winners for photo manipulation and workflow.
What’s New in Luminar Neo?
Skylum delivers a steady flow of features and effect modules as part of its subscription model, along with improvements to existing tools. A perpetual license just grants you access to what’s available at the time of purchase. Here’s a rundown of what’s new in the app since our last review:
Accent AI. This new feature offers one-click enhancements that can add drama to photos.
Atmosphere AI. Use this to add fog, mist, or haze to an image for dramatic effect.
Color Transfer. You can copy the color palettes of a reference image and adjust to taste afterward. The tool’s Match Similar Objects Colors option transfers colors between similar objects within an image.
New Masking Options. Object Select AI creates a precise mask of an object in an image in one click. Luminar Neo isolates different tonal ranges and applies selective adjustments to highlights, midtones, and shadows. You can also create masks based on specific colors in your photo for precise color edits and then adjust the color range with a slider.
New Mobile App for iPhone, iPad, and Vision Pro. These include many of Luminar’s main features, such as portrait retouching tools, Relight AI for correcting exposure, and sky replacement, on top of standard tools, such as crop, curves, erase, and filters.
Performance and Stability Improvements. Background Remove AI and other generative tools work faster and more reliably than before. Generative results are also better.
Post Crop Vignette. You can now tell the program whether you want to apply a vignette effect before or after cropping.
Smart Search. Like Lightroom, Luminar now uses machine learning to let you find images in your catalog using concepts like “car in front of mountains” or “Christmas tree.” This is in addition to filtering by EXIF details such as camera model, shutter speed, ISO, and so on.
Support for New Cameras and Lenses. This list includes the Fujifilm X-M5, Nikon Z50 II, Sony A1 II, and various Panasonic models (DC-G100D, DC-G95D, DC-GX880, DC-TZ95D, DC-TZ96D, and DC-ZS80D).
Twilight Enhancer AI. For those golden-hour shots that everyone loves, this slider adds color effects to shots of the blue and golden hours.
Water Enhancer AI. This helps you adjust and refine the color of any body of water, adding vibrancy to blue and green tones.
Other notable tools use Generative AI, including GenErase, GenExpand, and GenSwap. These generate background content based on what’s already in a photo. Panorama stitching, neon and glow drawing tools, and a tilt-shift effect are also recent additions. Other relatively recent AI tools include Background Removal AI, Noiseless AI, Supersharp AI, and Upscale AI. The company continues to tweak the program’s user interface, too.
How Much Does Luminar Neo Cost?
Luminar Neo is available directly from Skylum’s site either as a subscription ($99 per year) or via a lifetime license ($199). Heavy discounts are often available for both options. You get a 30-day money-back guarantee, as well as a 30-day free trial. I tested the subscription version for this review since it includes all the latest features.
For comparison, Capture One costs $317, CyberLink PhotoDirector goes for $99 (or $59.99 per year), and DxO PhotoLab charges $229. Adobe’s Lightroom 1TB plan, which includes Lightroom and Lightroom Classic, requires a subscription of $11.99 per month (or $119.88 per year up front). You have to pay for as long as you want to keep using it.
You can also download Luminar Neo from the Mac App Store or Microsoft Store. I prefer when desktop apps are available on these app stores because they make updates and installs on multiple computers easier. Such apps also go through a vetting process for functionality and security.
Setting Up Luminar Neo
Luminar Neo requires Windows 10 (version 1909 or later), Windows 11, or macOS 12 or later. At setup (or later), you can choose to install Luminar Neo as a plug-in for Lightroom Classic or Photoshop. But you can’t install plug-ins into Luminar Neo itself. The program takes up over 3GB of hard drive space, similar to Lightroom. When the installation completes, you sign into a Skylum account and then scan a QR code to install the companion mobile app for wirelessly transferring images.
(Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
Upon the first run, you see a very simple interface with a big Add Photos button. There’s no explicit import process in Luminar. You just choose a folder of photos to make them appear in your Luminar catalog. This setup might seem unusual, but it gets you to your pictures fast. You can start viewing and editing instantly. The software ‘imported’ my card with 858 files in just a few seconds. Moving forward and backward through images in the catalog is also snappier than in most applications. I would prefer if the Add Photos button could find attached camera media, but it just opens a file browser.
A Clear, Simple Interface
The program’s compact and dark interface lets you concentrate on your pictures. It’s far less busy than those of other pro photo applications, such as Capture One and ON1 PhotoRAW, and feels almost like a mobile app. It’s not very customizable, however. Luminar Neo has more resources than before to help you get started, though you might not need them, given the interface’s clarity and simplicity.
(Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
The app has just three modes: Catalog (for viewing all your images), Presets, and Edit. In the Catalog view, you zoom by spinning the mouse wheel (much simpler than in Lightroom). The app doesn’t restrict you to major stop points like 33% and 50%. When you select an image, an info panel with the shot settings and camera model details appears on the left; you can hide this easily with a button above it. You also get a filmstrip ribbon along the bottom for quickly navigating your collection.
The app doesn’t include abundant workflow features for organizing your photo collection. Icons below an image let you favorite (heart) or reject (X) it, but no color coding or keyword tagging features are present. If you need those capabilities but still want Luminar’s powerful tools, use it as a plug-in for Lightroom Classic.
The search box at the top left in Catalog mode makes quick work of finding photos based on filename, but you can’t refine the search based on metadata such as f-stop or lens model, as you can in Lightroom and DxO PhotoLab. You can’t search for tools either, which would be helpful given the number of them. Photoshop has an ever-present search icon at the top of its interface, for comparison.
On the left sidebar is an option to see All Photos, organized by date, with convenient filters to show recently added or edited images. Below that are computer folders and custom Albums. The standard program menus, such as File, Image, and View, aren’t along the top as in most Windows apps; click on the Luminar logo at the top left to see them. This makes for a cleaner default interface.
In Edit mode, you can switch between Tools and Edits tabs, the latter of which shows edits you’ve already applied. Clicking an eyeball icon shows the original view of your photo; a split-screen before-and-after view is available, too—something that took a long to arrive in Lightroom. I appreciate that double-clicking on sliders returns them to their defaults, and you can easily see any previous edits and undo them in the Edits tab. Double-clicking on an image’s full view takes you back to the gallery view.
Left to right: The initial raw camera file import from a Canon 80D in Luminar Neo, Adobe Lightroom, and Capture One (Credit: Skylum/Adobe/Capture One/PCMag)
For initial raw conversion, the Develop tool in Edit mode gives you profile choices of Adobe Standard, camera defaults, custom profile from DCP or DNG files, and Luminar Default. I didn’t have any trouble loading raw images from camera models such as the Canon EOS R6, the Fujifilm X-T4, the Nikon Z 50 II, the Olympus OM-3, and the Sigma BF, even though that isn’t among the models with official support. The default rendering of shots from a Canon EOS 80D (above) resulted in a fine image on par with that from Capture One and Lightroom. Capture One remains the best at initial rendering to my eyes, with more detail and less overexposure. Different camera models yield different results, and you can adjust the initial Develop profile in any of these apps for a better result.
Standard Adjustments
After you choose the Develop profile, a comprehensive group of adjustments remains on the right-hand side of the app (in order): Exposure, Smart Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Blacks & Whites, Curves, Color, Sharpness, Noise Reduction, and Optics. That last group includes a manual barrel and pincushion slider, along with a checkbox for Defringe. For some raw file types, the menu has Auto Distortion correction and Auto Fix Chromatic Aberrations checkboxes, too. The CA correction worked in a test shot, as did the geometric distortion correction. The latter took several seconds to apply, however. A Skylum rep told me the app includes a database of lens and camera profiles for these behind-the-scenes optics corrections. For gear not in the database, it uses general algorithms.
Of note is the Professional section at the bottom of the right-hand control panel, which gives you separate contrast sliders for Highlights, Midtones, and Shadows. You also get Curves with RGB selectors and White Balance settings with an eyedropper tool.
You don’t get Auto settings for the standard lighting and color sliders. The Enhance tool serves in place of that, and a slider lets you adjust its strength. It yielded pleasant improvements in my test shots, often boosting contrast and saturation for HDR-like results.
The Crop tool has an AI option that finds the subject and suggests a crop. It does a decent job cutting out excessive same-texture areas that take away from the subject. It suggested a pleasing crop for a portrait, with extra space ahead of the side where the subject was looking. In a photo of a ship, however, it cut off the back of the vessel. The crop section also has a Horizon Alignment tool, which works better now than in the past.
(Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
Related to cropping is the vignette tool, which now lets you choose whether to apply its effect before or after a crop. It also uniquely lets you define a subject for the vignette and, in effect, position it. You can adjust the Feather, Inner Light, and Roundness settings for the vignette.
(Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
Noise Reduction (in the Develop edit group and in a separate Denoise section) doesn’t have an automatic option, but it suggests a correction level based on the current photo. Its color noise and luminance sliders work well, maintaining decent detail. However, it’s not at the level of detail recovery in DxO PureRaw or Topaz Photo AI.
For even more anti-noise power, you can use the Noiseless AI extension. Results (below) from it are on par with DxO DeepPrime XD’s.
Left to right: Denoising in Topaz, Skylum Luminar Neo, and DxO (Credit: Topaz/Skylum/DxO/PCMag)
The Skylum tool lets you choose between Low, Middle, and High adjustment levels and tweak the results with sliders for Color, Details, Luminosity, and Sharpness. It works well.
Luminar Neo includes plenty of Color tools. In addition to saturation and vibrance options, you get HSL and hue shift sliders for eight colors.
(Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
For more color enhancement, in the Mood section under the Creative category, Luminar Neo offers a generous selection of LUTs in categories such as Cinematic, Creative (including B&W choices), Cross Processing, and Portrait Lighting. Sliders adjust the strength of these effects as well as their contrast and saturation.
Skylum continues to add generative AI tools to Luminar Neo. As mentioned, those include GenErase, GenExpand, and GenSwap. Among these, only GenSwap creates objects based on your text input, the way Adobe Firefly and some Photoshop plug-ins do.
GenErase
This works like Photoshop’s AI-powered Remove tool. Luminar Neo actually has a non-generative Erase tool, too; it works faster but not as well. GenErase (like the other Gen-tools) is accessible in Catalog mode via the buttons in the right-hand menu. You simply paint over an unwanted object in your photo with a resizable brush and then click Erase. In testing, it performed even better than Photoshop’s equivalent.
Painting over an object with the GenErase tool (Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
Here’s the final image after using GenErase:
Result of using the GenErase tool (Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
For comparison, Photoshop’s Remove tool (below) leaves a blotchy patch in the road and guardrail.
Photoshop’s Remove tool doesn’t do as good a job of removing an object in this case (Credit: Adobe/PCMag)
GenExpand
Like Photoshop’s Generative Expand tool, Luminar Neo’s GenExpand feature is useful for when you want to create a widescreen version of a narrow image. You can optionally describe what you want to expand with; if you don’t, Luminar Neo takes what’s in the preexisting image into account. I used a city vista shot to try it out, and Luminar delivered an impressive result. Below is the before shot:
Before using the GenExpand tool (Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
And here’s the result:
After using the GenExpand tool (Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
GenSwap
GenSwap most closely resembles what we consider to be generative AI since it creates objects and scenery out of thin air. It’s similar to Photoshop’s Generative Fill tool. However, in Luminar Neo’s case, you select an object to replace with the generated content. I asked it to swap the car in the shot below with a horse and buggy:
Result of using GenSwap to replace a car with a horse and buggy (Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
When I submitted this same request the last time I tested the software, it generated a bizarre combination horse-buggy. This time, I got a far more convincing result. These tools are getting better, but they still seem outside the province of photography per se.
Luminar Neo has plenty of non-generative tools, too. Two that stand out are the Erase tool’s Remove Powerlines feature and Relight AI. Extensions that come with a subscription add powerful new capabilities such as AI denoising, AI sharpening, AI upscaling, background removal, focus stacking, HDR merging, Magic Light, Portrait Lighting, and Neon Glow.
Enhance AI
This is the first tool you’re likely to use in Luminar. It’s similar to the standard Enhance or Auto feature in many photo applications, but it’s more powerful. It includes sliders for Accent AI (new for 2025) and Sky Enhancer AI. Additionally, you can use its Masking tab to apply effects just to a part of a photo. Here’s an example of what it can do with a somewhat drab shot of a volcano (without masking):
Left to right: Before and after using the Enhance AI tool (Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
Layers
Layer thumbnails appear on the left side of the Edit interface, and the top choice in the Tools tab on the right is Layer Properties. Luminar’s Layers let you add overlays and use various blend modes—Darken, Multiply, Screen, and so on. They’re not as complex and intimidating as Photoshop’s layers, but they’re quite useful and powerful enough to create some cool effects. Skylum includes a bunch of effect layers to slap on top of your picture, with choices like Flares, Light Leaks, and Sparklers.
The Layer Properties section also contains masking tools, which let you define areas of your image with brushes, gradients, color ranges, and luminosity ranges or by using one of several AI auto-masking tools, including Mask AI (which detects objects for masking), Object Select, Portrait Background, and Background Removal (more on that one later).
You can use layers with your images to create a double exposure effect, and you can apply exposure adjustments to individual layers. Photoshop gives you more control over layer editing, with things like adjustment-only layers and layer groups.
Background Removal AI
The Background Removal AI tool is common among photo editing software. Go to the Masking section of Layer Properties in Edit mode to find it. It analyzes your photo’s content and then lets you select things like Architecture, Flora, Human, Man Made Ground, Mountains, or Sky, for example. You can combine these objects if you want more than one to remain in the resulting image. By default, it simply selects the most likely subject.
(Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
This tool previously had disappointed me, as it considered the dark vents in the ceiling part of the subject, but that’s no longer an issue. It now at least equals the efficacy of ACDSee Photo Studio and Capture One at this task. A refinement brush lets you add to and remove from the selection, an essential help.
Color Transfer
Color Transfer also sounds a little ho-hum, though it includes effective samples and lets you match the tones of your original images. I applied the Cider Brown sample look to a fairly cold-hued portrait, and the resulting warmth made the picture far more appealing (below):
Result of using the Color Transfer tool (Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
Focus Stacking
Shallow depth of field is a desirable effect, and Luminar does include powerful blur tools that work with masking. But this tool lets you do the opposite: It lets you get different distances all in focus. I took four shots at different focus lengths and dragged them onto the Focus Stack tool. It aligns the photos and uses the in-focus part of each.
Using Focus Stacking allows the number on the closest dumbbells to be most in focus (Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
HDR Merge and Panorama Stitching
With Luminar Neo’s HDR Merge feature, you must drag the selected images (up to 10) over to the HDR Merge panel on the right-hand side. Click the Merge button, and a new thumbnail appears in the center panel after half a minute or so. My first try didn’t turn out sharp; you need to hit the settings gear and choose Auto Alignment (and optionally Chromatic Aberration Reduction and Ghost Reduction) for a decent result. The revised image was brilliant, but you don’t get options for different styles like with ACDSee Photo Studio and CyberLink PhotoDirector.
Luminar Neo’s HDR merge tool combines light and dark photos for a balanced result (Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
With Panorama Stitching, you drag contiguous photos onto the Panorama entry in the right-hand panel. You get the choice of cylindrical, Mercator, plane, and spherical methods. One fun touch is that you can grab and move the image in 3D space to realign it. Unlike the panorama feature in Lightroom and some other software, though, there’s no option to fill the black edges with generative content. In any case, a crop button removes the empty area at the end of the process. The tool matched my test images perfectly, as most do these days.
Panorama Merge convincingly joins adjacent shots of a scene (Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
Relight AI
Relight AI is an innovative tool in the Creative section that might be reason enough to buy Luminar Neo. It lets you change the brightness selectively for the near and far parts of the image, as determined by 3D AI mapping. You can also apply Dehalo and near and far warmth. The tool is good for both portraits and landscapes. My test shot of a West Mexican chachalaca shows that it works well for birds, too.
Left to right: Before and applying the Relight AI tool to a photo of a bird (Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
A related (and fun) tool is Magic Light AI, which lets you add radiant light sources and manipulate their beams. Just as fun and crazy is the Neon Glow tool, which lets you add a neon highlight anywhere you draw over detected objects.
Neon Glow is a cool effect that identifies people and objects in your photo and surrounds them with a bright outline (Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
Remove Powerlines
The Remove Powerlines tool, accessible via the Erase tool group’s Objects Removal section, does an impressive job of removing powerlines from street scenes. For my test image below, I applied the program’s Old Town filter for a markedly better result.
Left to right: Before and after using the Remove Powerlines featur; in combination with the Old Town effect filter, Luminar removed both the big vertical powerline and smaller horizontal ones (Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
Another button in the Erase group’s Objects Removal section is Remove Dust Spots. Like Remove Powerlines, it’s a one-button-press affair. Still, you can fine-tune results by clicking a brush over any parts you want to blend. It’s similar to Photoshop’s content-aware spot healing tool.
Sky Replacement
You still get Skylum Luminar’s signature sky-editing tools, which do an excellent and effort-free job of determining what’s the sky and replacing it with a more beautiful one. There’s a healthy selection of dramatic skies to choose from.
Luminar Neo’s sky replacement tool is simple and effective (Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
Supersharp AI
The Supersharp AI extension is comparable with Adobe’s abandoned Camera Shake Reduction tool. It attempts to fix blurriness that results from camera shake, as well as sharpen simply out-of-focus shots.
Left to right: Before and after applying the Supersharp feature to this shot of a Snow Goose (Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
As with the Noiseless AI tool, you get Low, Middle, and High adjustment options. The tool takes some time to work its AI magic, so don’t expect instant results.
Twilight and Water Enhancers
Result of using the Twilight Enhancer AI tool (Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
The Twilight Enhancer AI tool is another that might not sound exciting, but it creates compelling results. It can turn an ordinary early evening shot into something mysterious, as shown above. You can be more subtle than I was here by cranking down the slider. There are five color options: Blush, Blue, Emerald, Golden, and Mauve (which I used above). Each has a distinctively different yet still eventide-invoking appearance.
Result of using the Water AI tool (Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
I tested the same shot with Luminar’s new Water AI tool. It automatically selects bodies of water in your shot (which you can refine with an adjustable brush) and gives you sliders for blue, brightness, contrast, green, and the original color. If you compare this image above with the original shot of the ship in the Vignette section above, you can see how the water looks more inviting (I enhanced just the blue level).
In the Portrait section of tools, you get Body AI, Face AI, Portrait Bokeh, Skin AI, and Studio Light AI features. With Studio Light, you pick a light source point (or multiple sources) and adjust the brightness, contrast, smoothness, and more. Body AI lets you trim a few pounds off your subject. It did a good job of identifying human forms in my testing. The Face AI tool gives you Light and Slim sliders, which also work convincingly.
Upscale AI
Left to right: Before and after applying the Upscale AI to smooth out the pixelation in this hotel sign (Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
The Upscale AI tool, like HDR Merge, works from the Catalog view. You simply drag image thumbnails onto a target in the right-hand menu. As shown above, the tool is quite successful.
Presets
Luminar Neo includes a whole mode just for presets. They appear on the right side of the program window, and the app even suggests presets for the current photo. These can turn a drab shot into an arresting one with minimal labor. Choose from illustrative thumbnails for Filmatic, Landscape, Lifestyle, Macro, Portrait, and more. Again, sliders let you increase or decrease the effects’ strength. If you can’t find something that suits you, Skylum sells more sets of presets on its website.
(Credit: Skylum/PCMag)
Exporting, Printing, and Sharing
The up arrow button at the top right lets you save your edited photo to a folder of your choice or send it to your default email app. You can save in several file formats, including JPG, PDF, PNG, PSD, and TIFF, and resize and choose a resolution. The Print option in the main menu exports the edited photo and brings up your OS’s printing interface, but the app has no intermediary layout or contact sheet options. You don’t get an option to share your creation directly to social networks.
Performance
Using some of the AI tools made the graphics card fan on my Windows 11 test machine whir up. As mentioned, it can take a bit for an image to actually show an edit. I prefer to see some indication of processing, as with Lightroom. The good news is that Luminar Neo didn’t crash in this round of testing; it appears to have addressed past stability issues. The software technically doesn’t import files, as mentioned, so I can’t evaluate its performance from that perspective.
Luminar Neo started life as a macOS photo-editing app, and it ran just as well on an M1-powered MacBook Air as my Windows test machine the last time I tried it.
All of the processing for the AI tools happens on your local machine rather than in the cloud, which is a plus.
Mobile App
Skylum offers a full photo editing app for iOS and a companion app for Android and iOS that lets you transfer photos from the desktop app to your smartphone. The latter app lets you transfer edited photos to your phone and send images from your phone to the desktop app (which then appear in the Catalog view). Other options include exporting an edited shot or sharing via the phone’s native options.
Verdict: A Boatload of AI Fixes and Effects for Your Photos
Skylum Luminar Neo is capable photo optimization and enhancement software replete with unique AI features. Its clear, intuitive interface makes for an enjoyable navigation experience, and the app is simply lots of fun for creative editing. The flexible AI Relight, Remove Powerlines, and Twilight Enhancer tools all stand out, along with plenty for portraits. All that said, Luminar Neo isn’t a full workflow solution, so you are likely better off using it as a plug-in in a more capable alternative, such as Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom Classic, our Editors’ Choice winners for photo editing.
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The Bottom Line
Skylum Luminar Neo provides novel AI photo editing tools and a vast selection of effects and adjustments, all in a clear and pleasing interface.
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About Michael Muchmore
Lead Software Analyst
