Photo courtesy of Skylum Luminar Neo
For landscape photographers, the right editing software can be the key to unlocking the full potential of your images. While the most popular applications for years have been Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop, a new forward-thinking competitor has recently been making waves across the industry: Skylum Luminar Neo.
It is an innovative editor that’s incredibly user-friendly, has a wide range of powerful editing capabilities, and is available across all platforms (macOS, Windows, and mobile devices). Moreover, a plugin lets you integrate it directly into Lightroom and Photoshop and allows you to use both programs simultaneously.
In this article, we’ll focus specifically on why its state-of-the-art Artificial intelligence (AI) tools make it a must-own program for landscape photography. From enhancing images and replacing skies to adding atmospheric effects and cropping images, let Luminar Neo do the work while you sit back and watch the magic happen.
Now, without further ado, join us as we explore four reasons why Skylum’s Luminar Neo is a landscape photographer’s dream editor and why it’s the future of photography!
Check out the video above on the Luminar Neo YouTube Channel to learn more about editing landscape photos with Skylum Luminar Neo.
Table of Contents
- The Enhance AI Tool of Luminar Neo
- The Sky AI Tool of Luminar Neo
- The Atmosphere AI Tool of Luminar Neo
- The Composition AI Tool of Luminar Neo
- Final Thoughts on Skylum Luminar Neo
- New Feature Announcement!
- Recommended Photography Gear
The Enhance AI Tool of Luminar Neo
Photo courtesy of Skylum Luminar Neo
The first creative tool for landscape photography we will look at is Enhance AI. Its goal is to instantly boost the lighting and color of images. It is particularly effective when editing photos shot during poor lighting conditions (sunrise, sunset, nighttime) or photos that are overexposed and blown out (middle of the day).
How does it work? First, it scans your entire image and identifies problematic areas concerning exposure, colors, and contrast. After that, it plots those points on a custom “brightness map” and intelligently balances the image. Voilà, with a push of a button, you have breathtaking results.
Enhance AI is the first thing we try with all of our landscape photos and many times, it’s the only edit we need to make it POP!
The Sky AI Tool of Luminar Neo
Photo courtesy of Skylum Luminar Neo
Skies play a huge role in landscape photography and can absolutely make or break a picture. Have you ever taken a gorgeous landscape shot only to realize afterward that the sky looks slightly off? That’s where Luminar Neo’s one-of-a-kind Sky AI comes into play!
It provides complete control over sky backgrounds and lets you quickly and easily change them as you see fit. Whether you want to make detailed micro-adjustments or replace the entire sky, you can do it in seconds with Sky AI.
Luminar NEO has a huge catalog of replacement skies, ranging from stunning sunsets and star-filled nights to lightning storms and clear blue skies. So, you can choose the best one to match your landscapes and the mood you want to convey in your photos.
The Atmosphere AI Tool of Luminar Neo
Photo courtesy of Skylum Luminar Neo
Another amazing tool of Luminar Neo is Atmosphere AI. It allows you to add unique and realistic atmospheric effects to landscapes. Let’s say you were trying to capture a misty mountaintop with your camera, but the photos weren’t doing it justice. In this case, you can add mist to your image to display the scene's true appearance.
Alternatively, you can add effects to alter the image and transform the mood. Fog, mist, and haze are three of the most popular effects, and they can change the whole tone and style of a landscape. Graphic designers, digital artists, and marketing professionals find this feature super useful.
Atmosphere AI uses three sliders to control the chosen effect: amount, depth, and lightness. You should always use them hand in hand when crafting the perfect look and feel you want to achieve.
The Composition AI Tool of Luminar Neo
Photo courtesy of Skylum Luminar Neo
Good composition is one of the keys to successful landscape photography, and thanks to Luminar Neo’s Composition AI, you can achieve perfect compositions even if they don’t originally look that way out of the camera.
It’s an ingenious tool that was developed using the most important rules of composition, the knowledge of professional photographers, and a library of hundreds of successful images. With the simple click of a button, it provides composition suggestions that make your landscape images more attractive to viewers and help them stand out.
Even if we already think our photo looks great, we enjoy using Composition AI to view different perspectives. Frequently, it surprises us by sharing ideas we hadn’t thought of that we could use on that photo or in future ones.
Final Thoughts on Skylum Luminar Neo
Photo courtesy of Skylum Luminar Neo
Wow! Have you ever seen editing software with so many advanced AI features before? Because I know we haven’t! Since we started using Luminar Neo by Skylum to process our landscape photography, we’ve noticed a massive improvement in the quality of our photos, and the time we spend editing images has never been lower. Heck, even the features not powered by AI are impressive - like the erase tool (shown above) that clears clutter (or people!) out of your landscape photos.
On top of that, it’s extremely affordable. The month-to-month subscription runs at $14.95/month, the 12-month plan costs $9.92/month (billed $119 yearly), and the 24-month plan is $7.46/month (billed $179 every two years). They also offer a lifetime purchase option currently on sale for a one-time payment of $299. To learn more about the options, visit the Luminar Neo Pricing Page.
Luminar Neo isn’t just a one-trick pony, either. Check out the list below to see the other types of photographers who will benefit from working with it:
- Beginner Photographers
- Portrait Photographers
- Wedding Photographers
- Newborn Photographers
- Family Photographers
- Real Estate Photographers
So not only does Luminar Neo save you time at an affordable price, but it also gives you the capability of using laser-targeted tools for your work, no matter what niche of photography you specialize in. Not bad, right?!
New Feature Announcement!
Photo courtesy of Skylum Luminar Neo
Luminar Neo has a new feature as of this writing that adds even more AI-powered goodness! It’s called GenSwap, and it allows you to easily alter the composition of an image by replacing objects, swapping them out for something else (like the replacing the empty lake bottom with water in the image above), or adding new AI-generated details to the image based on your prompt.
For example, you can add animals or trees to a landscape photo that needs a little boost of interest. Alternatively, you can remove elements that are distracting or unnecessary for the composition.
Think of GenSwap as a time machine - you can use it to enhance your photo and generate a final result that you would have liked to create the moment you framed up the shot. It’s just another reason why Luminar Neo is such a valuable tool for landscape photography!
Recommended Photography Gear
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