Hi Everyone! This is a review of Luminar 4 and the editing possibilities that it brings. As you know, I have been a true believer of Luminar from Skylum software for quite a while. I used Luminar 3 a lot for the AI (Artificial Intelligence) features and as sort of a mix between Lightroom and Photoshop. With Luminar 4 even more AI is available with Sky Replacement and AI augmentation where you can insert objects like the moon or mountains or an airplane. All of these adjustments can be done very easily with the click of a button and moving a slider to make adjustments. I'm mainly a landscape photographer, but the portrait photographer uses lots of AI features also. I use Luminar 4 instead of Photoshop mainly because of the ease of use. I'm basically lazy, and Photoshop is a very powerful and complicated program. You can do all of the things you can do in Luminar in Photoshop, but it's very complicated, very hard to do, and time consuming. So I use Luminar. Let me go over some features of Luminar 4.
Basic Editing- Luminar 4 can do all of the basic editing that Luminar 3 can do from crop to basic light adjustments, all done with sliders. There are also AI sliders that will analyze your photo and correct mistakes such as contrast, exposure, etc. Presets are also available to help edit your photographs. With the touch of a button, you can add the preset to your photo, and if you don't like it you can make adjustments to the preset to make it stronger or weaker. Landscape enhancer - you can enhance the color of foliage and really make them pop. All of these adjustments can be made under the Essentials tab that is on the right of the editing panel.
Creative Tab- This tab is where most of the landscape editing is done. This is where the AI Sky Replacement is done. This is a fantastic feature! You can take a ho-hum photo with a blank sky and replace it with a more interesting sky. Luminar 4 has some to choose from, and you can use your own and make custom skies. Luminar does a good job of replacing the skies and masking out all the other things that are not skies. Also, AI Augmentation is under this tab. You can insert objects into the photograph with this feature -- clouds, birds, airplanes, mountains, or almost anything. Of course Luminar has some ready for you to use, but you can use your own objects also. This is a very cool feature. You can be very creative, and it usually just takes a click and a swipe of the slider and you're golden.
Portrait- This tab has lots of editing tools to help the portrait photographer. First, there is the AI Skin
Enhancer where you can smooth out skin, and only the skin, but not take away the texture of the skin so it doesn't look like plastic or fake. Under the AI Portrait Enhancer you can lighten the face to make it stand out, use red eye removal, eye whitening, eye enhancer, dark circles remover, slim face, enlarge eyes, improve eyebrows, teeth whitening, and lip enhancements. All of these can be done with the click of a button and the swipe of a slider to make them the way that you want them to look. I haven't used these too much, but I did use them on some older portraits and they worked great! I was very impressed and am looking forward to taking some more portraits.
Professional Tab- In the Professional Tab you can use Advance Contrast to enhance the highlights, mid-tones, and shadow contrast separately. You can use the Adjustable Gradient like you would in Lightroom. With the Dodge and Burn you can use a brush and paint to dodge and burn. Color Enhancer can make the photo warmer or cooler. I haven't used this tab too much, but it looks like it will work very well.
You can start in Lightroom, export a copy of your photos with Lightroom adjustments to Luminar 4, and when you're done you can apply all of your changes and they will show up in Lightroom beside the original photograph. Then you can export to whatever program or Facebook just like you usually do from Lightroom. I really do like this program, and it makes some very interesting images. So check it out. It's a one-time buy just like Luminar 3, and it's under $100. This is great software with lots of value and bang for your buck. If you like creating, Luminar 4 is a great choice for photo editing. So get out and shoot and have some fun!