5 Reasons to Edit Your Photographs in Luminar

Luminar is a photo editing software and digital asset manager (new with Luminar 3) developed by Skylum Software.

Luminar is available for Windows and MacOS and can be run as a stand alone application or used as a plug-in for Lightroom, Photoshop, and Photos for MacOS.

So why should I use Luminar instead of Lightroom, Photoshop, Photos or any of the other photo editing software programs out there.

First off, it isn’t an either-or decision.  You can round trip from Lightroom, photoshop, or Photos for MacOS, so Luminar can be a part of your workflow.

Below are 5 reasons why you should consider using Luminar in your photo editing workflow.

1 – Over 60 Photo Editing Filters

Luminar includes normal filters like Saturation / Vibrance, Vignette, Clarity, and Sharpening. Luminar 3 also creative filters like Fog, Golden Hour, Texture Overlay, Cross Processing and Orton Effect.  There are categories for Essential, Issue Fixers, Creative, Professional and Utility filters.  Check out my blog on my Favorite Luminar Filters.

2 – Two artificial intelligence filters in Luminar 3

Accent AI Filter and AI Sky Enhancer.These two one slider filters analyze your image and automatically make adjustments.  The results are amazing.  Skylum Software just announced Luminar 4 with an AI Sky Replacement filter that is supposed to automatically replace the sky and adjust the rest of the image to match the color and lighting of the sky.  Luminar 4 is coming in the fall of 2019.

3 – Luminar allows for masks to be added to almost every filter in Luminar.  Masks can also be used on different layers you can add while processing the photograph.  Masks allow you control what part of the image the filter will change.  For example, you can add a mask to the sharpening filter so it will sharpen the entire image except the sky.  Masks can be created in several ways in Luminar: brush, gradient mask, radial mask, and luminosity mask.

4 – Luminar Looks

Luminar looks are like presets or recipes.  They hold a collection of filters with preset values giving your photograph a preset look. They are great for scrolling thru and determining what direction you should take your photograph.  There are over 60 Luminar Looks that come with the software and you have the ability to download more.  Luminar Looks are a great starting point.  After clicking on a Luminar Look, you can then go over and tweak the preset filters or add additional filters to enhance your photograph.

5 – Powerful, but Easy to Use 

I find the Luminar Look / Workspace / Filter paradigm easy to use and understand.  But being able to add masks, and change blending modes for each filter very powerful.  Luminar also has several Photoshop like editing tools like Clone & Stamp and Erase (think Content Aware Fill).

Written by Martin Belan
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