Luminar Neo mini review

[iamdlewis]

Last year I ended my Adobe subscription (which had its own issues) but I like to have some options when it comes to editing so I thought that I would give Luminar Neo a try to go along with CapOne. Lets just say that I have some mixed feelings.

The good:
- Easy to load files
- Comes preloaded with a bunch of nice presets
- Lots of color editing options, more than Adobe has. Basically if you can't find a way to edit your colors to match your vision I'm not sure what would work for you.
- Lots of tools for sharpening, denoise, cloning that all work well
- Options for changing the lighting source direction
- Many more cool editing options that are simple to toy around with

The Bad
- It is slow
- The pano stitching tool says that you can stitch 2-100 files but I can't get a 12 image stitch to work. The Luminar support team tells me that it takes their Mac 30 mins to merge the 12 50mp images but my window PC stops trying after about 20 seconds. These same files take about 3-4 minutes in either CapOne or Adobe.
- The max exporting image size is limited to 15,000 pixel per edge

Clearly the Luminar Neo team has a lot of focus on providing new tools in their development strategy and they do a good job. If I were to compare them to other software companies I would say that they clearly do not follow the 80/20 development process of developing 80 of the feature and then maybe finishing the last 20 through support case since all the features, at least to me, seem complete. The issue that I have is that though the features work they have limited the overall performance of the software. This limitation is very frustrating to me since most seem to be made for landscape photography but the speed and limitations can greatly restrict landscape work.

I still have a couple weeks to decide if I will keep this or return for a refund.

 

[Richard A]

I subscribe to a Mac software collection called Setapp. The full version of Luminar Neo is part of the collection. I have to say that I rarely use it other than as a plugin for Photoshop. As you mention, there are some good effects etc. especially for landscapes. If you want to learn a bit more about Luminar Neo I can recommend these two YouTube Channels:

Anthony Turnham

Jim Nix

 

[iamdlewis]

I subscribe to a Mac software collection called Setapp. The full version of Luminar Neo is part of the collection. I have to say that I rarely use it other than as a plugin for Photoshop. As you mention, there are some good effects etc. especially for landscapes. If you want to learn a bit more about Luminar Neo I can recommend these two YouTube Channels:

Anthony Turnham

Jim Nix

Anothony might be one of the better creator of guides, he has a good rhythm and nice pace.

 

[Clix Pix]

Just ran across this thread. I have both Luminar AI and its success Luminar Neo. Both are useful for making some tasks quicker and easier than in my other software, so I keep both on hand, but neither is my primary editing tool. That is either DXO PhotoLab 7 or ON1 Photo RAW 2024, depending upon the situation, the type of images I'm about to edit and the mood I'm in at the time.

I don't mess around with the presets and gimmicky features too often, but I do like Luminar's approach to the "erase" tool and cloning, as well as their blur tool. I also like the Burn-and-Dodge tools, too, which can make those particular operations go fairly quickly and smoothly.

 

[Sgee]

Last year I ended my Adobe subscription (which had its own issues) but I like to have some options when it comes to editing so I thought that I would give Luminar Neo a try to go along with CapOne. Lets just say that I have some mixed feelings.

The good:
- Easy to load files
- Comes preloaded with a bunch of nice presets
- Lots of color editing options, more than Adobe has. Basically if you can't find a way to edit your colors to match your vision I'm not sure what would work for you.
- Lots of tools for sharpening, denoise, cloning that all work well
- Options for changing the lighting source direction
- Many more cool editing options that are simple to toy around with

The Bad
- It is slow
- The pano stitching tool says that you can stitch 2-100 files but I can't get a 12 image stitch to work. The Luminar support team tells me that it takes their Mac 30 mins to merge the 12 50mp images but my window PC stops trying after about 20 seconds. These same files take about 3-4 minutes in either CapOne or Adobe.
- The max exporting image size is limited to 15,000 pixel per edge

Clearly the Luminar Neo team has a lot of focus on providing new tools in their development strategy and they do a good job. If I were to compare them to other software companies I would say that they clearly do not follow the 80/20 development process of developing 80 of the feature and then maybe finishing the last 20 through support case since all the features, at least to me, seem complete. The issue that I have is that though the features work they have limited the overall performance of the software. This limitation is very frustrating to me since most seem to be made for landscape photography but the speed and limitations can greatly restrict landscape work.

I still have a couple weeks to decide if I will keep this or return for a refund.

Sounds like Luminar Neo is a mixed bag, tons of great editing tools and flexibility, but the slow performance and pano stitching issues are a real pain, especially for landscape work. The color control and lighting direction options are impressive, but if it's struggling with stitching 12 images while other software handles it in minutes, that’s a major drawback.

If speed and large-scale processing matter to you, Capture One or even sticking with Adobe (despite the subscription model) might be a better fit. If Neo’s tools outweigh the slowdowns, it could still be a solid companion editor. Since you’ve got a couple of weeks left, might be worth testing it on different types of edits before making the call. Would love to hear what you decide!

 

[iamdlewis]

Yes the color tools are quite good and there are nice options with modifying lighting and if this is what someone needs this is a very good choice.

The stitching does seem to be an issue when trying more than 10 A7Riv images. I did find a way to get the 12 images stitched by starting with stitching 6, then 7, then 8...... Not sure why this worked. CapOne does a decent job with stitching but ICE does the best even though hyou do need to convert to jpeg first.

Still using CaptureOne 90% of the time but still trying Luminar Neo.