Luminar 4 Review: Does AI really work?

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Luminar 4 is a strong contender in the plugin suite category. I consider it to be in the same general category as Topaz Studio 2, Nik Collection 3 and On1. In this Luminar 4 review you’ll see how it stacks up.

Luminar 4 boasts some really unique features like AI Sky Replacement, AI Sky Enhancement and AI Portrait Enhancement. I found that Luminar 4 performs these tasks with amazing results!

All in all, Luminar 4 is a powerhouse photo editor with some incredible one-click AI features. The score speaks for itself, but read the full review for examples and details!

Full Luminar 4 review:

There’s a lot to cover in this Luminar 4 review! Below you’ll find a comprehensive look at all the main features in Luminar 4, including the exciting AI features, as well as my take on the interface, support and overall impression.

Installation & support

I hit a bit of a snag after the initial installation. However, it turns out I had a much older version of Luminar already installed. It took me just a few minutes to uninstall and reinstall, and I was up and running.

I want to highlight that I found the solution to my installation issue within a few minutes. A quick Google search lead me to the Luminar Community Forum with the solution to my problem.

I am very impressed with the documentation and support options Luminar provides. All the options are easily available from within Luminar in the help menu. From here you can access a variety of training and help, as well as directly access your Skylum account. Having all these links in one place is brilliant.

Stand-alone vs. plugin

Luminar 4 can run either as a Photoshop plugin, or as a standalone editing suite.

The main difference is that the stand-alone option also includes a image organization system, much like the one in Adobe Lightroom and other software. This option is not available when running Luminar 4 as a Photoshop plugin. This Luminar 4 review focuses on running it as a Photoshop plugin.

Interesting note: I found that the load time for the stand-alone version was quite long. It took 45-50 seconds to load Luminar 4 as a stand-alone, but only 15 seconds when run from inside Photoshop. I suspect that the image library and organization feature requires that extra time to load.

Luminar 4 interface

I was pleasantly surprised at how easy the interface is to master while reviewing Luminar 4.

Almost all navigation, options and settings are controlled with a toggle system. Click a setting once to open a drop-down menu, click it again to close it. Push an option button to turn it on, push it again to turn it off. Select a tool once to activate it, click it again to close it. Once I figured this out I had essentially mastered the majority of how to use Luminar 4.

There are of course some advanced options that are a bit more involved than simply clicking a button, but even those are so intuitive that I never felt frustrated or confused when figuring them out.

Luminar 4 features

Looks

The Luminar 4 Looks feature allows you to create cool effects with just the click of a thumbnail. This type of adjustment is essentially the same concept as you find in Topaz Studio 2, On1, Nik Collection 3 and other plugin suites.

Here are a couple of quick example Looks that I captured for this Luminar 4 review: AI Image Enhance and Classic B&W. Keep in mind that these two Looks are “straight out of the box” without modifications. You can of course make as many manual adjustments to these looks as you wish, and even save your own.

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Essentials

In the Essentials panel you’ll find many ways to tweak your images. Rather than using labels like “contrast”, “sharpening”, “hue/saturation”, Skylum opted to use their own labels like “light”, “color” and “details enhancer”. You’ll also find two AI options that are quite fun to play with!

Here’s the AI Enhance in action. The result is quite amazing considering I just toggled it on and made a tiny adjustment. The result is a bit too saturated for my taste, but that can easily be rectified with the Color adjustments.

Creative

Now this is where I had the most fun when writing this Luminar 4 review! In the Creative panel there are two exciting options: AI Sky Replacement and AI Augmented Sky.

The function of the sky replacement is obviously self explanatory. The augmented sky let’s you insert objects like clouds, birds and the Moon!

Creative: AI Sky Replacement

This is a really exciting feature to play with. It was the feature I was most looking forward to investigating in this review of Luminar 4. In the AI Sky Replacement module you’ll find a long list of sky replacement options already included.

I found skies appropriate for bright sunny days, sunsets and even night time skies. When I applied a sky I found the the masking was excellent, and Luminar 4 did a great job making adjustment to color and lighting to match the selected sky. Here’s a quick look at the list.

Here are two examples of replacing skies with included skies. You can also load your own sky images if you already have a collection of them. With a new sky in place you’ll also find a ton of adjustment sliders to make the effect just to your liking.

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Creative: AI Sky Enhance (AI Sky Fun)

The sky enhance feature is just plain fun! You can insert a variety of objects into your sky, and Luminar 4 will make all the adjustments to make the objects seem like they belong in the original image (unless you go crazy with it like I did). Here’s a few examples. I was happy to find an option to defocus the balloon a bit to match the depth of field in the photo.

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Portrait

The Portrait panel allows you to make quick improvements to your portraits, with the help of Luminar 4 artificial intelligence. Here you can see many of the options available, from basics like Red Eye removal, whitening of eyes and teeth, to advanced settings like the Eye Enhancer.

During my review testing of Luminar 4, I found some of the setting didn’t work well on this image, but the various adjustments are clearly going to more or less effective depending on your starting image. In this model image, courtesy of Pixabay, the model already has amazing skin, and there’s nothing to improve on her eyebrows or eye size.

Here’s the before and after with marked improvements in the details of her eyes and lips, a minor lighting adjustment and some whitening of eyes and teeth. I was very impressed getting this result after just a few minutes.

I just lost all interest in learning frequency separation in Photoshop…

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More panels

There are several other panels available in Luminar 4, such as the Professional panel which gives you granular control of many settings pro photographers might need. Here you’ll find quite a few items similar to the native Photoshop tools, like Dodge & Burn, Photo Filter and Split Toning. If you are already familiar with such adjustments you can always do these modifications in Photoshop.

Two other important features to mention are the History and Layers panels. It’s really easy to go back to an earlier step, and you can create powerful combination effects with multiple layers.

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The Smart Object test

I always test how plugins work when I run them on Smart Object layers. To fully pass the test a plugin should be able to run on a Smart Object, AND, I must be able to open up the plugin smart filter and find all my settings in place.

Luminar 4 passed the Smart Object test with flying colors during this review. Clicking the Luminar 4 text under Smart Filters brought up the interface with all my previous adjustments in place.

Luminar 4 review conclusion

I gotta admit I went into this review with modest expectations. The anticipation of deciphering a new interface was unpleasant, and I was quite skeptical about the AI features. (I was quite turned off by the AI in Topaz Mask AI)

Luminar 4 turned all my expectations around, and I am very impressed with the entire package. Skylum provides excellent documentation and help, the interface is elegant, the cool features like AI Sky Replacement work exactly as advertised.

Sure, this might not appeal to hard core Photoshop fans who prefer to master the native Photoshop tools, but to more casual photographers and artists, this may just be the thing!

Oh, and the price of $67 is totally reasonable for this product. It could easily go for over a hundred bucks considering the power of it.

Based on my review I highly recommend Luminar 4.

Luminar AI announced

Skylum has announced the release of Luminar AI during the 2020 holiday season.

Read the details of the Luminar AI pre-release here.