Luminar AI, my initial thoughts

Having pre-ordered Luminar AI I have had the privilege of having an early copy and wnated to share my intial thoughts.

let me say straight away I have some mixed feeling about Skylum’s new product, Luminar AI. There has been some very strong marketing pushing Luminar AI, perhaps a little too much. And maybe, they have slightly over sold their product.

What I like about Luminar AI

I like the clean user interface, and Skylum has been able to simplify the process of editing your images by using artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse an image and then suggest a number of templates that you can apply to enhance or process your image.

For photographers an image editors this may take a little getting used to. If you don’t like the template based approach to processing images, you can take a more traditional approach to processing your images and use the edit section, this will combine AI sliders, traditional sliders and effects to help you process your image.

What I am not sure about 

I get the concept of templates etc.. and I understand that my image is been analysed by AI, but nothing happens to my image until I apply a template. And having created my own template, it seems to me that I still have to manually adjust all settings to get the look I want and then save as a template.

While Luminar AI suggests templates after analysing an image, it does nothing to an image until you apply one?

So, no template means no adjustments? I would have thought that having used all of the power of AI to analyse an image, there would at least be a default image analysed and processed by AI, and then after that some more creative template suggestions…

Because of the way the software is working, you need to click on each template to see what it does. I found this to be a little frustrating as I am clicking around templates to try and get a look that I like. To my way of thinking there should be a default image analysed and processed by the AI to give you a baselined image to start with. After that you can check out the templates for a more creative look.

What I don’t like at the moment

The templates that come with Luminar AI are limited, therefore you end up using the same templates over and over again. You can purchase more templates but that will work out to be expensive. Its much easier to create your own templates.

Example Workflow

I still like to run my RAW files through DxO Photolab as there is no better RAW file editor on the market. So the images below show:

• An unprocessed RAW file converted to Jpeg shot on my Lumix GX8.
• A RAW file processed in DxO photolab using a Landscape Preset.
• The final image, processed in Luminar AI and using a template I created for myself.

The thing to remember and the promise of Luminar AI is to allow you to spend less time editing and more time creating, the final image was a one-click edit. Dispensing with adjusting things like, exposure, highlights, shadows, white balance, and using HSL adjustments etc…

You can check out Luminar AI here