Skylum announces Luminar Neo
Today Skylum announced a new product - Luminar Neo. They are billing this a new product and a new member of the Luminar family. It is a separate application from Luminar AI and Luminar AI will continue to be sold. So, what’s new, and what’s the difference?
They haven’t announced a huge number of details at this stage - as it’s primarily an announcement rather than a release. They will continue to provide updates over the next while as they edge closer to an actual shipping product. The gist of it is that Luminar Neo will be a more advanced image editor, with layers, more functionality, and an entirely new imaging engine. Think of it as “Photoshop” to Luminar AI’s “Lightroom.” - This is just an analogy, of course. They are also keen to point out that this is an “Image” editor rather than purely a “Photo” editor, meaning that it can be used for more than just pure photography.
I’m not going to go into too many details here, as you can find out everything you need to know about it on the Skylum website.
Of the things they did announce though, there are some useful tools, including AI-based dust and spot removal (thank you!), AI-based image relighting and AI-based masks for layers. You can also apply any tool to any layer in any order (and multiple times).
They are offering early bird discounts too for those who want to get on board early, and full details of that are available on their website too. They do say that there will be a 30-day return policy from the date of shipping, so if you’re not happy, you can get a refund after the application is available.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to write about this, or even whether to report it at all. In the past, when they did a similar release for Luminar AI, many people let me know they weren’t happy with the way it was handled. There was also some discord with the way they started a whole new application rather than continuing with Luminar 4. Now it appears as if they’re doing the same things again. However, the company did go to great pains to say that Luminar AI is not end-of-life and will continue to get operating system performance updates and camera support. However, they do consider it “feature complete” and they won’t be adding major new features. For what it’s worth, it does seem that Luminar Neo will be a very different application from Luminar AI - so rather than a new version it will be a new member of the family. At least that’s what I was told.
Take from that what you will.
I do think the little details that have provided sound interesting, but I’m reserving any judgement until they actually show more. I wish these announcements weren’t so controversial, and I can understand if some readers are a bit perplexed and annoyed by this. However, given that it’s a well-known application, and I’ve covered it in the past, I felt I should at least post about it.
Anyway, let me know your thoughts in the comments, and if I can answer any questions based on the little I know or am allowed say, I will do my best. Do you want me to keep covering the pre-release, or should I avoid it until there is an actual application to talk about?
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