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Winter Edit With Texture Overlays in Luminar Neo Including Two Free Textures

 Last January we had some days with snow and people were rushing out to have some fun with it before all melted away, which is often the case were I live. I took my camera and went out into the falling snow and saw some people from my neighbourhood with their kid sleighing down a small hill nearby.  Here is the finished edit of the scenery: Enjoying A Winter Day RAW - Edit in Luminar Unedited RAW Image -  I started with the Enhance AI tool. I set the Accent AI value to 32 which was enough and brought out lights and contrasts, which I found helpful with this monotone snowy image. -   I changed into the Develop module where I enhanced the Exposure always keeping an eye on the Histogram because with snow you quickly run into burned out highlights.  - I also decreased the Highlight a bit and added more blacks. Especially reducing the lights is helpful, because I found that blend modes such as Overlay and Soft Light work better when editing with texture overla...
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Luminar Neo - My First Impressions new





Mystical Woods - move mouse over  for an before / after
   

In December of last year I was asked whether I'd like to take a look and try out the photo edit software Luminar Neo. So I was provided with the program and the extensions pack. At the moment there are seven extensions available, I installed four of them that I thought could be useful in my workflow. These are Noiseless Ai, Upscale Ai, Supersharp Ai and Magic Light Ai. 

Until I was asked to try Luminar Neo, I had not heard of the program, but the opportunity to partner with Skylum and make some additional money convinced me to take a look. That means: This text contains affiliate links.


What is Luminar Neo?

Skylum's Luminar Neo is a photo editing tool that makes editing your photos quite simple. Many of its features are enhanced by artificial intelligence that lead to sometimes stunning results and are intuitive and easy to use.





Lightroom and Photoshop plugin

I almost exclusively edit my images in Lightroom and Photoshop, so I was pleased to find out, that one can edit images via a plugin (that was easily installed btw) in Luminar Neo. The result shows up as a new image in LR and would be eligible for further editing. 

One image edited in Luminar and the other in Lightroom


Luminar Edit

Lightroom Edit



I processed some photos via the LR plugin, but also solely in Luminar Neo to see how that works. 


Sky Replacement

Every review of Luminar is talking about the Sky ai - tool and I had to try that. It was quite stunningly accurate and easy to use. I am looking forward to use it on a variety of pics with different light conditions and foregrounds.

Have look at this image where I used it

     
December Parkway
   

Layers in Luminar Neo

The other feature that triggered my interest is the ability to add layers. I often use textures and overlays to add elements an interest to my images. Although this feature isn't as powerful and versatile as Photoshop, I found, that it is sufficient to create images, that doesn't further editing in Photoshop.

I was able to change this rather simple dark scene into an moody greenish image adjusting light, sharpness and the tones of the trees and of course, by adding texture layers and bird overlays.




Hazzy Tree - move mouse over to see before/after effect
   



Conclusion

I really have only scratched the surface, but I must say that I am quite satisfied with what I was capable to achieve with this software. If you have some experience with other photo editing software (LR, PS, Affinity..) you'll quickly find your way in. I think that LN is also much easier to learn for people with only little experience, while enabling them to create superb images.

So, good first impressions.

I will explore Luminar Neo further and you can expect to read about thus here on my blog.


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