There will be times when you need the precision, control and subtlety of regular layers and masks, but for the rest of the time there’s this! Anyone who’s ever tried to replace a sky in Photoshop who then tries this will be blown away. It doesn’t produce a flawless result every single time, but it’s so effective, so often, that it’s really rather extraordinary. So does the AI Sky Replacement filter work? You bet. So really, you are still importing these images for editing, and with no option to save a single image as a bespoke Luminar file, the old Luminar file format for single re-editable images seems to have gone.

Luminar 4 can also edit single images that are not currently imported into its library, but it goes about this in a rather odd way – you can drag single images on to the app icon to open them, but they are automatically imported into a special album and your editing changes are still stored non-destructively within the Library. Very often you might want to use Lightroom for your organizing and processing and just switch to Luminar for its creative effects – similarly, you might use Photoshop for layers and retouching and use Luminar at the end to add a specific ‘look’. The ability to use Luminar 4 as a plug-in is welcome.

Annoyingly, there's no quick option to export a processed image back to the original photo's folder – you have to navigate to it manually. It sounds a small point, but it does make the export process more tiresome than it should be.Īs usual with non-destructive photo editing programs, you have to export a processed version of an edited image for other programs and users. Second, with non-destructive photo editors like these, you need to ‘export’ a processed image if you want to publish it or share it – and Luminar doesn’t offer the option to export an image straight back to the folder where the original is stored – you have to navigate to the export folder you want manually. First, it doesn’t yet offer ‘virtual copies’ (we’re told they’re on the roadmap), so you can’t create different versions of a picture with different ‘looks’. Luminar 4 misses a couple of key features, however, that the others have.

This has become a standard way of working for many programs, not just Lightroom, such as Exposure X5, ON1 Photo RAW 2020 and Capture One Pro. Luminar 4 also offers Lightroom-style non-destructive editing, so that even after you’ve closed an image or even quit the software, you can go back later and change or remove any of your settings. You can create Albums to 'virtually' group together images stored in different folders, though. Luminar 4 has its own integrated browsing and cataloguing tools, complete with non-destructive editing, though it doesn't offer more advanced options like virtual copies, smart albums or search tools. These are fast and effective, and while they’re not as sophisticated as Lightroom’s, for example, they’re probably enough for casual users. We also have to talk about Luminar 4’s integrated image browsing and cataloguing tools. These are a great way to get ideas for effects to apply to your photos, and you’ll soon build a list of favorites – and you can of course create and add your own. These adjustments and effects can be applied manually using Luminar 4’s four newly-streamlined workspaces, or via single-click ‘Looks’ with preset combinations of of filters and effects. It’s not just a photo-enhancer but a powerful image editing tool in the classic sense, offering not just regular tone, color and cropping tools, but geometric corrections, raw processing, image layers and masking… and a whole range of creative effects. It's not astrophotography, but it's a remarkable technical achievement. Luminar dropped in this perfectly masked night sky into a regular daytime photo with just a handful of mouseclicks, even shifting the overall exposure and colors to match the sky.

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