LUMINAR NEO VS LUMINAR 4 UPDATE
LUMINAR NEO VS LUMINAR 4 SOFTWARE
LUMINAR NEO VS LUMINAR 4 PLUS

LUMINAR NEO VS LUMINAR 4 SOFTWARE

To be upfront, I stopped using Skylum software back in early 2020 when various maintenance updates failed to deliver a robust version of Luminar 4.

Share works as long as your mobile doesn’t go into sleep mode.

Presets are rudimentary and slow in operation – 3 seconds or more to apply on my hardware.

Almost no utilisation of GPU capabilities so heavy on CPU and memory usage.

Overall performance is lack-lustre especially given the marketing hype of an “all new core engine”.

LUMINAR NEO VS LUMINAR 4 UPDATE

Some editing functions are very laggy between slider movement and image update.Layer feature is very basic – just image layers and not the effects layers as expected.Some users report stability / usability issues especially when opening the software.No perspective adjustment tools provided.Still no oportunity to create virtual copies.

Can get very slow if you do lots of complex edits which use multiple Ai masks eg Bokah Ai with Relight Ai.Very limited portraiture functionality especially when compared with say On1 PhotoRAW 2022.

Some core tools missing such as clone & stamp, histogram, dodge & burn, over / under exposure indicators.Weirdly complicated workflow which is very likely to confuse a lot of users.Share images from a connected mobile device.Probably the best sky replacement of any tool out there today.Some innovative tools such as Bokah Ai, Relight Ai and Powerline, Dust Bunny removal.Image layers (but not effects layers as in Luminar 4) and presets included.Lot’s of editing tools (that do work) with more promised.Demand a bit more from it though and you could come unstuck! Does it do anything well? Yes, as a basic editor it’s very good and inexperienced editors will perhaps be able to overlook its limitations and focus instead on its simplicity and the fact that if you don’t push to to hard, the good results you can achieve. When those improvements will come though is anyone’s guess as there are a great number of them needed to remedy the problems with performance and lack of functionality that exists today. It’s possible of course that over time my feelings about Neo might change, especially if Skylum work on fixing the huge number of problems this software currently exhibits. Yes it can be improved greatly if Skylum listens to it’s customers but they seem to be a company who doesn’t listen or at least they listen but ignore what people are telling them. There’s simply too many issues holding it back and I’m not talking here about features, more the way in which the program works. I fear though that Luminar Neo will need a miracle if its going to compete with the likes of DxO, Lr/Ps, Capture One, On1 PhotoRAW etc within a reasonable timeframe. Improve the UI, provide it with a usable wokflow, add in some of the key functionality it lacks today and improve performance overall and it could easily overturn this finding, especially if core features like Relight Ai can be improved upon.

LUMINAR NEO VS LUMINAR 4 PLUS

There’s simply too much missing in terms of functionality plus its clunky in use and its workflow feels overly complex. In my opinion, and this is based on Neo as it stands today, I simply don’t feel that it is ready for prime-time use. Read on if you want a more in-depth overview. Rather than make you wait for my findings, here’s a summary of how I feel about Luminar Neo after a couple of weeks of using the software.

Luminar neo vs luminar 4