Luminar AI is here and it is promising photographers and digital media specialists improved workflow in terms of both efficiency and artistic creativity.
Naturally, given the “AI” in its name, Luminar AI seeks to automate many of the processes that required manual input in the past. This can be a double-edged benefit with many automated processes cutting out the photographer’s ability to tweak and customize to their heart’s content. Not so with Luminar AI, the company actually says the tech was built from the ground up with the artist and their needs in mind.
Skylum CEO Alex Tsepko said of the product: “Our approach to AI lines up with that of the best minds in the field. What differentiates Skylum is our human-centric application of this incredibly powerful technology. In my experience, only 30% of our time is actually spent being creative. Luminar AI uses artificial intelligence to flip those metrics. We created Luminar AI so people can focus on the outcomes and photos, and not worry so much about the editing process.”
One of the major features of the Luminar AI is its ability to look at your photos and figure out what is going on in them. Why would it need to do this? The software works to automate processes through a mechanism called “Templates.” Somewhat equivalent to presets, these “Templates” use the interpreted information in your photo and apply these presets automatically.
Some examples include portraits, sky replacement, and even atmosphere.
Of course, Skylum CPO Dima Sytnik gives a much better explanation of what Templates are and how they work from a technological standpoint.
DPReview quotes the CPO saying of the feature, “The built-in AI assistant in Templates sees the relationships between all of the elements in a photo, thanks to 3D depth mapping. Templates are designed with the help of many incredibly well-respected photographers and photo editors, to achieve very specific edits and enhancements to individual components of an image.”
If you’d like to check it out, you can do so over on their website at this link.
Does the new Luminar AI sound appealing to you? Let us know why or why not in the comments section below if you like.
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[DPReview]
2 Comments
Doesn’t appeal to me – not because of any prejudice over AI or processing in general but because the company has a history of holding developments back and then rolling out a ‘new’ version rather than an upgrade – essentially they are operating a subscription model but of course they have the caveat ‘well you can carry on using v2…..etc’. If they thought that that was a great deal, why develop ? (Yes I know the answer).
Doesn’t see that much difference between this and luminar 4 . Getting old with their continuing $100 new versions. I have every version so far but at this rate might as well subscribe to Lightroom .