A photogenic vantage point, a camera and a standard lens are the bare essentials required for landscape photography, making it one of the most accessible genres of all. But serious landscape photography is anything but accessible. Seasoned landscape photographers operate at unsociable hours, travel huge distances and visit the same locations over and over again to capture the best conditions.
Not everybody has the time and means to capture incredible landscape photos, but with Luminar Neo’s wide range of AI-infused photo-editing tools, even dull scenes devoid of a sunset or great lighting can be transformed into beautiful vistas that you’re proud of.
Nothing beats getting it right in-camera, of course, but if you’re a hobbyist photographer who has limited time to dedicate to your hobby or simply cannot get to and from certain locations early in the morning or late in the evening, then tools such as Sky AI and Light Depth will allow you to transform your photographs into something really special.
First and foremost, photography should be enjoyable, and one of my favorite things about Luminar Neo is that although it can handle manual RAW editing, it can also be a lot of fun. Even as a photographer and journalist with years of editing experience, I actively enjoy playing around with many of the software’s more casual appointments.
For those at the beginning of their journey or those whose passion for photography has cooled, never underestimate the importance of having fun. Ultimately, the goal is to get out there and capture the moment in-camera; Luminar Neo might just give you the confidence and motivation to do just that.
Luminar Neo: Ditch a dull sky
The dedicated Landscape panel in the Edit tab collects all of Luminar Neo’s specialist landscape tools in one place. It’s here that you’ll find one of its most impressive tools: Sky AI. In my opinion, Skylum does sky replacement better than anyone else. The automated masking tends to work very well and once you’ve chosen a sky preset (or imported your own), you can reposition the sky and amend the mask using a series of intuitive sliders.
If you intend to replace a sky, it’s important that you do so before any other edits. This is because you’ll need to match the tones and lighting of your new background throughout the rest of the image. Thankfully, Luminar Neo gives you a helping hand with the Sky AI tools’ Scene Relighting panel. This allows you to balance the strength and saturation of the lighting in the original image to better match the lighting of the replacement sky.
Luminar Neo: Create consistent lighting
I then like to move out of the Landscape panel and into the Creative panel, which houses my favorite tool in Luminar Neo’s arsenal: Light Depth. This insanely powerful feature automates a 3D map of your image, which is displayed in the panel itself. Increase the Amount slider and you’ll notice an area of the map will turn light grey. This charts the area of the image that’s affected by the Light Depth tool.
What I love about the map is that you can interact with it directly. Simply drag the grey area around to move the Light Depth effect and enlarge the bounding box to increase the affected area. You can then use the Softness slider to feather light fall-off and the Warmth slider to control the color temperature.
Luminar Neo: Blend colors and tones
Another hugely useful tool is Color, which can be found in the Essentials panel. This doesn’t just allow you to control both saturation and vibrance, but also features a HSL dropdown menu, allowing you to alter the hue, saturation and luminosity of individual colors for greater control.
Take my image of Glastonbury Tor, for example; I can use HSL to give the green grasses a more yellow hue, akin to my sunset. Another way of doing this, which affords you less control but is much easier, is to head into the Landscape tool in the Landscape panel and increase the Golden Hour slider. This will immediately bathe your image in golden hues to match a golden sunset.
Once I’m happy with my image, I like to finish with the Enhance AI tool to bind everything together. This can be found in the Essentials tab and can feel a little like watching a magic trick. With just one slider, you can intelligently apply a huge range of tonal edits including exposure, contrast and saturation in one fell swoop. The temptation can be to overcook this tool, but at this late stage, you’ll likely benefit from applying it sparingly.
Luminar Neo: Your personal retouching tutor
It’s also worth mentioning Luminar Neo’s AI Assistant. If you’re a newcomer to the software, this is a great way to get up to speed almost instantly. It can be found in the bottom-right corner of the Presets and Edit tabs, look for a roundel with a speech bubble.
When active, you can either select from automatically generated prompts or enter your own text-based prompts. The AI Assistant will then provide you with up to three presets that can be applied to your image. Alternatively, you can ask ‘How to’ prompts, which will provide text-based instructions, allowing you to apply the edits yourself.
Luminar Neo is available on macOS and Windows. You can try the seven-day free trial before committing to a perpetual license with one year of unlimited upgrades, from $99 / £99. The software can be used standalone or in conjunction with Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom Classic as a plug-in, as well as Luminar Mobile for cross-device editing.
