Leaving Lightroom for Luminar Neo
I did it. I just finished deleting all of the Adobe apps from my computer. It took a while to clean up all the files that had built up within the apps I was using, pretty much just Lightroom and Photoshop. I thought I would let you know why I am ditching Adobe and how I found another photo editing software to take its place.
When I got back into photography earnestly about 10 years ago, I did some courses and took a lot of photos. And then did what so many other beginning photographers do, I signed up for Adobe services. I played around with Photoshop a little, but by far the software that I used the most was Lightroom. To make sure I could use both of the apps, I signed up for the Photography Plan, which also included a bunch of other apps as well. When I signed up all those years ago, I think I might have been paying ten or eleven dollars a month. With tax my monthly cost after the latest price increase was almost $25. That is $300 a year! The cost wasn’t the only reason I decided to switch to another software.
My digital camera is a Fujifilm X-T2 and as the name would suggest it uses Fujifilm’s X-Trans sensor. That sensor doesn’t play super well with Lightroom. If you look super close it can leave these little stringy artifacts in the images. For the most part I have looked past this as I am not a pixel peeper and I thought the images look okay. But with the last cost increase, I thought why am I paying so much for something that only does an average job of editing my photos. There had to be another option.
I began to look and see what the alternatives were and was surprised to find that there are quite a lot. The one that is most often suggested by Fujifilm shooters is Capture One, but it is just about as expensive with a montlhy subscription of $20 or a full license at $420. So it would take me over a year of Adobe costs to pay for it and so decided there must be another option. DxO Photolab is another choice and it is significantly cheaper at $229 for a full license or about 10 months of an Adobe subscription, it seemed that it lacked a lot of the features of Lightroom though like focus stacking. The last one that looked at was Skylum’s Luminar Neo which is currently available for $169 or about 7 months of an Adobe Subscription. Just as I was thinking about the benefits of each one, I actually had Skylum reach out to me to see if I wanted to try Luminar Neo. So just to declare my bias here, I did get a license from Skylum so that I could check it out and do a review. I will be writing a complete review of Luminar Neo at a later date as I have only been using it for a couple weeks so far. That said, I will provide you with my first impressions of it and how it is going as a replacement for Lightroom.
As far as user interface goes, if you know your way around Lightroom, you will be able to find your way around Luminar Neo. The placement of the toggles is not exactly the same and they don’t all have the same names, but overall it makes sense and you get the hang of it quickly. Compared to Lightroom, I would say that the AI features are more front and centre. As most of you know, I lean to the ‘not using AI’ in my photography, but I also think there is a big difference between using a Large Language Model to create a photo from nothing, and using an AI to purposefully tweak your photo so that you get the artistic output you want. The latter I think is great, just make sure you acknowledge your process. The main three tools that Luminar Neo has, at least in its base form are GenErase, GenSwap, and GenExpand, there are a ton more that lean on AI, but are maybe less noticeable in the editing menu. I haven’t really played with GenSwap and GenExpand, but the generative erase feature is great as an alternative to the normal erase tool that is in the editing suite of tools. The main thing I use an erase tool for is getting rid of dust in my black and white photos and the GenErase tool does an amazing job. I can’t see any mysterious smudging which you often get in the non-ai tools and in Lightroom. I also tried removing other things in a photo like powerlines and people and it really does an impressive job. Again, I personally don’t do this in photos I publish because I like a mess of wires if they were there, but the option is there. I have included a couple of before and after photos below. I will say that as with a lot of AI software, there is a delay while it does its work, you do get a cool graphic on your screen as it does it but apart from that will take a moment to render, though part of this may be my very old laptop that does not have a powerful GPU running in it. I am going to keep playing with the software for a couple of more weeks before I write a full review, so far I am having a lot of fun exploring this new world.
Before with powerlines
After using powerline removal tool
If you would like to try out Luminar Neo and you want to support Sidewalking Victoria, please visit their site through this link. I really do think it is a great product and a great way to stop sending so much money to Adobe. Just to be super clear though, this is an affiliate link and no matter how much I am trying to be unbiased, the fact is that I was given the software for free and I receive compensation if people purchase the product after reading my articles. Please take that and what I say with the full grain of salt that it requires. If you have any questions or thoughts about the software, please leave me a comment. I am happy to try things out for you and let you know how it works!
Created using stacked images in Luminar Neo