Use MAPPING10 for a Luminar Neo discount code

As a travel blogger, it should come as no surprise that I take a lot of photos. But for every thousand photos I take (that’s basically one day’s worth!), I might only end up with a handful that are worthy enough to share with the world.

The biggest problem is photo editing, because this can be extremely time consuming. I tend to stick with basic edits because traditional photo editing software takes a long time to master and use if you’re diving into all available tools. 

Now though, AI technology is entering the world of photo editing to make our lives easier. And I’m excited!

Luminar Neo, with its innovative AI-driven tools offers an easy-to-use photo editing software that provides novice photo editors the chance to easily create professional-looking images in just a few clicks, if not just a single click. 

Many professional photographers have already reviewed Skylum’s popular new Luminar Neo photo editing software, but I’ve found these reviews go into extensive detail that can get a bit complicated to understand.

So I want to offer a more simplified beginner’s guide to Luminar Neo in laymen’s terms of what you can expect with this product and how it can help you start rescuing your images and allowing you to quickly and easily meet all your creative photography needs.

Because we all deserve the photos we see in our mind when we initially click the shutter!

Luminar Neo: Achieve Impressive Photo Editing Results with Little Effort or Time

Brief History of Skylum

Luminar Neo is the latest photo editing gift to the world brought to you by Skylum, a software company that was created by a few amateur photographers like myself.

The company started off with just iOS apps and then branched out to provide photo editing software for Mac and Windows. 

Skylum’s photo editing apps and software have won a number of awards over the years and Luminar Neo will no doubt become another front runner when it comes to the most popular and easy-to-use photo editing software out there today. 

So What Exactly is Luminar Neo?

Luminar Neo is the latest photo editing software in the Luminar family and replaces its predecessor Luminar AI. Luminar Neo also easily integrates with other photo editing software you may already have such as  software like Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom. 

First off, I love the name, as Neo was of course the main character in the Matrix movie franchise who himself was a computer programmer and was thought to be destined to be “The One” to bring peace and end the war between humans and machines.

This is fitting because Luminar Neo has eliminated the frustration and aggravation of photo editing to actually make the process an enjoyable experience. 

Luminar Neo, whose performance and speed has been enhanced with an upgraded engine, offers users a wide range of new advanced features and utilises AI to make photo editing easier and faster than ever before. The software is available for Mac and Windows and supports around a dozen different languages besides English including Spanish, French, and German.  

While software like Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom may be able to produce some impressive results when it comes to photo editing, the real challenge is the difficulty and time needed to achieve those results in these complex software.

Most people with jobs or those like me who are raising a small child simply rarely can find the time needed to sit and edit photos in bulk. 

Luminar Neo’s easy-to-use interface and specialised AI-powered tools are actually, dare I say it, fun to use. It excels for those people who are new to photo editing but still packs plenty of tools and features to please advanced or professional photographers looking to really fine tune their images in little time. 

Handy Presets allow you to apply photo effects with a single click and the AI technology used actually scans your photos in order to suggest edits it deems would be suitable for each image.

In this way, Luminar Neo encourages you to experiment with your images and makes what would otherwise be complicated edits that could take you all day to achieve now become possible in just seconds. 

Adding Photos to Luminar Neo and Sharing

Too often, the battle of photo editing begins from the moment you try to upload images into editing software. This process too is made easy by Luminar Neo with a simple “Add Photos” button. 

While other photo editing software often import the images into their programs and creates a duplicate image, Neo simply pulls the images from their original location without creating a copy which means your photos load or pop up much faster. 

The approach Neo takes is great for people that are in a hurry to edit photos such as travel bloggers on the go such as myself.

Just keep in mind that you don’t want to delete your images off your camera’s memory card or external hard drive because again there is no duplicate image created within or stored on Neo. And removing your SD card or detaching a hard drive will mean your photos will no longer be detected by Neo to edit. 

Luminar Neo also makes it easy to use a simple app to allow you to make edits to images taken with your smartphone.

Simply use the app to wirelessly transfer images from your phone to the software on your laptop and then transfer them back to your phone to share on your socials. 

Luminar Neo Presets

Presets use AI to suggest one-click edits that can transform your images from dull to Instagrammable in seconds. You can quickly give your images a complete makeover without having to fiddle with adjustment sliders.

AI’s intelligence saves you the hassle of spending a great deal of time experimenting with various adjustments to eventually end up with something that you are pleased with.

There are a number of included presets to get you started and then you can purchase fresh new presets from the Luminar Marketplace when they become available or you can sign up for a membership program that will give you access to over 120 new and exclusive presets annually. 

Play around with presets to help inspire you in terms of what personal artistic flair you want to give your photos and then save those you find most useful as your favourites to quickly access them for future use.

You can also create your own presets that will incorporate a series of manual edits you have made to an image so that these same edits can be applied with a single click to other images to create a similar result.  

Finding the right presets is easy as they are grouped according to subject or theme such as those that would be useful for nature, landscape, wedding, portrait, macro, or B&W photography.

Within each category, you will find a number of presets to create various effects such as giving your images a vintage or cinematic look or creating dramatic skies in the case of landscape shots. 

Editing with Luminar Neo

Luminar Neo now allows you to work in layers which is extremely handy because you can now apply editing tools to any layer and modify edits to individual layers without losing work done to other layers.

Another great feature is batch processing which allows you to make edits to several images at once which is useful when editing a series of photos that were taken in similar lighting conditions.

You’ll find all the traditional editing tools such as a clone tool, ability to crop, adjust colour and lighting, get rid of noise, etc. Each tool brings up sub-menus and allows you to make adjustments with sliders if you do wish to spend more time making manual edits as opposed to using simple presets. 

Removing dust spots on your images caused by your camera’s sensor can be done very quickly and easily, as is removing unwanted objects such as random strangers or tourists in your travel shots, eliminating overhead power lines that spoil your beautiful landscape shots, or other distracting objects and elements that distract you from the main subject of your photo.  

You can go as basic or involved as you wish with manual edits which makes Luminar Neo great for both beginner photographers as well as more advanced ones who have a greater understanding of editing tools and how they can each be used to enhance images. 

Standout Editing Features

Another major highlight for me personally with Luminar Neo is the way it handles Edit History.

Normally, I have found if you wish to go back to an earlier version of your image after playing around with edits, you end up losing a bunch of your edits.

Neo uses parametric sequencing as opposed to sequential rendering which allows you to go back and alter various edits you previously did while also keeping others in place so you don’t lose all your hard work. 

Neo also allows you to adjust light in a “three-dimensional space” within your images which makes it easier to get the lighting results you want in various parts of your image.

AI technology can recognise and differentiate various subjects or objects such as a face or sky and then you can make edits to just those objects without affecting the rest of the image. What this does is greatly minimise the chances of your images looking edited or retouched.  

AI edits will allow you to retouch portraits for social media in seconds, creating smooth skin, eliminating blemishes, whitening teeth, etc. And you can enhance skies or create moods in your photos through the various AI edits. 

While you may find similar AI editing tools in other programs, none seem to be as user-friendly as those found in Luminar Neo. Just a few of the popular AI tools you can utilise include Portrait Background Remover, Portrait Bokeh, Sky AI, and those that can make edits to body, face, and skin.

Honest Photo Editing

Especially in the travel world, the ethics of photo editing is often questioned, but as long as you are not trying to mislead people in a deceitful way or attempt to retouch photos to cause harm or conflict, then there is really nothing wrong with editing. 

Editing photos is simply a way to artistically express how you personally see the world or to accurately recreate special moments when your camera failed to capture the true colours or lighting you witnessed or human error made your image flawed. 

Honest photo editing is less about deception and more about showcasing a moment in time at its greatest potential and true brilliance or a way to express your artistic talent to create your own special moment that may not be possible in the real world.

Luminar Neo’s Extensions

One of the best things about Neo is that it just keeps getting better thanks to its offering of extensions which act in a similar way to how third-party plugins work for other software.

One of the biggest advantages of signing up for Luminar Neo’s Pro plan is that it includes all current and future extensions so they need not be purchased separately.

The availability of extensions acting as continuous updates only makes the process of editing photos more seamless and engaging as time goes on. 

One of the visions of Luminar Neo was to create a single photo editing software that could quickly and easily tackle any editing task that will allow creative photographers the ability to bring their visions to life without becoming an arduous task so they can instead keep doing what they really enjoy and that is taking photos. 

Installing the Extensions is easy and there have already been a number of very useful extensions such as:

HDR Merge

This feature allows you to merge numerous exposure-bracketed images to create a single HDR photo that would otherwise be impossible to achieve any other way.

Some cameras have the ability to create HDR images but getting good results is often hit or miss. 

Usually you need to have a tripod to avoid blur or getting a dreaded double image effect and you can often only merge 2 bracketed images whereas Neo allows you to merge up to 10 to achieve really impressive results. 

Noiseless AI

Photo noise is usually not welcomed by photographers and this extension allows you to reduce the noise level on your photos.

Noise is basically when your photos look grainy and is often a result of shooting in low or poor lighting conditions which has you often having to rely on using high ISO settings or long exposure times.  

Because excessive noise in an image usually detracts from an image, any chance to remove it is usually welcomed unless of course you are looking to create a vintage look. Noiseless AI works well with both raw and non-raw image formats.

Supersharp AI

I think it’s safe to say that 90% of the time, photographers are seeking super sharp photos unless they are trying to showcase motion or create light trails. Achieving sharpness is not always easy and is often one of the main factors that make an image unusable. 

Supersharp AI can help rescue those images that suffer from motion blur or out-of-focus subjects to help remove the blur and create a photo that is much sharper.

So whether blur was caused by shooting wildlife with a long lens in low light or a portrait of someone where they moved slightly, you can help get images looking crisp again. 

Background Removal AI

Should you wish to isolate a subject in your shots and remove the background, this tool is a lifesaver.

You can select a single subject or multiple subjects with very little effort and then instantly remove the background so you can then transplant a new background to create more artistic photographs that go beyond what was reality.

This tool is especially useful for creating promotional items or logos.

I have many times needed to isolate subjects within images so that they can be simplified without distracting background elements and then be used for things like banners or branding on my website. 

Magic Light

Easily control multiple light sources in your photo by adjusting their intensity, glow, or adding effects. Sliders within the tool allow you to have incredible control over light emanating from various sources within your photos. 

Upscale AI

Easily enhance the image resolution in a way that looks natural with Upscale AI.

You can achieve a higher resolution image that adds detail even in places where it was not present, creating a sharp image without noise and artefacts while also preserving the true details of the subjects in your photos. 

Focus Stacking

Overcoming the limits of depth of field in photography can be a great challenge. It can often be quite tricky to create an image where you achieve sharpness in the foreground, middle ground, and background all at the same time.

Your lens focal length, distance from subject and aperture all play a role in determining how much of your subject you are photographing will be in sharp focus. 

Focus stacking allows you to take several different shots of the same scene or subject, each time focusing on a different area of your subject from the foreground to the background and then using this tool to blend the images into a single image where you achieve a greater depth of field than would otherwise have been achieve within a single image.

The result is all parts of your subject being in sharp focus instead of some areas being blurred.

Luminar Neo Plans

There are a number of plans available for you to make use of Luminar Neo yourself and they include the Explore, Pro, and Lifetime plans.

With the Explore and Pro plans, you have the option of paying monthly or receiving a discount for enrolling in a yearly subscription. But if you are after the best bang for your buck, the best plan is undoubtedly the Yearly Pro Plan.

The Pro Plan allows you to use Luminar Neo on two devices as opposed to just one as is the case with the Explore and Lifetime plans. The other major reason to opt for the Pro Plan is that it comes with all the incredible existing and future-released pro-level Extensions with AI-based tools at no extra cost. 

Enjoy 24/7 technical support with all plans as well as a 30-day money back guarantee. This makes it easy to give Luminar Neo a try risk-free and you can always get help answering any questions regarding how to get the most out of the software. 

While Luminar Neo is definitely not the only photo editing software out there that offers a wide range of useful editing tools, I challenge you to find any that make the process as simple and time saving as Neo does. 

But don’t take my word for it, try Luminar Neo for yourself (click here) and I look forward to hopefully seeing your photo creations posted online. 

Use the discount code MAPPING10 when you checkout!