Skylum Luminar should appeal to photographers who don't want to pay a monthly fee for photo editing software. It stands out by providing a competitive set of core editing tools and a useful natural-language search engine in a straightforward interface for a reasonable one-time price. Moreover, a broad range of somewhat useful AI features, including generative removal, photo restoration, and sky replacement, is available via an annual subscription. That said, Luminar doesn't perform well with big galleries, lacks keyword and metadata filtering, and still can't compete with top alternatives on noise reduction. As such, we've lowered its rating by half a star since our last review. Adobe Lightroom and Lightroom Classic remain our Editors' Choice winners because of their rock-solid reliability and superlative Raw development tools. Meanwhile, Photoshop is our favorite app for pixel-level photo manipulation.

Pricing: Luminar Is the Cure for Subscription Fatigue

Skylum sells three versions of Luminar, each with a seven-day trial.

The Desktop Only package ($129) gets you access to the macOS and Windows versions of the app on up to two devices, along with ongoing bug fixes, performance updates, and support for new cameras. This tier also includes one year of access to generative AI editing tools (AI Assistant, GenErase, GenExpand, GenSwap, and Restoration).

Stepping up to the All Platforms package ($159) adds support for Luminar's iOS and Android apps, includes the Spaces web gallery service, and grants you access to the forthcoming Luminar on the web editor, slated for release later this year. This tier also lets you install the app on up to two desktops and as many mobile devices as you want.

Finally, the Max option ($199) unlocks access to a library of assets, such as LUTs, overlays, presets, and sky replacements, which you can download and use even after the year is up.

(Credit: Skylum/PCMag)

If you want to continue using generative AI editing tools or retain access to the aforementioned library of assets, you need to keep paying for Luminar Prime ($69 per year). Subscribing to this add-on also brings your software up to the latest version.

Luminar's pricing model is refreshingly flexible in that you can buy the software and use it for as long as you'd like, while upgrading only to the latest model or paying for AI features and other assets as you want. Other Raw workflow applications rely entirely on a subscription model or cost a lot more. Adobe, for example, charges $119.88 per year for its Lightroom plan, which includes both Lightroom and Lightroom Classic, the mobile Lightroom app, and 1TB of cloud storage. Capture One Pro is even more expensive; you pay $216 per year for its desktop-only plan or roughly $296 per year if you want to use its mobile app. Even a perpetual license for Capture One costs far more at $349. DxO PhotoLab 10 falls somewhere in between. A perpetual license costs $249.99, with upgrades from recent versions available for $129.99.

What's New in Luminar?

The biggest change since our last review is that Skylum dropped the "Neo" from the product name. As explained above, the latest pricing structure now means the core features are available for a one-time payment, while access to AI features and assets requires an ongoing subscription.

The app's interface also benefits from a redesign. The Catalog and Edit tools are now on a single screen, and the right sidebar gets a fresh look. In addition to support for new cameras and a heap of more improvements, Skylum also gains a load of new features. Here are the highlights:

• Auto Adjust: This feature tweaks exposure, color, and other adjustment sliders based on an image's content with a single click.
• Bokeh AI: Luminar can soften backgrounds for images captured at a narrow aperture, letting you select the shape of the specular highlights.
• Face AI: Portrait photographers can use Face AI to brighten or slim faces, enhance eye and lip color, and remove dark circles under eyes. 
• Light Depth: Landscape photographers can use Light Depth to simulate dramatic, directional lighting for images captured on flat, gray days.
• Mobile to Desktop Syncing: With the All Platforms and Max plans, Luminar automatically syncs edits you make on your phone or tablet back to the desktop client.
• Restoration: This new generative AI feature restores color and removes dirt and scratches from damaged prints.
• Skin AI: Portrait photographers can use Skin AI to remove blemishes, smooth wrinkles, and eliminate shiny highlights from faces and full-body images.
• Spaces: The All Platforms and Max versions of Luminar give you access to Spaces, a web gallery service for hosting and sharing your photos. 

Additionally, Luminar is planning a Fall 2026 update, which you will get with any new purchase of the software. The update includes four upgraded features: AI Assistant 2.0 (an upgrade to the current AI help guide), Atmosphere 2.0 (adds fog effects to images), Crop 2.0 (an automatic crop mode), and Enhance 2.0 (an automatic develop option).

System Requirements: 16GB of Memory Recommended

Luminar requires Windows 10 (version 1909 or later), Windows 11, or macOS 13 or later. The app needs 10GB of disk space for installation, and Skylum recommends 16GB of RAM, though you can still get by with 8GB. You need to set up an account to get started, but the software doesn't support multi-factor authentication or passkeys, so make sure to use a strong password.

You can download Luminar directly from Skylum's website, or install the desktop app via the Mac App Store or Microsoft Store. All licenses let you install the desktop app on two systems, but will only let you run the software on one at a time. This restriction doesn’t apply to the mobile app; you can use it while Luminar is open on your desktop. Skylum doesn't impose an activation limit on mobile devices, either.

Luminar is also available as a Lightroom Classic plug-in, in which case it functions as an external editor. No plug-ins are available for Luminar, but you can purchase editing presets, sky replacements, LUTs, and overlays from its Marketplace. This is the same marketplace that Prime subscribers use to download assets they get with their subscriptions.

Camera Support: Everything Under the Sun

Luminar supports pretty much every mainstream digital camera you can think of. It handles vintage models, including Canon's first Digital Rebel from 2003, up to recent releases like the Sony RX10 V. It leaves out just a couple of oddballs—you can't process images from Sigma's Merrill or Quattro Foveon sensor cameras (Adobe doesn't support them either), and I couldn't get images from the Nikon Z5IIC to load. Granted, the Z5IIC isn't shipping to consumers yet, so it's likely only a matter of time before you can get one. I'm impressed with Luminar's Raw format support; it even handles images from boutique brands like Phase One and Samsung's discontinued NX mirrorless system.

Interface and Ease of Use: Everything on One Screen

Luminar opts for a single-screen interface, though it has two main view options. The Library view shows a folder tree from your hard drive along with dynamic albums (All Photos, Luminar Mobile, On This Day, Recently Added, Recently Deleted, Single Image Edits, Trash) on its left panel, a grid view of the active folder or album in the center, with rating tools at the bottom and develop tools on the right. You can snap back to this view in an instant with a hotkey—L (for library).

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Click on "Tools" on the right or tap E to go to the Edit view. The left panel switches to a panel where you can manage image layers and opacity, the central grid shows a single image, and a filmstrip appears below so you can jump to different photos within the current folder. The right panel opens to show the various develop tools.

Luminar provides dozens of tools for manipulating images, all of them nondestructive, which break down into subsections: Creative, Crop, Essentials, Image Quality, Landscape, Layer Properties Pro, Portrait, and Professional. That's a lot of segmentation, but thankfully the Tools panel also has a Favorites section that lets you add the things you use most often with a simple right-click, as well as easily reorder them.

One note to clear up some confusion: Luminar also has an Edits icon, which shows the history of all the changes you've made and lets you step through different versions or undo changes. It's useful, but the nomenclature is silly—Luminar would be smart to rename Edits to History.

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Speaking of edit history, Luminar includes an easy way to compare the original Raw image with your edited version. To the right of a photo's star rating, favorites, and rejected icons on the bottom strip, you get buttons to enable a split-screen slider view, along with an eyeball icon that reverts back to the original image when you click it.

The program's Presets view (T) is similar to Edit in that it shows a single image, but it suppresses the left panel (Layers) and shows a list of Presets (some free and some paid) to the right of the image. You get dozens of presets to choose from across categories such as Aerial, Cinematic, Essentials, Landscape, Lifestyle, Macro, Mother Nature, and Portrait. If that's not enough, the in-app Marketplace has countless more that you can download. Many Marketplace options are available with a Prime membership, while others are available for purchase à la carte. I like the selection of presets, but am a little annoyed that they appear in a long, skinny pane you can't make any wider—as it stands, it’s a little frustrating to scroll through them.

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Finally, the right panel also has an Extra option, where sundry generative AI tools live. An Info button displays all exposure data and file information for the active image.

Importing and Organization: Useful Natural Language Search, But I Miss Keywords

Luminar takes a flexible approach to catalog management. For instance, you can import folders or individual images into its catalog and browse them in a directory tree, just like in Lightroom. Alternatively, you can make one-off edits to photos directly from a memory card or external drive just by opening the file.

Single-image edits are convenient at times, though if you're managing a personal or professional photo archive, I recommend importing images and building a directory structure that makes sense to you. I sort images into descriptively named folders by date, for example. Luminar lets you search folders by name but doesn't support adding custom keyword data or sorting images by metadata (such as the camera or lens used).

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I won't mince words: I miss having keywords. I've tagged everything I've ever shot for a review by camera and lens model in my Lightroom Classic catalog, and I also tag family and pets by name. I love that those keywords appear in images when I export them, so I can readily find images in my SmugMug archive or with Lightroom's internal filtering.

I'm not sure why Luminar doesn't have keywords. It seems like a pretty basic addition, especially given that the program has a class-leading natural language search engine. No, I can't quickly find pictures of my tuxedo cat, Aubergine, but typing "cat" into the search brings them up, just intermixed with other felines I've photographed over the years.

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Luminar's search works impressively well for other subjects. I searched my catalog for "dragonfly," "cardinal," "headstone," and "waterfall" and (mostly) got the results I expected. There are some false positives, but in most instances, Luminar buries those at the bottom of the search results. The search for "cardinal" netted some other birds with orange and red coloring (including robins, male house finches, and, laughably, a pileated woodpecker), but put male and female cardinals near the top of the list. But please, Sklyum, how much would it take to add keywords, too?

I also noticed that Luminar is very inconsistent when loading thumbnails in folders. Sometimes it loads huge folders with thousands of images in an instant, and other times the app stalls and shows blank images. Quitting and restarting tends to give Luminar a shot in the arm and get things running smoothly again, but it can still take several minutes to render thumbnails for a large folder. That seems to be a one-time process, though; once the thumbnails are ready for a folder, it loads smoothly in subsequent editing sessions. 

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As mentioned, if you subscribe to the All Platforms or Max edition, Luminar syncs edits you make on the mobile apps, but not the other way around. Still, if you like to edit on the go, it's a convenience. You can offload photos from your camera to your phone or tablet and sync them back to your desktop when you get home, or you can easily import images you've shot with your smartphone.

I'll also note that Luminar doesn't support tethered camera control, something that you get with both Adobe Lightroom Classic and Capture One. Some professional photographers, especially those who work in a studio environment, swear by tethering. I'll admit it's never appealed to me, but if it's a must-have feature for your workflow, Luminar isn't the right option for you.

Core Tools: Nondestructive Editing Capabilities That Work as Expected

Luminar has all of the basic exposure, contrast, and color mixing sliders, cropping tools, and noise reduction features that are table stakes for Raw image processors. They all work as expected. Luminar gives you just as much room to tone Raw images as the Lightroom twins, and it takes the same nondestructive approach—you can experiment freely with edits without altering the original photo.

That said, Skylum makes a confounding decision for its editing interface, one that's a little tricky to explain. Let's say you want to change the exposure of an image, for example. Click Tools, go to the Develop panel, and move the Exposure slider to brighten or darken your shot. That's the same as how Lightroom, Capture One, and pretty much every other nondestructive editing app works. 

But what if you take a second look and say, "Oh, I don't want it to be that dark." If you click back into Develop, you'll find that the sliders all show neutral, zero-level positions. In other apps, you'd see the slider adjustments you previously made. Luminar hides your previous Develop changes in the aforementioned Edits (history) panel. 

I'm still able to fine-tune my initial edit by nudging the slider one way or the other, but boy, is this disorienting. I questioned my memory a few times before I figured out what was happening. Still, Luminar has one advantage versus Lightroom Classic: You can go back and remove any edit from the Edits panel without affecting others. Lightroom Classic lets you undo changes step by step in its history pane, which is less flexible.

Color Profiles: Scattershot Camera Matching, Plenty of Presets

Luminar is inconsistent when it comes to color profiles. It can match the JPG looks of some brands, including recent releases from Canon, Nikon, OM System, Panasonic Lumix, and Sony, but it doesn't include profiles for Fuji's iconic Film Simulation engine, nor does it include profiles for Leica cameras. Whether this matters depends on your choice of camera brand.

If you prefer a more stylized look than your camera can produce, or if you're a Fuji shooter who wants to work with Raw images and still get a filmic color grade, it's worth exploring Luminar's Presets. I tried a few of the free ones and was happy with the results.

Horizon Alignment: Slants to the Left

Luminar lacks some of the geometric corrections available in Lightroom Classic. For example, I seriously miss Lightroom's Upright tool, which straightens out crooked photos with one click. Luminar tries to match this capability with a Horizon Alignment button in the Crop menu, but it's more apt to make an image even more crooked. I tried it with about a dozen images that were a little off-kilter, and it tends to tilt straight lines to the left rather than properly level them out.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

Noise Reduction: Leaves Room for Improvement

Although many of my gripes about Luminar are minor or edge-case issues, I'll call out its noise reduction tools as deficient compared with Lightroom's. To test the programs' standard, non-AI noise reduction capabilities, I looked at some of my high-ISO sample images, including an ISO 51200 shot from the Sony RX100 RIII that I've previously used to evaluate Lightroom Classic's denoise tool. Luminar's processed result shows more splotchy color and grainy luminance noise than Lightroom's, as well as resolving less detail.

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Luminar's AI-powered denoise tool, Noiseless, is even more disappointing. Not only does it take a long time to churn through an image—I clocked it at around five minutes for the 60MP RX1R III image on my older (2022) M1 Max Mac Studio—but the results are also bad. Noiseless delivered a photo with less luminance noise (grain) than the standard tool, but far more splotchy color noise, which I find more offensive of the two.

How much noise reduction matters comes down to what type of images you take, of course. If you typically take photos in the sun, you won't need to push your camera's ISO high enough for noise to be a big issue. But for astrophotography, event photography, or outdoor wildlife snaps with narrow aperture telezooms, and other disciplines in which you push the ISO into five digits, you'll probably want to pony up and pay for Lightroom.

Lens Corrections: Handles the Basics, But Struggles With Complex Geometry

Luminar's lens support could be better. Optics for mirrorless systems are designed to work hand in hand with digital distortion correction, so I find it problematic that Skylum doesn't publish a list of lenses for which it supports one-click profile corrections.

For most lenses I tried, the profiles work as expected to nix basic barrel or pincushion distortion, but they struggle with complex mustache distortion patterns from ultra-wide lenses like the Tamron 16-30mm F2.8 G2. Lightroom has no trouble with the latter. I’ll stress that this issue is mostly restricted to ultra-wide (20mm and wider) zooms; standard-angle and telephoto lenses usually exhibit simple barrel or pincushion distortion patterns, both of which Luminar corrects properly.

Luminar's support for fixed-lens cameras is inconsistent at best. I noticed that the profile for the fixed-lens Leica Q3 43 did absolutely nothing to correct the lens's barrel distortion, and the Ricoh GR IV has no profile at all. That said, the distortion profiles for the Fujifilm X100VI and Sony RX1R III work well. 

I'd like Skylum to address this mixed performance in future updates, and publishing a list of which cameras and lenses it's profiled for distortion correction would also help. As it stands, I recommend loading the app trial to make sure it works correctly with your gear.

Luminar's Strengths: Sky Replacement, Overlays, Creative Effects

For all its shortcomings, Luminar does include many tools that are just as good as what you find in Lightroom. I like its film grain simulation, for example, which offers independent control over the amount, size, and roughness of grain.

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I'm less enthusiastic about Luminar's Sky Replacement feature, but that's because I don't like faking results to enhance images. Sky Replacement uses real images to create composites, but conceptually it's no different from using generative AI to create a photo of a scene that didn’t happen in reality; it's up to you to decide whether you're comfortable with these techniques for your work. 

The tool itself works exceptionally well. Essentially, Luminar's automatic masking identifies the sky in an image and lets you replace it with a more dramatic background. I tried it with an image of two planes throwing out exhaust at an air show. The sky in the image is mostly clear behind the planes, with defocused foliage in the foreground. The tool successfully replaced the sky with a more dramatic one, complete with interesting clouds. Yes, the photo is inauthentic as it gets, but it's certainly spicier than the original.

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Otherwise, Luminar has more than two dozen creative effect tools, which it segments into Creative, Landscape, Portrait, and Professional sections. A few notable ones include Atmosphere (adds fog or haze), Bokeh (blurs backgrounds behind a subject), Magic Light (adds soft points of flare), Mystical (applies a soft focus effect), Neon and Glow (enhances images of city streets), and Sunrays (adds drama to sunrise and sunset images). The effects are convincing and serve as a compelling reason for visual artists who don't mind weaving a bit of fiction into their images to use Luminar.

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The app also supports Overlays as part of its Layer feature. These let you add another image on top of your photo with selectable opacity and are convenient if you want to add an effect, such as flare or a simulated light leak, to a photo. Luminar includes four types of effects with the software (Flares, Light Leaks, Sparklers, and Stardust Bokeh) and lets you load any image to use as an Overlay. You can also purchase additional effects from its Marketplace.

AI Tools: Not Worth $69 Per Year

As mentioned, Luminar organizes its generative AI features into the Extra section. You get these features for a year with any Luminar subscription, but must renew them via a Prime subscription afterward. Among these tools are AI Assistant, GenErase, GenExpand, GenSwap, and Restoration. One quick note: The Extra section also includes non-AI features, such as Focus Stacking, HDR Merge, Panorama Stitching, and Upscale, and your access to them doesn't expire. Overall, I don't think the AI features are worth their cost, especially for photographers looking at Luminar as a value alternative to Lightroom.

AI Assistant: Natural Language Image Editing

The AI Assistant, which appears at the bottom of the screen on the Edit, History, and Presets screens, can edit an image based on your prompts. In testing, I asked it to apply a vintage look to one photo, and a grainy retro black-and-white finish to another. It spins its wheels for a few seconds based on a request and comes back with three versions of a photo. I'll count it as useful, even though it can't do more advanced tasks, such as removing distractions or replacing skies. 

GenErase: Hit or Miss Distraction Removal

GenErase lets you select an object (or objects) in a photo and remove them, replacing the empty space using generative AI. I took the same test image that I used for Lightroom Classic's equivalent feature (a photo of a guy with a cup of coffee admiring a sports car) and ran it through Luminar to see how well it erased him from the shot. Luminar removed him without issue and replaced the space with a convincing background.

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However, like with Lightroom Classic's tool, his reflection remained on the car's hood after an initial pass. I tried a second pass to erase it, but the results weren't as good. Luminar removed the reflection, yes, but it also noticeably blurred the area. With Lightroom Classic, I was able to convincingly erase the reflection from the hood using a brush.

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GenExpand: Hallucinations and Blurred Results Disappoint

Have you ever taken an image that's just a little too claustrophobic? GenExpand could be your solution—it takes a scene and uses AI guesswork to broaden the angle of view.

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I gave GenExpand a torture test with a complex scene: a pavilion surrounded by trees. Luminar's end result isn't convincing. It added part of the roof back, but without the same sharp focus as the rest of the building. And while it made the trees in the background taller, it drew trees on top of trees—there's a clear line between the generative areas and the original image that won't fool anyone.

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I decided to give Luminar an easier image, a local storefront that I often photograph on my morning walk around town. GenExpand did better with this scene, but still wasn't fantastic. Everything it added is noticeably blurry and devoid of texture. Its attempt to raise a utility pole also resulted in a group of power lines that go nowhere. I'm not impressed.

GenSwap: Feels Out of Place in a Photo Editor

GenSwap lets you add elements to images out of thin air. You use a brush to mask the area of the photo you want to change, and then a text prompt to describe what you want to do. I took a photo of my cat, brushed over her face, and asked GenSwap to replace it with a mallard duck.

The result isn't convincing. The duck is a little cartoonish, and GenSwap rendered it with spotted cat ears. So, I decided to try something else. I've played a Skyrim campaign with a Kahjit battlemage modeled after my cat, so why not try to recreate that with AI? The results were far less visually disturbing, but the tool still drew a completely different face and coloring. I didn't want to see some random cat dressed like a purple lightning mage; I wanted to see my cat dressed like a purple lightning mage.

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Like many AI tools, GenSwap is freaking weird. It also feels out of place in Luminar, since most of its special effects tools are grounded in reality. GenSwap is just pure fantasy.

Restoration: Brings Old, Faded Photos Back to Life

Old photos don't always stand the test of time; they can get grungy, scratched, or curled, for example, and colors always fade. Luminar includes an AI-powered Restoration tool that aims to bring old images back to life.

To see how well it works, I grabbed an old school picture of my mom that I found when cleaning out my grandmother's home after her passing and snapped a photo of it with an iPhone 18 Pro Max. The print was faded, dirty, and curled. Luminar made short work of cleaning it up, restoring colors and removing the dirt. However, it didn't do anything to flatten the curled edges.

I tried restoring the same photo in Adobe Photoshop using its Firefly engine. I prompted Firefly with "I want you to restore this photo. Get rid of the dirt and scratches. Bring back the faded colors. Flatten the curled print." It returned an image that wasn't very faithful to the original, adding makeup to my mom's cheeks, darkening her hair, and failing to restore the colors in her dark, flower-patterned blouse.

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I think Luminar wins for this specific restoration job. And for fun, I took the Luminar restoration into Photoshop and asked it to flatten the image—it cut away the curled borders and replaced them with a realistic, flat frame. This is a heck of a lot easier than going through the complicated steps of physically flattening old prints.

Exporting: As Easy as 1-2-3

Luminar makes exports simple. Select an image (or images) in the Library view and click the Export button at the top right of the app window. A drop-down appears with options for 100% or 80% quality JPGs, as well as 8- or 16-bit TIFFs. Once you choose your file format and destination, the program renders the images with your edits for sharing.

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On macOS, the Export menu also lets you AirDrop to another Apple device or send images to the Messages or Mail app. And for All Platforms and Max users, a Spaces option lets you publish to Skylum's web gallery service. Space is a Prime feature, so you’ll need to keep an active subscription to host your photos with Luminar.

You can also send an image to a printer via Luminar; click File > Print to open the system print dialog. The available options depend on your printer. Luminar is good only for making single-image prints; it doesn't have the layout tools you get with Lightroom Classic, nor does it include Classic's soft-proofing and color management tools.

Performance: Two Weeks of Use, One Corrupted Catalog

Although I'm happy with Luminar's price, it does mean you should expect performance compromises. I noticed slowdowns, for example, when loading folders containing a large number of images (more than 1,000), which is a serious pain point for sports, wildlife, and event photographers who often capture a high volume of photos during a normal day.

More worrisome, however, is that during my two weeks of testing Luminar, its catalog ended up corrupted. When I went to start work one morning after leaving Luminar open and running overnight, the app was frozen, and my photo storage drive was no longer mounted. That's not too surprising, since my IT-managed computer frequently unmounts external volumes for overnight system and security updates.

But after I force-quit Luminar and rebooted, I couldn't get into the app at all. I launched it several times, and it just didn't work at first. A couple of reboots later, I got into the app, but my image catalog simply refused to load. Eventually, I was able to open my catalog by loading Luminar while holding down the Option key on my keyboard and loading a backup catalog from the previous day. On a positive note, Luminar automatically makes frequent backups to the catalog, so I didn't lose any work. But it's a pain point for sure, and I'll note that in nearly 20 years of using Lightroom Classic, I've never had to worry about the app failing to load or encountering a corrupted catalog.

Michael Muchmore contributed to this review.