Saturday, April 08, 2023

Luminar Neo update 1.8

Skylum has quietly slipped out an update to Neo without much fanfare. It has two features I’ve really wondered why they were never included. Both make a significant improvement in useability for me.

1. Before & After Sliders


This was pretty hard to believe because Skylum had this feature in Luminar Ai and PhotoLemur. I do find it much better to compare before and after on one screen than flicking the whole screen before and after backwards and forwards. The fact that this also works when you mouse-over presets leads to a better appreciation of their effect on your chosen photo. Finally having a slider to control the opacity of how the preset is applied makes this a real winner in my books.

2. Histogram at the top of the edit controls 


This was also a real puzzle because the histogram has always been displayed in Luminar’s catalogue screens, but was missing when using the edit tools. This is the time that I find the histogram gives its most useful feedback. Specifically, it changes as you apply different edits, so you can follow the tonal impact of them, You do need to understand how the histogram works and why it is a useful graph. It is activated from the main View Menu by ticking the Show Histogram option at the bottom of the pop out list.

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