Luminar AI Review Part 2 – Templates

On December 3, 2020December 3, 2020 By Mark DoddIn ReviewsLeave a comment

OK, now that you have your images in Luminar^AI via the Catalog, on to the next section.

Templates

Templates in Luminar^AI are what use to be called Looks in Luminar. In other programs they may be referred to as presets. But basically they all do the same thing. They are a pre-set set of settings that you can apply to your image to give it a certain look.

Getting started with Templates. Select the image you wish to work in in the Catalog, then click the Templates menu at the top of the window will bring you to the Templates view

Templates in Luminar AI. The menus and sections — The Templates Section Layout

As you can see from the above, this layout has several sections, but the default view you are brought to is the Templates with the recommended AI template collections shown at the top of the Templates menu. Below the AI Template section are other categories of Templates that you may choose to use and those include.

Template All Categories Menu — The Template Categories of Templates that come with Luminar AI

The top right of the window contains the Template Collection that Luminar AI has recommended based upon the photo that you had selected. In my example you will note that it recommended the “Monochrome” Template Collection as one it things I should like to try with this image. I suspect it choose this collection first since this is a Black and White image. There are additional recommended template collections to the right of the Monochrome Collection and to view those, you swipe to see the additional recommended Template collections.

My Collection

The Star below the “Magic Wand“ as I’m calling it is the “My Collection” menu selector. In this section,you will see any templates that you have marked as your favorites, any that you have purchased via Luminar Marketplace, User Templates (Those that you have created yourself, Yes you can do that), and lastly, Legacy Templates. The Legacy templates are where you will find any templates you have from the previous version of Luminar that are compatible with Luminar ^AI. Most seem to transfer in my case, but any that use depreciated tools that are no longer in Luminar^AI will not transfer and would not be shown.

I’m still deciding on my new favorites, I haven’t purchased any yet, and have yet to create any myself, but you can see I have several Legacy Templates to go through in my “My Collections” menu. I’m not sure yet if Luminar^AI will use any of these in the recommended Templates yet, but I suspect not. My thinking there is the newer template collections probably have additional information as part of the collection that is used the AI when determining if it is a good fit. That and I have several templates that are shown in my Legacy Templates section that are good for Black and White images and they were not included in the recommend Template collections section. If I find out otherwise, I’ll update you here.

Template Collection

Once you decide on a template collection to use, you now get to choose the specific template from that collection. Each will have its own settings and a slight variation or adjustment, That’s what makes them their own template. but have the same general theme, thus the collection.

Above is the view of the Monochrome collection that was recommended for my image. In this collection there are 5 templates. To see your image with each template, all you need to do is click on each template and Luminar^AI immediately applies the templates settings to your image.

Be sure to slide the adjustment slider to see if your image looks better with a bit less of this template applied. This is one feature of Luminar^AI and for that matter, other Skylum programs that I’ve always liked. When you select a template, the effect is shown at 100%. I’ve often found templates that I like but I sometimes do not like the effect at 100% so I just slide the slider to the left to back it off a bit.

And if you don’t like the template applied, you can select another, or just choose the Reset Adjustment to go back to your image without adjustments. You know if a template has been applied as the name of the template will show at the bottom right of the window. If no template is applied, there will be no name listed, just a grayed out “Your Template”

And out goes without saying, you don’t have to just use the template collection that the AI recommends, There is many more template collections included and you can always use on of the templates included with them.

Editing a Template

Now if adjusting the slider still doesn’t get you the look you want, you can still use that template as a base. Choose Edit in the template’s menu in the bottom right to see the adjustments made in this template and to make additional changes to get the look you want.

Now if you have made adjustments and really like the new look you have created and think you can use this on other images, you now have the option to save this base template with your adjustments as your own custom template. Note, the save button will only show up as being available if you have made your own adjustments. The name of the new template will be the name of the Template you used with the word Edit added. But if you go to the My Collection section and go to the User Templates section, you will now see your modified template saved in this section and you can rename it here if you want by choosing the menu on the right of the new User Template.

We will get more into the whole editing section in Part 3 of the review.

My Thoughts on Templates

Part of the focus of Luminar^AI is to make it easy to do things that use to take multiple steps or were complicated to do.

I think Luminar^AI accomplishes this fairly well especially with the new AI template recommendation that is based upon it analyzing the your image and recommending which template to use. I think this recommendation is going to be very helpful to you especially if you start collecting templates. If it didn’t do this for you, you could end up going down a rabbit hole of trying to find which template may work best with your image. You could spend all your time picking a template instead of creating your work of art.. Just let Luminar^AI make that selection for you and save some time.

If you are new to Photo editing, this feature will help you get the best out of your images without much work, but you don’t have to stop there. The templates are just a starting point. There is much more that this program can do for you. More on that in the Part 3 – Editing Review.

For me, I use the templates as a starting point. Either to give the overall picture a certain look before I go in and make minor adjustments, or to use as a base for creating my own custom template that I would apply to similar images.

How to update to or purchase Luminar^AI

Luminar^AI is offered in a couple variations as of this writing. There is a 1 Seat and a 2 Seat version.

What is meant by Seat? In short, each seat is each single installation of Luminar^AI by device. So if you want to have Luminar^AI on two computers you need to purchase the 2 Seat license.

Luminar^AI 1 Seat – Cost is $79 before discount.

Luminar^AI 2 Seats Cost is $99 before discount.

Don’t forget to use my Luminar^AI Coupon Code of MARKDODD to save an additional amount when you purchase.

Order Luminar^AI

There is a 30 day money back guarantee from the time of shipping, which is currently set for December 15th, 2020; so if for some reason you are not happy, you can get your money back.

Please make sure your system is up to the task by checking it against the System requirements listed at the bottom of the product page. And yes, it does work with Mac OS Big Sur. But one note: LuminarAI is not yet been certified as of this writing with the new Apple M1 chip computers. I fully expect to be, but Skylum is still doing its testing on the new M1 chip hardware.

Be sure to check out Part 1 – The Catalog

Luminar AI Review Part 1 – The Catalog

On November 29, 2020November 29, 2020 By Mark DoddIn ReviewsLeave a comment

This review is based upon a beta version of Luminar^AI, Skylum’s latest photo editor. As such some things may be a little different between the version reviewed and the final released version.

I have been a long-time Skylum customer, back even to the MacPhun days, and as such, I have seen their programs evolve over time. Some things I agree with, some I do not. I hope this to be an unbias review of their latest program Luminar^AI.

What Luminar^AI is and What it is not.

This is NOT an upgrade/update to Luminar 4. Despite having the base name, this is an entirely new program. Instead of just patching things in Luminar 4, Skylum made the decision to start from scratch with this new program. They, I believe, have taken the best of all their previous programs and some they acquired to make this new Photo editor that combines everything into one application.

This is NOT a cataloging program, aka DAM (Digital Asset Manager). Although you can view your images in what they have labeled a Catalog, in my option, this is more of a browser than a catalog. My view of what a catalog is is something that lets you tag, keyword, label, or add other metadata to your image. Luminar^AI does not do this. There are many other programs that can serve this function well, those include Adobe Lightroom, On1, Capture One, ACDsee Photo for example.

Some initial comments

Luminar^AI is intended to be a program for everyone. It has been designed for the beginner photographer and has options to add that level of user improve their image using AI but it also has the full set of tools a more advanced photographer would want to make more finite adjustments.

As part of this, Luminar^AI is taking advantage of AI (Artificial Intelligence) that will analyze your image and make adjustments with little effort on your part. This seems to be a trend in photo editors, the AI bit, and I see this as becoming the norm for all photo editors. More to come on this in the part 3 review post when we get into editing.

In order not to have it be one very long post, I’m breaking it down into several parts. Part 1 will start out with the Catalog, Part 2 will be Templates, Part 3 will be Editing/Exporting

The Catalog

The Catalog in Luminar^AI is quite functional for its purposes of letting you view your entire photo library. This is the view you are brought to when you open the program.

For you Luminar 4 users, important note, it does not open/convert your Luminar 4 catalog. When you open Luminar^AI for the first time, it will ask you to locate your images so that it can create a fresh catalog of all your images. So, this is a bit of a repeat step but is necessary as they have written the catalog file to improve performance. At first, I thought this would be a bit deal, but after thinking about it what would I rather have done, have a new catalog that is much faster at responding and have to create my Albums from scratch, or have my albums with a slower catalog view. I’d take the faster catalog,

It has default items of All Photos, On this day, Recently added, Recently Searched (although this will only show up after your first search), and Trash (contains items you have trashed in Luminar^AI, but they are not yet deleted from your physical photo library). Items are added when you select Move to Luminar Trash on any image.

There is a Folder section that shows what folders you have added to Luminar^AI for it to show in your Catalog view. This folders section can contain 1 or many folders, and if you subfolders, you can expand the top-level folder to show those subfolders. The Albums section is where you can create your own Albums to help you organize your images locally or any other way you would like. It doesn’t physically move the image on your computer but lets you group images together in any way you would like.

It has a built-in search function that does let you search but image or folder name, date, or extension to help find your images wither they be in a folder, Album. Once you have found your image, you can see a bit more metadata of the image by clicking the little “i” icon on the bottom left of the Luminar window to show basic metadata information about the image, such as filename and extension, the ISO, Focal length, EV, F stop, and the shutter speed of your image; the date/time, dimensions, and file size of the image; and lastly the device it was taken on including the lens.

The interface