Luminar Neo vs Photoshop: Features & Pricing Comparison

Solid collection of standard editing features. Photographers who prefer to edit their images manually will appreciate the Develop section that allows you to tweak both familiar parameters like Exposure, Highlights, and Shadows and unique settings like Smart Contrast, which adjusts both the highlights and shadows simultaneously to create a nice, harmonious look.

By selecting "Erase", you can pick from two Luminar Neo tools: "Remove Powerlines" and "Remove Dust Spots". Both options perform similarly to Adobe's content-aware spot healing feature without requiring you to make any extra clicks. The "Landscape" tool is another handy inclusion that lets you dehaze an image, create the illusion of a picture taken during the golden hour, and improve the foliage in the shot.

Convenient image organization. The Catalog is comprised of 5 sections that are automatically updated depending on the user’s actions: All Photos, Single Image Edits, Recently Added, Recently Edited, and Trash. There’s also an “Albums” module that heavily resembles Lightroom’s Collections and lets you put together groups of different photos that were already added to the overall Neo catalog.

This software allows you to add several images to an album or create another one by choosing the desired photos and right-clicking your mouse to bring up the relevant options. Sadly, Luminar Neo doesn’t support drag-and-drop functionality in the Albums panel but that isn’t a big issue.

Fantastic AI sky enhancement tools. Regardless of whether you’re editing a landscape photo or an urban image with busy streets, Neo excels at replacing the sky and changing the lighting in the shot to match the new look. This software also offers a Remove Powerlines AI feature that lets you instantly get rid of unwanted elements in cityscape, urban, and travel pictures. Luminar allows you to automatically generate sky masks in just one click.

Smart tools for beginners. This software also has such a useful tool as EnhanceAI that examines your images and enhances their colors, details, and tone within seconds by determining the optimal color balance. Meanwhile, the AccentAI tool allows you to adjust a magical slider to tweak the Shadows, Highlights, Contrast, Tone, Saturation, Exposure, and Details of your photo.

The Mood feature applies pro-level LUTs (lookup tables) to instantly alter the tone of your image. Pick from film presets and B&W looks or create color grades to apply a new style in a matter of seconds.

Terrific portrait enhancement features. Luminar Neo is also supplied with state-of-the-art portrait enhancement features that can improve the look of the faces and bodies in your photos in various ways. You can employ these tools to perform teeth whitening, skin smoothing, and change the model’s eye color within seconds. Arguably one of the handiest additions to this software is the ability to individually adjust the face lighting even in pictures that feature multiple people, which is particularly useful when enhancing family group photos.

Another handy feature that can only be found in Luminar Neo is the Portrait Bokeh AI tool that relies on artificial intelligence to detect the subject(s) in the image, separate them from the backdrop and apply a “fake” bokeh effect.

Deep image retouching. Using Photoshop, you may apply dozens of proven and effective methods of image retouching such as dot healing, frequency separation, Dodge & Burn, etc. Among other functions available you may also find the customary ones like teeth whitening, hair straightening, removal of deep wrinkles or dark spots on the skin.

Advanced layers. One of the peculiarities that makes the professionals choose Photoshop is the advanced layers. They include type layer, image layer, vector shape layer, layer styles, smart object, smart filter, layer mask, adjustment layer and background.

Using these layers, you may perform any manipulation – starting with a watermark, background change and ending with complex frequency editing. You may use layers to create complex manipulations out of two and more pics or edit only a specific area in the photo.

Professional color correction. Camera RAW, a built-in plug-in, is a lighter version of Lightroom that allows editing almost all popular types of RAW files. The tools include familiar options like curves, saturation, white balance, clarity, dehaze, HSL, exposure, etc. Like in Luminar software, the picture editing process in Camera RAW is a non-destructive one.

Useful plug-ins. While Luminar and Lightroom allow adding third-party presets, Photoshop also works with various third-party filters, textures, overlays, actions and even fonts.

You may find hundreds of ready plug-ins on the Adobe Add-ons website or use other services to make the image editing process more automatic and simple.

Graphic tablet support. For artists and designers, working with tablets for photo editing is a great benefit since it boosts productivity and speed, preserving the decent quality. That’s because when you work with a mouse, you may take a cursor and move it one way or another. But you can’t control pressure/pressure force specifying the deepness.

Creating graphic design. Unlike Luminar photo software that offers only image editing functions, Photoshop is more universal. You may create the design for your project and use the ready styles of Ps menu or set your own dimensions. Moreover, there are many templates in Adobe Stock, including standard sets and illustrations that you may use to create your own unique projects.