Luminar
For a limited time, you can watch the replay of my Luminar AI webinar ‘10 Reasons to love Luminar AI’ below. If you’re interested in Luminar AI, get it today before my 20 euro/usd discount code expires!
Save €/US$ 20 with code MORETHANWORDS20 until August 31, 2021
Yesterday, the folks over at Skylum did a marathon livestream about Luminar AI. A number of guests, featuring well-known names like Scott Kelby, each had half hour slots to share some of their favourite Luminar AI tips, tricks and ideas. My slot was a little shorter because I was banging on the wrong virtual door for ten minutes, but if you know me, you know I go through my demos so swiftly that I easily make up for that ;-)
So, if you’re interested, below is my 20 minute section. For those of you that might struggle with my accent – or those of you who are watching this on mute when you’re supposed to be working ;-) – I’ve added Subtitles. Just click on the CC icon in the player. The full stream should be on Skylum’s YouTube channel in one of the coming days.
If you’re interested in purchasing Luminar AI, if you use the link below and enter coupon code MORETHANWORDS during checkout, you’ll get a 10$/€ discount and you’ll also support me to keep creating free content like this. Luminar AI both works as a standalone application as as a Lightroom Classic and Photoshop plug-in. The app also comes with a 30 day money-back guarantee.
Until June 17 you can purchase Luminar 4 from Skylum for only €69 instead of €89. Upon checkout, you can get an extra €10 discount by clicking on ‘Enter Promotional Code’ in your cart and entering the code MORETHANWORDS, so that you ultimately only pay €59. If you’re in Europe and you’re VAT-registered, you can enter your VAT number in the ‘Enter VAT ID’ link and you’ll even be exempted from VAT.
€59 is a real bargain for this great software! If you like to photograph landscapes, you will certainly be interested in the AI Sky Enhancer and the AI Sky Replacement tools: the first automatically improves an existing sky, the second puts a new one in an instant.
Replace a boring sky with a new one? In Photoshop, you can easily spend an hour. In Luminar, you do it in fifteen seconds!
If you prefer portrait photography, then the Luminar 4 portrait retouch features alone are probably worth the price of admission it. Softening skin, brightening bags under people’s eyes, accentuating eyes, …Luminar 4 does it all super fast and credibly.
Moreover, you can use the application both as a Lightroom and Photoshop plug-in and as a standalone product.
Still in doubt? Then check out the English webinar that I did some time ago on Luminar 4. But I warn you: only look if you still have €59 in your wallet, because you will undoubtedly want to buy the software afterwards!
I was one of a select few that could test these tools already live and you can read about my thoughts in this blog post. In fact, I was so enthusiastic, that Skylum asked me if they could use this quote of me on their website :-)
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that I think that Luminar by Skylum Software is one of the most interesting new developments in terms of photographic software. There are several reasons for this:
Luminar is affordable;
It exists in a Windows and a Mac version
It can be run by itself as a Lightroom alternative (Luminar 3) but also as a plug-in (Luminar Flex);
It is relatively simple to use:
It makes intensive use of AI (Artificial Intelligence) to automatically and quickly speed up complex image retouching jobs.
Skylum is currently working on Luminar 4, that is expected somewhere this fall. Every once in a while, they give a sneak peak of the new features that will be in that version 4 and this week, they teased a fantastic new tool for portrait photographers. I was lucky enough to be asked to make a video about this tool for Skylum that will be on Skylum’s YouTube channel later this year but as a reader of this blog, you can already watch it here. But first, let me tell you some more about the new philosophy for Luminar 4.
An important new development is that Luminar 4 will be the upgrade for both Luminar 3 as well as for Luminar Flex. Luminar 3 and Flex will kind of melt into Luminar 4. During the installation procedure of Luminar 4, you will be able to choose whether you want to use the application as a stand-alone piece of software, as a plug-in, or as both. Personally, I think it is a good thing because now, Skylum can focus on this one product instead of having to update to different yet very similar pieces of software. This also means that if you want to use Luminar as a standalone and as a plug-in in the future, you’ll only need one license.
Luminar 4 will contain a lot of smaller and bigger new features. One feature that will definitely interest landscape photographers, is the AI Sky Replacement filter. This lets you swap out a boring sky in a landscape or a cityscape for a more interesting one without having to make tedious selections. It all happens automatically. Luminar 4 even makes sure that the perspective matches and that where necessary, the foreground is color graded to match the new sky, for example when you put us warm sunset sky into an image that was shot earlier in the day. As you can see from these animated gifs, the tool works surprisingly well and of course there are sliders for more advanced tweaks should you need them.
Everybody loves Clarity, Structure and Texture. Lightroom just recently added a new Texture slider and Luminar also has a number of sliders to emphasize details in your images. Yet, up until recently, you always have to use a mask to make sure that all that extra structure and detail didn't add 10 or 20 years to your model. With AI Structure, this happens automatically this tool recognizes things like faces and skies and can give different areas in an image each their own (or none at all) dose of extra structure.
The previous two tools were mainly interesting for landscape photographers, but this tool will be right up your alley if you are a portrait photographer. AI Skin Enhancer can't automatically recognize faces and can soften the skin in those faces while retaining texture. I was pretty sceptical myself but I think the result is nothing short of amazing. I know photographers that would happily pay the price of Luminar 4 only for this feature. Even more so, the only direct alternative that I know is a plug-in called Imagenomic Portraiture and although that plug-in is really good, it costs more than double then all the tools in Luminar 4 combined and it's not as flexible or automated.
In the video below, I show you these two new portrait tools in more detail.
If this blog posts as aroused your interest for Luminar 4, there are a couple of options, depending on the scenario…
You want to start using Luminar already now as a standalone application
You can now buy a special, discounted ‘Early Bird’ bundle of Luminar 3 + Luminar 4: you can already start using Luminar 3 now and as soon as Luminar 4 is released, you can start using that. Luminar 4 will automatically upgrade your Luminar 3 catalogue. On this bundle, discount code MORETHANWORDS will knock another $10 off of the prize and you can also receive a number of bonus Luminar presets. The regular price for this bundle is $99. With the code you only pay $89.
Click here to go directly to the sales page for this bundle on the Skylum website. The bundle you’re looking for is the most right-hand one of the two.
You want to start using Luminar already now as a plug-in
You can now buy a special, discounted ‘Early Bird’ bundle of Luminar Flex + Luminar 4: you can already start using Luminar Flex now and as soon as Luminar 4 is released, you can start using that. On this bundle, discount code MORETHANWORDS will knock another $10 off of the prize and you can also receive a number of bonus Luminar presets. The regular price for this bundle is $99. With the code you only pay $89.
Click here to go directly to the sales page for this bundle on the Skylum website. The bundle you’re looking for is the most right-hand one of the three.
You're okay with waiting until Luminar 4 is officially released, but you want to get it at the best possible price
In that case, you can pre-order Luminar 4 right now via this link for $69. Choose the leftmost option of the two. The price will increase soon (although I don't know when exactly) but by pre-ordering, you are sure to lock in the current price and you get a number of bonus presets for Luminar on top of the deal. In any case, you have a 30 day money back guarantee that only starts when the software is actually out.
You're already a Luminar 3 customer and you want to upgrade to Luminar 4.
In that case, you can pre-order your upgrade for $59 via this link and you’ll receive a bonus presets pack valued at $49. Until Luminar 4 actually comes out, you can simply continue to use your existing version of Luminar 3.
You're already a Luminar 3 customer and you want to upgrade to Luminar 4.
In that case, you can pre-order your upgrade for $59 via this link and you’ll receive a bonus presets pack valued at $49. Until Luminar 4 actually comes out, you can simply continue to use your existing version of Luminar Flex.
To claim your discount code MORETHANWORDS, in the checkout window, you click on Enter a Promotional Code (1). If you have a VAT number, you can even enter that and VAT will be excluded from the price. For that, click on (2) Enter VAT ID.
DISCLAIMER: The above links are affiliate links: when you use these, MoreThanWords receives a commission. This commission is entirely paid for by the software manufacturer. So you do not pay extra. On the contrary, in some cases, you can use a special discount code that lets you pay even less than if you would buy directly from the software manufacturer. Commissions like these allow me to continue adding free contents tutorials and reviews on this blog.
