Cameras today can take good photos. However, photo editors could push the envelope further and turn them into great images. Some of this already happens in cellphones in the form of "filters". When it comes to photo editors, I have used various software, including but not limited to Photoshop, GIMP, Affinity Photo, and Luminar. Luminar, which released Luminar AI last year, is about to release Luminar Neo, and I just bought it. It's frustrating!

Why Luminar

I always loved a good photo. This interest, coupled with bad cameras and poor photography skills, meant I had to rely on photo editors a lot. Photoshop was my preferred go-to photo editor for a long time. Once I moved to Linux, I relied solely on GIMP. About two years back, I moved to the Apple bandwagon. I bought my Luminar 4 license before I got my iMac delivered from Singapore.

I loved Photoshop. It had all the features I wanted and a lot more I couldn't even understand. Sure it was clunky, slow, ugly, but it did the job. What I disliked most was Adobes decision to convert its software suite to a subscription model.

Luminar is a simple to use the app. While Luminar is not fully featured like Adobe Photoshop, it has most of the features you like, including a capable erase tool like Adobes Content-Aware-Fill.

Luminar Neo

Luminar Neo Skylums latest software. In all honesty, it looks to me like an iterative update to Luminar AI. How every they are labelling it a "New Software" that does a different job and all that for one purpose $$$.

I am not judging, and I am happy to pay the price. But honestly, I'm not particularly eager to get jerked around. You want money, be honest and ask for it, and don't give me BS reasons. But it introduces some interesting new features.

• Layers
• Depth aware control over scene lighting
• Remove portrait backgrounds
• Context-aware masking

While every new feature is exciting, I am most curious about layers. It is one of the features I always believed (since Luminar 4) that Luminar lacked.

Skylum has promised and fallen short of delivering. For example, I got Luminar AI for portrait mode (background blur), and it was not available when the software was released.

My fingers are crossed, and I am eager to see what they deliver.