Luminar Neo vs Lightroom

Lightroom offers significantly better photo management capabilities and a traditional yet responsive photo editing mode. Yet, Luminar Neo is a more capable editing application overall and can be bought and owned outright for less than a year’s subscription to Lightroom. Jump to Conclusion

COMPARISON CONTINUES BELOW

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Photo Management

Luminar Neo's Catalogue View — Luminar Neo’s Catalogue View

While photo management in Luminar Neo has improved, it falls far short of Lightroom. With Neo, you can rate your photos, assign images to albums, and trade pictures between your computer and smartphone using the Luminar Neo Share app.

Neo now has Smart Search, an object recognition-powered search tool that allows you to find photos based on their content. For example, you might use Smart Search to return all photos containing birds, mountains, or architecture. However, Lightroom does all of this and more.

Lightroom’s photo management also includes Face Recognition, enabling you to browse photos by those appearing in them. Moreover, because Lightroom leverages the cloud, you can access and edit your images from most computers, smartphones, and tablets and easily share your photos with family, friends, and clients.

However, there is a catch. Lightroom’s Face Recognition and object Recognition-Powered search only work with the images you’ve synced with the Cloud. This shouldn’t be an issue since Lightroom includes 1TB of storage, but if you plan on accessing your pictures from local storage, these advanced cloud-powered features will not work, and you may prefer Luminar Neo.

In summary, I consider Luminar Neo’s photo management much improved and certainly adequate. However, Lightroom’s photo management is top-tier, so long as you’re happy to sync your images with Adobe’s cloud.

Presets

Luminar Neo and Lightroom have a vast preset collection, providing a quick one-click route to well-processed images. Furthermore, Luminar Neo and Lightroom will analyze your photo and recommend which preset may best suit it.

Finally, you can download additional presets or save the sum of your manual edits as presets for future use. Overall, if presets are critical to your workflow, both Luminar Neo and Lightroom have plenty to offer.

Photo Enhancement

Luminar Neo vs Lightroom Denoising — Lightroom’s Denoiser is superior to Luminar Neo’s.

Regarding photo enhancement, Lightroom marginally beats Luminar Neo thanks to its top-tier AI-powered noise-reduction tool, AI Denoise, which is vastly superior to Neo’s equivalent, Noiseless AI. However, Lightroom’s Super Resolution and Neo’s Upscale AI are comparable in enlarging your photos.

Yet, Lightroom has no alternative to Luminar Neo’s SuperSharp AI, an AI-powered-sharpening tool that has the potential to correct poorly focused and motion-blurred images. Therefore, you might prefer Luminar Neo over Lightroom if you prioritize blur correction over noise reduction.

Luminar Upscale AI before and after image — Luminar Neo’s Super Sharp AI can correct moderately blurred photos

However, regarding photo enhancement, it is worth noting that Luminar Neo and Lightroom are well-beaten by other products. Therefore, you might prefer to base your choice on factors other than photo enhancement and then supplement Neo or Lightroom with applications such as ON1 NoNoise AI, Topaz Photo AI, Gigapixel, and DxO PureRaw.

Photo Editing

Luminar Neo has far more photo editing features than Lightroom and is ultimately more capable. Yet, you may prefer Lightroom’s traditional photo editing workflow to Neo’s effect-orientated approach.

Specifically, Lightroom’s workflow is built around classic adjustments such as exposure, tone curves, white balance, etc. While Luminar Neo also features a classic develop tab, it leans toward compound effects with well-named tools such as Foliage Enhancer, Golden Hour Glow, and Sky Enhancer.

Yet, Neo takes things further with its wide range of AI super-tricks. Sky AI will replace your photo’s sky and relight your image to match. With Relight AI, you can independently adjust your subject’s exposure and background, which is ideal for correcting backlit portraits. You can also use Face, Skin, and Body AI to brighten, slim, and perfect your subject’s features. While Lightroom has now added a portrait-background blurring feature, it still falls short of Luminar’s Portrait Bokeh AI.

An Example of Sky Replacement in Luminar Neo — Sky Replacement in Luminar Neo

With Neo, you can add effects layers and even blend different images, whereas Lightroom users will need to upgrade to Photoshop to do the same.

Both Luminar and Lightroom offer AI masking, instantly enabling you to mask your photo’s sky, subject, or background. While Luminar Neo’s masking is more flexible, Lightroom’s is more accurate, although it varies from image to image. It’s much the same story when it comes to comparing Neo’s and Lightroom’s AI erase brushes, though I’d say Lightroom’s generative AI eraser is more reliable more often.

Finally, Neo has a few generative AI tools. With GenSwap, you can insert new elements into your image or trade one aspect for another. With GenExpand, you can extend your photo’s boundaries with Luminar’s generative AI, filling the void with new content. While these features are novel, they’re unreliable and need time to mature.

User Experience

Luminar Neo has built-in tutorials — Luminar Neo includes a series of well-implemented step-by-step tutorials for newcomers.

Luminar Neo’s effects-orientated workflow makes it one of the best photo editing applications for beginners and anyone in a rush. In contrast, Lightroom’s more traditional workflow demands that you understand concepts such as exposure, white balance, and tone curves.

Yet Lightroom’s relative simplicity is also its strength. Its attractive and concise interface reacts to your inputs in real time, resulting in a slick, light-footed user experience. In contrast, Luninar Neo can chug under the weight of its labor-saving smarts, mainly if your edit includes the application of multiple effects. Regarding effects, Neo offers far more than Lightroom. However, some of Neo’s features feel underdeveloped and, at worst, risk being gimmicks. With Lightroom, you get far fewer features, but the ones you get feel polished and mature.

Therefore, Luminar Neo does more, but Lightroom does fewer things better. While Neo can run slower than Lightroom, thanks to its powerful compound effects, it may still be your quickest route to a finished edit. Thus, whether you prefer using Luminar Neo or Lightroom is a matter of personal preference.

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Price

Over three years, Luminar Neo costs $139 compared to $395 for Lightroom. However, this does not value Lightroom’s added value, namely, cloud storage and perpetual updates.

Luminar Neo is cheaper than Lightroom in most use cases. Critically, you can buy and own Luminar Neo outright for US$139, whereas Lightroom will cost you $11.99 monthly for as long as you want to keep it. In other words, Lightroom will cost you more every year than you paid once to own Luminar Neo outright. However, this is not a fair comparison.

Luminar Neo vs Lightroom costs — Want Cloud? The going rate for 1TB of Cloud storage is $5 monthly. If we were to add this to Luminar’s cost of ownership, Neo would now cost $304.99 versus $399 for Lightroom. Remember, unlike Luminar Neo, you’re still getting updates with Lightroom.

Firstly, Lightroom includes 1TB of cloud storage, whereas Neo provides none, and storage always costs, even if you prefer to buy local disks. Second, buying Luminar Neo outright includes one year’s worth of updates. With Lightroom, you’ll continue to receive updates for the life of your subscription.

Therefore, whether you consider Lightroom a good deal depends on how much you value perpetual updates and that 1TB of cloud storage.

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Conclusion

Lightroom is the superior photo management tool, whereas Luminar Neo is the more capable photo editing application. Neo relies on user-friendly effects-orientated tools to produce big results quickly but can suffer from latency during extreme edits.

At the same time, Lightroom’s traditional approach demands expertise yet rewards those who stick around with a concise, capable, and highly responsive interface. Luminar Neo does more, but some of its features feel more developed than others. In contrast, Lightroom’s modest feature set feels mature and well executed.

However, you can buy and own Luminar Neo outright for less than a 12-month Lightroom subscription, making it a much better deal for some. Yet, you may be drawn to Lightroom’s 1TB of included cloud storage and its perpetual updates and thus find it better value overall.

To conclude, Lightroom and Luminar Neo do broadly the same thing for two very different audiences. Casual users will likely be drawn towards Luminar Neo’s simplicity, eye-catching effects, and low up-front price. Meanwhile, enthusiasts will enjoy Lightroom’s responsive interface and well-executed feature set and may extract more value from the included cloud storage. In other words, both Luminar Neo and Lightroom are outstanding photo editing applications – it just depends on what kind of outstanding you’re looking for.