Luminar 4 is an excellent photo editing application with innovative and well-executed features. However, it has been discontinued and replaced twice, first by Luminar AI and then by Luminar Neo. Furthermore, AI and Neo are generally superior to Luminar 4.
Therefore, even if you can buy a copy of Luminar 4, you shouldn’t, and you might like to try Luminar Neo instead. Nonetheless, my Luminar 4 review remains below for the sake of historical records. Jump to Conclusion | Read my Luminar Neo Review
Contents
- What is Luminar 4
- What can Luminar 4 do?
- Is Luminar 4 good for Beginners?
- Is Luminar 4 good to use?
- How much does Luminar 4 Cost?
- Conclusion – Is Luminar 4 any Good
- Luminar 4 Download
What is Luminar 4
With its extensive preset catalog (known as ‘looks’), Luminar 4 initially appears to be another pre-set-based editor. And whilst there’s nothing wrong with quick, one-click results, plenty of other applications do as much for free. However, dig deeper, and you’ll find all the usual tools, such as Tone Curves, White Balance, and Exposure.
But while most applications name their tools after their function, many of Luminar’s tools are named for their effect. For instance, Luminar 4 has a slider called Glow and another called Foliage Enhancer. As a result, Luminar is a friendly place to hang out even if you are new to editing photos.
Despite its easygoing interface, Luminar 4 has some major tricks. With its Sky Replacement function, a single click can convert a dull mid-day photo into a sunset masterpiece. And if you find replacing the entire sky a little subtle, you can go full Michael Bay and add sun rays, a little aurora, and even the Milky Way.
Yet, despite its impressive technology, Luminar 4 is no one-stop shop. Although you can add photos, rate them, and divide them into albums, you cannot assign keywords, detect faces, or run advanced searches. Nor is it a good option for those who like to mix a little graphic design with their photography since it lacks vector and text layers.
Therefore, it’s best to consider Luminar 4 strictly as a photo editing application that succeeds at being powerful, affordable, and suitable for beginners.
What can Luminar 4 do
Looks
As Instagram has its filters, Luminar 4 delivers one-click processing with ‘Looks’. You can apply a Look, add your own adjustments, and then save your efforts as a new Look for future use. Overall, the Looks work well, and it’s nice and quick to browse through them and preview their effect.
The Essentials Tab
The essentials tab contains all the usual photo editing tools, such as exposure, white balance, and tone curves. The sharpening tool or ‘Detail Enhancer’ offers three tiers of adjustment and delivers impressive results, and I also like the AI Structure and Enhance modes. If you want to enhance the appearance of foliage or reduce haze, check out the Landscape Enhancer tools.
The Creative Tab
Here is where you will find Luminar 4’s box office features. By clicking on a few drop-downs and nudging a few sliders, you can swap out a sky, add fog, insert light rays, and, yes, place a Giraffe (or other objects) onto the horizon.
After some adjustment, the effect ranges between artificial-looking and downright impressive, depending on the original photo.
Beyond the headline features, you have Dramatic, Matt, and Mystic effects adjustments. And if you want to mix a little tradition with your artificial intelligence, a Film grain simulator.
The Portrait Tab
Here, you can slide away skin imperfections, whiten teeth, and slim faces. If that isn’t enough, you can also whiten and enhance eyes, remove dark shadows, and brighten lips. Best of all, it’s all done without selection, brushing, or masks.
Also, there’s a nice tool for boosting brightness (high key), while the Orton effect adds a blurry, ethereal glow to your subject.
Pro Tab
The Pro tab is somewhat conventional compared to the rest of Luminar 4. Here, you can alter color and contrast and use a dodge and burn brush.
Is Luminar 4 good for beginners?
Luminar 4 is excellent for beginners. If you are new to photo editing, you can rely on its Looks for instant one-click image processing. Thanks to Luminar’s intelligently named tools, it won’t be long before you start experimenting with the Landscape Enhancer, Teeth Whitener, and Fog settings.
Is Luminar 4 good to use?
Performance
Since Luminar 4 does so much of the thinking for you, it’s not surprising it suffers a little lag. Sometimes, like when replacing a sky, the lag is acceptable since the effect is worth the wait.
However, there is a delay as you move from editing one photo to the next. Although the photo appears immediately, it takes about 8 seconds before the image is fully rendered and the tools become available. A similar but less severe delay occurs when you zoom in and out of the image.
And finally, there are significant delays when accessing the brush tools. For example, when I select the erase brush, it takes more than 20 seconds to load the erase screen.
A quick look at the task manager revealed that Luminar 4 was giving my 8-core 16-thread CPU a thorough workout. While Luminar 4 takes advantage of your GPU, the load is insignificant.
Overall, Luminar 4 runs well, especially considering its purpose. However, if you are using an older PC, you may encounter problems.
Ergonomics
Luminar 4’s ergonomics are excellent, thanks to its well-named tools and streamlined, clutter-free interface. I particularly like how Luminar highlights the tools I’ve used to process my image and how easy it is to enable/disable or reset their effects.
If you wish to undo your changes, you can revert the image to its original state or use the History tab to backtrack through each of your adjustments.
However, there are some improvements I would like to see in future editions. Some snapshot functionality would help save and access multiple edits of the same image. It would also be nice to have a window that shows a 100% magnified view as you pass your mouse over parts of your photo.
Finally, resizing my erase brush using the mouse rather than the toolbar would be good.
Luminar 4 Pricing
Is Luminar 4 free?
Sorry folks, not quite. But you try it for free
How much does Luminar 4 cost
Luminar 4 is very affordable. Check prices + 25% discount
What’s the difference between Luminar 4 and Luminar AI?
Luminar AI furthers Skylum’s philosophy of creating an effects-orientated photo editor. Thus, Luminar AI is designed to do more with less user intervention.
In reality, the differences are slight. And in some ways, I prefer Luminar 4. For more information, read Luminar AI versus Luminar 4
Conclusion: Is Luminar 4 any Good
Luminar 4 isn’t just good; it’s fun, affordable, and easy to use. If you want to apply powerful effects to your photos with little effort, Luminar 4 is a fantastic choice. However, I do not recommend Luminar 4 for everyday use for the following reasons.
If you have an extensive photo collection, you may find Luminar 4’s photo management tools inadequate. Not only does it lack the option to tag your images with keywords, but it’s also missing contemporary features such as face recognition. And because of the delay between loading images and the slight lag between zooms, I would not use Luminar 4 to review large batches of photos.
Yet, I recommend Luminar 4 as a supplement solution to be deployed as a power app for tuning the nuts off singular photos. I would also recommend it to more casual users who are unfulfilled with the thousands of free options but have no need or desire to buy or learn Lightroom or Capture One. Luminar 4 is more straightforward to use than either and is also vastly cheaper.
Overall, Luminar 4 is a no-brain-required recommendation that can only be faulted for what it isn’t designed to be. But if you use it as intended, you’ll get great results and have a lot of fun along the way.