Radiant Photo is a well-designed and competent photo editing application that offers a simplified approach to photo editing. However, Luminar Neo beats Radiant Photo at its own game while providing many more features for a similar price. Jump to Conclusion
REVIEW CONTINUES BELOW
RADIANT PHOTO 2
LIFETIME LICENSE
US$159
30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE
Radiant Photo Review – Contents
- What is Radiant Photo 2
- How much does Radiant Photo cost
- Try Radiant Photo Trial for Free
- Key Features of Radiant Photo 2
- What’s missing in Radiant Photo 2
- What is Radiant Photo 2 like to use
- Alternatives to Radiant Photo 2
- Conclusion – Is Radiant Photo any Good
- About the Author
What is Radiant Photo 2
Radiant Photo is a photo editing studio for Windows PC and Mac OS that leverages Assistive AI to help automate the photo editing process. For instance, Radiant’s Intelligent Scene Detection evaluates your image the moment it is opened and automatically applies the preset it thinks best suits it.
Alternatively, you can make your adjustments. Radiant Photo is loaded with Assistive AI tools such as Enhance, Skin Tone, Super Contrast, and Sky Tone, meaning you can edit your photos even if you know little about photo editing. However, seasoned photo editors will feel comfortable with Radiant’s traditional features, such as sharpening radius, white point, and color temperature.
As with most photo editing applications, Radiant Photo’s toolset is logically divided into sensibly named tabs, such as Color, Details, Face, etc. Yet, with Radiant, you can allocate any number of these tabs to individual workspaces. For instance, you can assign portrait-centric features to a portrait workspace – thus optimizing the interface for the type of photo you’re working on.
Radiant Photo is a standalone application that can be run independently of any other photography software. However, it also functions as a plugin for Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, and Corel’s Paintshop Pro.
How much does Radiant Photo cost
A lifetime Radiant Photo license will cost you a one-time payment of US$159. Buy Radiant Photo Now.
Try Radiant Photo Trial for Free
You can try Radiant Photo 2 for 30 days. Try Radiant Photo 2 Now
Key Features of Radiant Photo 2
Intelligent Scene Selection and Presets
Radiant Photo’s Intelligent Scene selection evaluates your photo and automatically applies the preset that best suits its aesthetic. Radiant includes many presets for Landscapes, People, Animals, and more. If you don’t like the preset Radiant Photo has chosen, you’re free to choose your own or edit your image manually and save the sum of your edit as a new preset.
Smart Editing
Smart Editing features three adjustments: Enhance, Color, and Skin Tone, and offers a quick alternative to manual editing.
Portrait Editing
Radiant Photo leverages Face Detection technology and includes tools to adjust skin tone, brighten eyes, and smooth skin. You can even apply digital foundation and blush. Moreover, none of these tools demand any more skill than the ability to nudge sliders.
What’s missing in Radiant Photo 2
Radiant Photo lacks photo management, making it impossible to rate photos, assign keywords, and sort images into albums and collections. It also lacks increasingly commonplace luxuries such as AI noise reduction, upscaling, AI object masking, cloud integration, layer-based editing, and Generative AI.
Radiant Photo 2 is also somewhat limited in file types and seems to leverage Windows’s inbuilt Raw compatibility, meaning those with more obscure cameras may require a separate Raw convertor. You can export your processed images as JPEG, TIFF, or PNG, but not as DNG Raw, PSD, WebP, or HEIC.
What is Radiant Photo 2 like to use
Radiant Photo 2 welcomes newcomers with its well-presented and minimalistic interface. Beginners and experts in a rush will appreciate the automated simplicity of Radiant’s intelligently applied presets and range of sensibly named assistive AI tools.
However, seasoned photo editors may grow frustrated with some of Radiant Photo’s quirks. For instance, Radiant’s image preview could not always keep up with my adjustments, resulting in a bumpy workflow. While I appreciated the idea of tool-specific workspaces, I found that workspaces would change, and toolsets would disappear from view.
Moreover, Radiant Photo’s array of adjustments remains dependent mainly on sliders. In contrast, other photo editing applications enable you to adjust properties such as Lighting, Color, and Tone Curves by interacting directly with the image (targetted adjustments), resulting in greater precision and a more intuitive tactile workflow.
However, the biggest problem relates to Radiant Photo’s Presets. Upon loading your image, Radiant automatically applies a Preset. Now, I could change the Preset, but I could not figure out how to remove it entirely and begin my edit from scratch. Clicking the Reset button cancels my manual adjustments, but the Preset remains ever-present.
Alternatives to Radiant Photo 2
Radiant Photo vs Luminar Neo
Radiant Photo and Luminar Neo offer similar approaches to photo editing. Specifically, both use assistive AI to simplify once-complex tasks into single clicks. Thus, like Radiant Photo, Luminar Neo provides all sorts of simple effects-orientated tools such as Golden Hour Glow, Foliage Enhancer, Skin Smoothing, and Sky Enhance.
However, Luminar Neo takes things further with tools such as the background-blurring Portrait Bokeh AI and the sky replacing Sky AI. Moreover, Luminar Neo features layer-based photo editing, object recognition-powered AI masking, generative AI, and superior photo management.
Like Radiant Photo 2, Luminar Neo comes stocked with Presets and automatically recommends which preset best suits your photo. But unlike Radiant Photo, you can remove your preset entirely and begin your edit from scratch.
Unfortunately, there are no circumstances in which I would recommend Radiant Photo over Luminar Neo. Simply put, Luminar Neo does much of what Radiant Photo does but better while doing much more besides.
Read Luminar Neo Review
Radiant Photo vs Lightroom
Radiant Photo and Lightroom share different design philosophies. For instance, Radiant Photo relies on automation to simplify the photo editing process, while Lightroom relies more on traditional adjustment and, thus, demands more expertise.
However, Lightroom does offer the beginner an absurd amount of Presets, and experts will vastly prefer its hyper-responsive array of precision adjustments and automated masking tools. Moreover, Lightroom’s Face and object-recognition-powered photo management is exceptional, whereas Radiant Photo lacks photo management entirely.
Since Lightroom is integrated with Adobe’s Creative Cloud, your photo collection becomes untethered from your PC and accessible to any internet-connected computer or smartphone, making it ludicrously easy to share photos with family, friends, and clients.
However, Lightroom is a subscription-only product that costs at least US$9.99 monthly for as long as you want to keep it. In contrast, you can buy and own Radiant Photo outright for a one-time payment of US$159.
Read Lightroom Review
Radiant Photo vs ACDSee Professional
Radiant Photo’s effects-orientated adjustments and automatic presets make it more immediately accessible than ACDSee Professional. However, ACDSee Professional offers experienced users a more responsive and capable editing mode, AI masking, and outstanding face and object recognition-powered photo management.
Moreover, at US$99, ACDSee Professional is considerably cheaper than Radiant Photo. Overall, I consider ACDSee Professional the best value all-in-one photo management and editing studio on the market.
Read ACDSee Professional Review
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Conclusion – Is Radiant Photo any Good
Radiant Photo is a capable photo editing application with an attractive minimalist interface populated with user-friendly assistive AI-powered labor saves and tricks. As a result, Radiant Photo provides a good first impression and should appeal to beginners and anyone looking for an easy route toward a good result.
Unfortunately, Radiant Photo has two problems. First, It lacks many features that have become commonplace elsewhere. For instance, there’s no photo management, noise reduction, Cloud integration, AI-powered masking, layer-based editing, and Generative AI.
Radiant Photo’s second problem is that rivals have bettered its finest attributes. For example, Radiant Photo and Luminar Neo aim to disolve once-complex editing tasks into single clicks. However, Luminar Neo does it better and faster while offering far more features and a similar price tag.
Yet even experienced users will likely favor an alternative to Radiant Photo. Its adaptable workspaces seem like a good idea, but they result in a somewhat fluid and ever-changing interface stacked with tools that are not always where you left them. I was also highly frustrated with the inability to proceed with an edit without applying a preset first, and I found the latency between adjustments jarring.
In isolation, Radiant Photo 2 is a capable photo editing application and a good choice for beginners. However, its price puts it against serious competition and is ultimately outdone.
RADIANT PHOTO 2
LIFETIME LICENSE
US$159
30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE
About the Author
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