Photo Editing with AI

When DW gave me new photo-editing software for Christmas, in 2020, she told me that some things would not be as easy to process with the tool than it is with my trusty old app, PaintShop Pro.

Challenge accepted.

She cautioned me that while Luminar AI was great for landscapes, was great for enhancing photos, it wasn't known to be reliable when it came to portrait touchups. For example, she said, it doesn't have a Makeover Tool, to remove blemishes from skin. It doesn't have a Skin Smoothing feature to iron out any unwanted wrinkles.

But what Luminar AI does have, I told her, are several portrait templates that automatically take care of many steps that I go through with PaintShop Pro. For instance, there is a collection of templates, called Easy Portrait, which automatically apply high key, low key, vignette, and other filters that would take me several steps in PSP.

There are portrait tools, in the editing mode, that specifically help me touch up the face (I could even change the subject's eye colour or apply more light with the click of the mouse), skin, and body. There's a check box that will magically remove skin defects but I find it goes a bit too far and so I don't use it.

But what I do use to remove unwanted blemishes is an erase tool that does as good a job, I find, as PSP's Makeover Tool. You just have to be careful about the size of the erase tool.

What I also like about Luminar is how, at the click of a button, you can have a slider that allows you to easily compare the original photo with your improvements. PSP does have that feature as well but in order to get it, you have to change the layout of your workspace, and I find that I cannot easily find the tools that I use the most, and that slows me down. With Luminar, the layout of my workspace doesn't change.

Before and After views by sliding the bar.

I like playing with the templates in Luminar, sure, I can use them to make my regular editing quicker and easier, but there are also templates that let me get artsy. These templates remind me of some of the filters that I can apply with Snapseed.

Burned Film template from the Experimental collection.

All of the photos in this week's Wordless Wednesday post were edited in Luminar AI, rather than PSP, with one exception: on one photo, I made the Erase tool too large and messed up the shadows on a model's face. I had to go to PSP and use the Makeover Tool to even out the light.

While I will never stop using PSP, I'm finding Luminar AI to be an app that saves me a lot of time with my photo editing. And really, that's the whole point of these apps, isn't it?

Happy Friday!