Speaker 3 (00:01)
Welcome to the LumaCast, your premier gateway to the universe of limitless photo editing. Dive into the galaxy of Luminar software and the dynamic world of AI photo editing. Join us weekly for a burst of creativity and the drive to transform your photos with confidence and skill. Broadcasting directly from Clever Photographer headquarters, it's time to welcome your hosts.
Jacob Boars and Holly Linton.
Speaker 2 (00:31)
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Lumicas, our weekly podcast where we talk about photo editing, photography and Luminar NEO. We are back again with a special episode where this week we're going to be focusing on the latest Luminar NEO update with the number 1.24. But before we do that, my name is Jakub Bors and if you never see me or heard me before, I'm landscape photographer based
in West Sussex here in England and on my side is the amazing Holly Linton. Hello Holly!
Speaker 1 (01:05)
Hi Jacob, how you doing today?
Speaker 2 (01:07)
I'm great, really looking forward to this one. I'm always excited about โ updates and even more for Luminar Neo. But before we do that, let's just quickly run through how you can update the application. It's really simple. If you haven't used it, if you just turn on your computer, all you need to do is to actually bring the application on, so open it, and that should be prompt, letting you know that there is an update available to just follow the screen and you will update it. If that doesn't happen, then the way to do it is to go into the application,
In top left corner there should be Luminarneo logo. When you click on it there will be check for updates option and when you click on that it will open a window where you will be able to access the update and update it from there. So that's how you install the update and now it's time to look at the list of the updates coming with this latest version number 1.24.
Speaker 1 (02:00)
All right, well, the first update is going to be an auto adjust feature. So I'd love to hear more about.
Speaker 2 (02:07)
Great,
so starting with the big one, the auto adjust option will be as Holly said available in the develop and developer tool. So both of the tools will have it in it. It's actually just a little button on the top of the tool itself and it works very easily. You just press or click on it and it will apply the auto adjustment. Of course that once you do it, you're more than welcome to still apply any additional adjustments or tweak it depending on the look you're looking for or what edit you want to create.
Out of all the updates in this update, this auto adjust feature is only available for the pro subscribers and the upgrade path owners. And later on in the podcast, we will talk about how you can subscribe to Luminar NEO or how you can get the upgrade path if you don't already own it or if you just want to update your lifetime version. Oli, do you have any questions about the auto adjust?
Speaker 1 (03:00)
My brain is churning as you're describing that. I have a question about the blacks and whites and the clipping. Does that mean that the auto adjust will automatically do that for you?
Speaker 2 (03:13)
So that's a great question. That's one thing I haven't actually mentioned. What the auto adjust actually adjust with sliders and what it will adjust is the light section. So your exposure, contrast, highlights and shadows. It will also adjust the black and white section and it will adjust the curves. But so far, again, the beta version I was using, it was only using the black and white curve. So it was adjusting light, black and whites and curves.
And from what I saw, the adjustments with the black and white, they were taken in consideration the clipping. So you're right. It should not go into the numbers or values where it would either overexpose or underexpose the photo.
Speaker 1 (03:55)
Okay. And then my last question would be, do you see that feature being a great tool for a beginner, I would imagine, someone who doesn't quite understand how to edit yet, and for a more โ advanced user like yourself, it sounds like you'd be using it more for the preset aspect. Would there be a reason you would use that instead of develop bra and doing it all yourself?
Speaker 2 (04:19)
That's a great question actually. And you're 100 % right. I think the auto adjust will be a great new feature, especially for beginners or the users who are not so comfortable with the basic development. I like to call it basic development, but actually there is nothing basic about it. The beginning, the starting part of the photo editing process, which is done in develop tool is really important and you want it to do it quite well. So if you're not comfortable, I think this is where the auto adjust will help tremendously.
Where I think it's going to be really handy for maybe more advanced users is for presets or for building it into their workflow. But more importantly, also it will speed up the process. I think some people may consider the difference between auto adjust and enhance AI because in a way it does a similar thing. know, the enhanced AI also, when you increase it, it does that kind of basic development, but
The difference between the auto adjust and enhance AI is that enhance AI still you don't have a control over what it actually does to the image. You can only adjust the slider with the amount and if you like it, you like it. If you don't, you don't. Where with the auto adjust, you click on auto adjust, will apply the adjustments and then you can still go in and adjust any of the sliders like contrast, like brightness, like highlights and like shadows. So you still have much more control with the auto adjust. And I think both of the tools will still be as important.
Speaker 1 (05:39)
Okay, and now I have another question. Can you look at what it has adjusted and use that a new user could use that as a tool to figure out how to learn how to edit?
Speaker 2 (05:51)
That's a great point actually. Yes, yes, 100%. While it's not 100 % easy to recognize what it adjusted, you can definitely use it as a learning tool. This is where I think it's important to use it as the first step, because if you go into the tool and adjust something yourself and then press on the auto adjust, you will not really be able to say clearly what was adjusted with the auto adjustment. So first step, for beginners or somebody who want to test it, before applying anything to your image, click on the auto adjust.
see what it does. If you like the result, definitely learn from it or furthermore, adjust it more to your liking.
Speaker 1 (06:27)
Well, I look forward to seeing that in action for sure.
Speaker 2 (06:30)
Awesome. And actually, that's a great point as well. The video with the update by now should be already available on the YouTube channel. So once you finish with Lumicas, definitely head to Clever Photographer YouTube channel and watch it from there.
Speaker 1 (06:43)
On to our next update. This is going to be a popular one, I think. It's the catalog cache cleaning for optimized performance.
Speaker 2 (06:54)
Over the years, it's always been one of the big drives to try to see how they can speed up the application, how they can make it more accessible, especially for computers which are maybe not as advanced or maybe they are a little bit older. And this is definitely one of the bigger issues that were there. And that's the size of the catalog. Anytime you start to use Luminar Neo and you keep adding your images and you keep applying edits, the catalog naturally grows. And over the months or years you've been using it,
Some users actually reported 60, 70, 100 gigabytes of just the catalog itself. So this I think is very much a natural step to help to offload this value from your hard drive or free the space on your hard drive and be able to get it back and speed up the process. So basically how it works in very simple ways, what you can do, you can go into Luminar Neo, regardless if you edit presets or catalog module, you again go into the top left corner, you click on the
icon with the Luminar Neo logo on it. Then you go into the settings and in the settings on the top, there is a whole section called catalog. This is where you can choose where the catalog is going to be saved. But more importantly, under there is a new option called catalog cache size. Next to it, it tells you how much of the data is there in gigabytes. And next to it is a little button called clear cache. So if you see that there is a 20, 30 gigabytes or more or less, and you want to clear it,
You just click on the button, clear the cache, it will clear the space and it will not only reuse space on your hard drive, but it will also speed up the editing process in the application.
Speaker 1 (08:32)
Sounds good. The need for speed. I do have a question because I don't know if this cache clearing is what I think it is. I've had a problem where my internal drive, I only have 500 gigabytes, gets to be half full, say after a year's worth of edits. So I've been going into the Luminar resources folder and basically saying to myself, I am never going to go re-edit any of these pictures again. I'm going to clear all this out.
And that's been my process kind of year to year. So are you saying that this new feature will be with the click of a button going to clear all that? And what does it do to the edit?
Speaker 2 (09:14)
It's a right question. And I understand that people will be scared about the fact that they will lose their edits, but actually what you're going to be losing are not the data about the edits, but more of the temporary files created with the application. And temporary files are, for example, when you move your image from catalog into the edit and start to use overlays and start to use LUTs and start to use skies, the application constantly creating this library of this virtual tools around it. And they keep saving them.
in this virtual space. while once you move back to the catalog and pick another image, you don't really need these virtual elements or items because they are directly attached to your edit. The application up till now haven't been deleting them. They just kept them there and it just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. So what I think is going to be happening is it will clear the temporary files, which the application used for editing, which I think is definitely a good thing.
Speaker 1 (10:11)
Great. think a lot of people will be happy with that.
Speaker 2 (10:13)
Definitely. And I think this is one thing that can help, but because I have the preferences open actually, another thing that can also help to speed up the process is the possibility to switch off the dynamic backgrounds in Luminar New York. So when you're in preferences in the same settings panel, there is a catalog, which I already talked about, but around middle, there is a section called appearance. And here you can actually switch on and off the dynamic background. And I don't know if you ever noticed when you move image around, there's a little
background kind of moving and animating and it looks very pretty but actually takes lots of performance away from your computer. So from here you can also switch this off and just get a little bit more extra speed. So that's another pitch.
Speaker 1 (10:56)
Yes, I have that turned off that used to drive me nuts. So I'm happy when they created that feature.
Speaker 2 (11:03)
So no more animations for Holly.
Speaker 1 (11:05)
Hey, we're on to the third new update. We have the depth models update in the Atmosphere AI tool. What's that all about?
Speaker 2 (11:15)
Excellent. I do use atmosphere AI quite a lot, especially around autumn and winter when you know you get in lots of moody scenes and this is where you can either add or enhance your fog and mood in the images. In past, you've been able to add it with a simple slider. There is an amount slider and depth slider, but the depth slider was a little bit hidden missed. It depended what you had on the image, what kind of elements you had there. Also, it was human aware, so anytime you had a human in your image, it would just avoid it.
so you couldn't switch it on and off. It would just avoid the human. And even if you wanted the human to be in the actual folk omnis, it was just avoided and it didn't really look that great. Where with this new update, they worked quite heavily on the depth model on mask and it works super well. Actually yesterday when I was recording the video, I had the older version and the new version of Luminar Neo open next to each other. And I applied exactly the same amounts and the difference is huge. So imagine a scene where you have a forest
with lots of trees, some of them closer to your camera, some of them further away. And you apply the fog to your image. And when you apply it with the depth on zero, the focus all the way at the end of the scene. So you see it in a little trees at the back, but it's just there and everything else is clear. And as you take the slider with the depth and start increasing it, the depth in front of your eyes, traveling through the forest and getting closer and closer to you. And not only that it
actually takes in consideration the trees and first when you're sliding it's try to avoid them, so to mask them away and then it overtakes them and cover them and as you're getting closer and closer eventually when you get to 100 % of the depth it covers the entire image with the fog. So I was, as you can hear from my voice, really excited about this update and I think it works super well. I think this is great improvement for one of the older tools, but tools nevertheless which can be really useful.
Speaker 1 (13:11)
Sounds great. I can already tell you're going to be doing some interesting edits using this in your upcoming videos. It just sounds like it's much of a new and improved tool. Nothing negative to say about it at all. It's something that probably a lot of landscape photographers are really going to enjoy and even just to do use for spooky edits. already thinking Halloween time pictures and trying to make more of a scary looking scene.
or like you say, a moody scene, very useful. So, onto our fourth and final update in Luminar Neo would be the improved exports menu feature. What does that entail?
Speaker 2 (13:57)
Great. So let's move on the exporting. Now, before we started, I was telling Holly that I was a little bit confused about this actually, because the text from Skyland was mentioning that it's enhanced export menu. And when I went into exporting, was not much difference. Some of the controllers moved around little bit. The order of the settings is adjusted, but the window looked exactly the same. So I kind of had to look around to see what really changed. And probably the biggest update is
when it comes to the actual export button in the application. And this is how it works. So when you're in the application in the edit module, you can go into the top right corner and that is the export button. Now, when you click on it, there are some new options here. First, it will tell you how many photos you have selected, which I think is great because in past when you had the multiple pictures selected and you click on export and started the exporting process, you didn't even notice that maybe you exporting 25 images rather than just one. So immediately you can see how many photos you selected.
So that is the first thing. Second thing, you have the option to click on new export, which is just like in the past, you use Shift, Command and E or Shift, Control and E, it opens the exporting window and you go there. However, you now also have the option to choose export with previous, which basically will export the image in exactly the same settings you had with your last export. So this is really handy when maybe you working on an image, you export it.
then you adjust it a little bit and you want to export it same again, same values, same settings, but you don't want to go through the process of adjusting it again. You just click on the export with previous. After that, there is also new option called click export, which is basically four presets that you can click on and it will set the exporting options for you. Two of them are focusing on a JPEG format. So now you can very quickly export JPEG in 100 % quality and 80 % quality just by clicking on the button.
It will open the window, you choose where you want to export it and that's it. And you can also export to TIFF formats, one of them in 16 bits and eight bits. So this is really handy. I think lots of photographers will use the JPEG 100 % quality or 80 % quality. I think that will speed up the process. And I think that's a great little update there. Now, when we finally get into the exporting window, there is also a big addition here and something that
I know that for three years, lots of photographers out there been asking for, and that's the possibility to export in a DNG format. Now the DNG format in very basic way is a digital negative. So basically it's a raw format, which was created by Adobe. It's commonly used in Lightroom as well as Photoshop, and it's very popular. So now you have the possibility to export your photos in this format, which I know that lots of photographers out there will appreciate. So
When you're going to be hearing about this exporting update, don't necessarily go into the exporting window itself, but head to the top right corner of the screen, click on the export button, and this is where all the new features are hidden.
Speaker 1 (17:05)
forward
to taking a look at these new export menu features and how that might change my exporting workflow, if that's the right word. I typically export one image at a time once I'm done editing so that I don't forget to export it. I'm sure all the new features will be very useful to our users. โ I do have one question about though, you mentioned batch exporting. I'm curious, how do you rename your files?
I typically would rename it, say purple flower, know, dash image one, two, three, or whatever. When you have 25 selected and export them, how do you rename that?
Speaker 2 (17:44)
That's a great question, actually. And I guess if you've never done it before, then you're not aware of it. But what actually happens is when you select multiple files and go for the export, when the window appears, it doesn't have the option to add the name. You cannot name it as anything. So what it's going to do, it will use exactly the same name as the original file and just add at the end of it, the new format you're going to use. So if you're exporting your images in JPEG,
they will have all these options there. And I think this is definitely one more thing that I would really like to see in the exporting menu. And that's being able to basically create like a naming connection. So let's say when you're exporting 20 files, I would like each file to have my name, maybe the date, and maybe like a sequence number, know, so one to 25. I think that would really help because what it means now when you export 25 files, you have to then go into the actual folder and rename them.
manually from there, which I don't think is really that great. So what else is there on our list?
Speaker 1 (18:44)
That covers all four. That's it for this update. So I guess you're going to tell everybody again pricing and what are your finishing thoughts on this new update?
Speaker 2 (18:55)
So
I think before we look at the update in overall, as Holly mentioned, let's have a look at the latest availability and also pricing on how to get Luminar NEO right now. Right now Skylum is running their Spring offer or Spring sale, which is available until the 28th of April. Now the offer in very basic ways gives a 75 % discount to all new users, all the users which will be switching from lifetime license to subscription.
Basically, can follow the link in the description of the podcast that will bring you on a Skylum website. And that's where you can see this discount. To top it off, you can also use the discount code CPneo10 and that will give you 10 % additional discount, which should then make it to how much 85 % discount. I don't know if that's right. Anyway, you will get more discount by using CPneo10. So that's how it's going to work there.
Now if you are current user, if you are subscriber, you don't have to worry about it. You are getting all these updates as you go along. If you are lifetime user or the one time purchase user and you do not own the upgrade pass, then you can get it right now following the spring update until the 28th of April for $33. The easiest way to see what offer is there for you is to again follow the link in the description of the podcast, which will bring you on the Skylum website.
Once you log in, it will give you all these options tailored towards your account and what is the best possibility for you. Just one more time. Don't forget the CP NEO 10 that will give you the additional discount. So on the back of that, looking at the update itself, I think last update we had around the anniversary, is that right? Date. So that was the 1.23. So this is probably the second biggest update of the year.
Speaker 1 (20:39)
Yes, and that was a major up
Speaker 2 (20:47)
With some exciting news, think especially hobbyists and beginner users, will appreciate the auto adjustment. The catalog cache cleaning is a big one again for those users who maybe have older machines, older computers or laptops where you're struggling for size. I personally also have a laptop. The laptop has maybe just about 500 gigabytes. By the time you have your editing videos and photography and photo editing software, you know, there's really not that much left. So
this is a great option to optimize the space and the application. So I think that's a great update. The depth model and the update for the atmosphere AI, I think is great. I know that it doesn't sound like the most exciting update ever, but if you've been using this tool, you will see how much better it just got. So that's really exciting. And finally, the exporting, I think is just showcasing the movement forward with the application. Those are not necessarily the most groundbreaking updates. However,
once again, they making the whole usage of the application much more easier. The fact that you don't have to go inside of the exporting window and you can just very quickly export the image in one of the preset qualities or export it with your previous settings, I think is a welcome option which people will appreciate. I think maybe new users who will join after this will take it as a granted. They will think that how it's been always.
But for us who started with the application three years ago, we know that things were not always as smooth as they seem. So it's always nice to see that the application is moving forward. Now, the biggest update will be again in autumn. This is where the big things happened in the application, where lots of new tools arrived and usually new technologies. I think we still have a little bit of time to wait for that. However, I think going into the late spring and beginning of the summer, I hope to see one more, maybe one more update.
and see even more tools to get us ready for the amazing summer and landscape season.
Speaker 1 (22:39)
I think any update is a great update. This may come as a surprise, but I keep a list of all of the new features that I think Skylum should add to the software. So I'll submit that one day.
Speaker 2 (22:53)
Definitely. And that's the way to do it. I think the more people ask for features, the more possibility there is that they will come in the future. Okay, Holly, I think that brings us nicely towards the end of the podcast. We will be back again next week with the promised episode of the myths of editing in Luminania. We are really excited about that. And with so many more topics. Now, since we are live now across the streaming platforms, we should say that you can
Listen to us on Spotify, Apple Music, also Prime and YouTube and so many more platforms. So I hope that we're covering all your favorite ones. If you can, please give us a follow, like, and also leave us comment anywhere you can. We would love to hear from you. So thank you very much, Holly. Thank you for today. Thank you. Have a great afternoon, everyone, and we'll speak to you next week.
Speaker 1 (23:40)
Thank you. It's been great.
Speaker 3 (23:46)
And that's a wrap. Now, there's only three things left to do. Subscribe to this podcast so you never miss a future episode. Visit our website at cleverphotographer.com slash lumacast to see what we have in store next. And stay creative and keep editing your photos no matter what anyone says.
