STACK RANKED: Luminar Neo Extensions (Surprising!)

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#LuminarNeo #photography #tutorial

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[rskulas]

This is the best explanation on the extras. Luminar needs to punish a written manual!!

[ronwilson]

Love your thinking on this, ye my ranking would be different as I am more wildlife, but your logic is sound. As one would expect from you.

[michelvincent]

Thanks you for this review of extensions. You do a great job.

[carlabrams]

I agree with HDR Merge being the most used and great performance - however, it would lose some score as it doesn't allow you to dial it back from 100%. Yes, I can use a layer mask and brush/dial what I want but, to me, the lack of slider in the tool deserves less than a 5.

[irenesteeves]

Thanks Jim for this, I am with you on Hdr being my fave too, I have Aurora Hdr with all the whistles but if I want a quick edit this one is very useful

[AdamTV]

Since we have sharpen and noise edit tools are these Ai extensions just an alternative method of getting to the same end point? Sure it might require less skill and time but that is not my question.

[jeffkogler]

Very helpful Jim. Especially your performance score which I take as read and wouldn't necessarily repeat your experiment. As far as usage go I would also consider what other software does those functions, do I have it, what is it's relative performance and cost. I'm not too keen on maintaining a Luminar subscription and would prefer one off purchases. However on that basis the extensions are relatively expensive additions and other vendor's software may indeed be price competitive.

[fjperras]

Admittedly, from all of these extensions, the only one I have is HDR which I feel no one has matched yet. Apart from HDR and MagicLight, functionality of all other Neo extensions are available in basic license on other tools (i.e. ON1 Photo RAW). I still haven't digested Skylum new business model and fear they might make it worst in the future so I'm holding up on further investing in their tools until I get a better view of where they are heading. Don't get me wrong, I love their software and use Neo and their HDR extension a lot. But I drive everything from ON1 at the moment. Until then, if you have some more comparison between Neo extensions and the ON1/Topaz counterpart, I might reconsider once I find peace. Thank you so much for sharing. As usual, these are very enlightening. Most of all, Happy New Year :).

[RonaldBrown]

Thanks for ranking the Extensions, and I agree that it all depends on how much use you will get out of a certain extension. Happy New Year Jim.

[brucewiebe]

As far as usefulness goes Merge and Focus Stacking would be the only 2 I would use enough to justify a purchase. I had Aurora so I got merge and may add focus stacking at some point. I have Topaz Gigapixel, Sharpen and DeNoise which I only use if I’m going to print a photo. For social media, which is mostly what I do the basic Neo program is fine for me. Will see what they add in ‘23 but for now I’ll stand pat. Hoping for a Panorama addition. Thanks for the video. It has helped me confirm what I need.

[ThePNWRiderWA]

The background removal tool made a Christmas scene postcard to send out easy. So while some of the tools are of limited use when you need them they work pretty well. The upscale tool works well for old images we all have that are small

[MaurizioFaini]

Thank Jim, great video. Usefulness 5.0 🙂

[PaulFeinberg]

HDR Merge is for sure my favorite, but I do shoot a lot of real estate so kind of goes to show there. My order would be the same except focus stacking is on the bottom for me. I think to tool is amazing but I just don’t shoot those multiple shots unless I am doing real estate brackets

[tollarplennie]

I love the new extensions. But I was both a bit surprised and disappointed when I looked at Anthony Moriganti's last video from yesterday. In this he points out that the last update of Supersharp and Upscale and the addition of Face Enhancer AI was not doing what I thought it should do. When using this it totally modifies a face, looking nothing like it did from the beginning. It is sharper, but not the same face. Have you also seen this? I will most probably not use this, and do not understand why this have been added?

[alangauld]

Thankfully I got HDR for free as an Aurora user. None of the others really excite me. I use DxO Photolab for my initial raw to DNG conversion which has their DeepPrime noise reduction. And I use Affinity Photo for focus stacking. The resizing extension is really the only one I might spend money on because it's cheaper than the Topaz alternative. But the others I just don't need. Good to hear your assessment of the full pack though.

[rebeccamoore]

I need to use HDR more! And focus stacking. I think I will see some better images going forward if I do that. And my favorite thing too is the all in one application of these. Thanks Jim!

[brotell]

thanks for vid great looks from your prospective as a side bar i am currently using neo from most of my pictures but using topaz photo ai in conjunction

[hepgeoff]

Thanks for this, Jim. I just bought the SuperSharp AI extension during this Spring sale. It's super slow and takes about 3 minutes for it to sharpen a single photo. Have you seen this? I have a 2019 MacBook Pro with I7 and 16GB ram. Topaz Sharpen is way faster.

[bobs...]

Hey Jim, Great info. Can you do a video on some of the structure of how and where the catalog is stored, as well as the Backup Process for Neo Catalogs. I have about 36, 000 photos in a catalog and when I did a backup, it displayed 'creating backup' for about 30 hours until I killed the app. Thanks

[volkerwehres]

Hi Jim, happy ne year to you and your family. Like how your new hair looks :-) Some words to the extensions. I‘m working exclusive with Luminar Neo, howeever, I would love if they spend their time to improove performance instead of finding always ways to make more money. I agree that HDR merge is good, must be good because of their experiance with Aurora. I like supersharp ai to some extend, but it also could be a normal tool in the details folder, I like fokus stacking, that in deed works good, I don‘t need upscale ai but as an early bird I had no chance to see what comes next. I do like denoise ai, I don‘t need magic light, I think the new face enhancer in upscale ai and in supersharp ai simply create new faces, terrible. Background removal works better on an iphone! I will stay with Luminar because I do like the App in generel but it still don‘t performs good on my 2017 iMac with 48GB RAM, that I would like and score it with a ten… Like your editing videos. All the best in 2023 Volker