Luminar Neo

Luminar Neo is Skylum's AI photo editor for desktop and mobile, offering relighting, sky replacement, retouching and denoise tools with a rare perpetual-license option and local processing.

Luminar Neo is Skylum's flagship AI photo editing application for macOS, Windows, iPhone and iPad. It packages a range of AI-driven tools, including relighting based on depth, generative and standard sky replacement, background removal, structure and detail enhancement, portrait and skin retouching, and denoising, into a layer-based editor that works as a standalone app or as a plugin for Lightroom and Photoshop. A key differentiator is its purchasing model. Alongside a Pro subscription, Skylum sells Luminar Neo as a one-time perpetual license, letting users own the version they buy while the AI runs locally rather than in the cloud. This is attractive to photographers who dislike ongoing subscription costs and to those who want offline, on-device processing. Luminar Neo is aimed at enthusiast and semi-professional photographers who want strong, quick AI edits without deep manual masking. It is less of a full digital-asset-management and cataloging tool than Lightroom, and heavy AI features can be demanding on older hardware, but for creative one-click enhancements and portrait work it is a capable, well-regarded editor.