Luminar Neo: RAW photo editing workflow tutorial

This beginner tutorial follows a RAW photo edit in Luminar Neo, using a horse beside a fence as the example. The speaker starts by evaluating the image: straighten the fence, keep attention on the horse and darken distracting areas. He recommends noise reduction first when needed, but skips it for this photo.

The edit begins with manual rotation in Crop AI rather than its automatic composition option. In Develop RAW, he adjusts exposure, contrast and shadows, then enables distortion and chromatic aberration corrections. Small saturation and vibrance changes prepare the image for more selective edits. The separate Color module provides HSL controls; he reduces green and yellow saturation, darkens background colors and brightens oranges to separate the horse from its surroundings.

For local adjustments, he applies linear gradient masks to darken the edges, subtracts the horse with Object Select and feathers the mask. A second Develop adjustment uses a radial gradient to brighten and slightly warm the subject. He notes that this edit uses few of Luminar's AI tools and stops before optional effects because he has reached his intended look.

The final review compares the original and edited image, then eases an overly dark edge adjustment. Export guidance covers choosing quality and settings for the intended destination, without prescribing specific values.