Luminar Neo tutorial: RAW edits, AI sharpening and layers

This Luminar Neo review and tutorial combines the speaker's assessment of its value and interface with an edit of a dragonfly in flight. He describes a lifetime license without a subscription and reports smooth performance on his Mac, while noting that performance depends on the computer. These are his assessments rather than comparative benchmarks.

The editing example starts with a noisy, slightly soft 50-megapixel photograph. The speaker skips presets and begins with RAW development, adjusting highlights, shadows, white and black levels. He temporarily raises saturation to judge white balance, then reduces it before cropping.

For sharpening, he brushes a mask over the dragonfly and selects the medium AI setting to avoid sharpening the soft background. He then applies medium AI noise reduction, explaining that lower strength can preserve more detail and reduce an artificial appearance.

The final section adds a lens flare image on a separate layer, changes the blend mode to Screen and masks the effect away from the dragonfly. A custom LUT demonstrates another look adjustment. The speaker stresses selecting the correct layer and acknowledges that the example effects do not particularly suit this photograph. The tutorial does not establish whether the AI features work offline.