The Luminar Neo Plugin Easily Fits Into Your Existing Photo Editing Workflow

We put Luminar Neo to the test, not as a standalone app, but as a plugin designed to enhance your existing editing photography workflow.

Full disclosure: This article is brought to you by Skylum.

In the crowded world of photo editing software, Skylum’s Luminar Neo has carved out a niche by offering powerful artificial intelligence (AI) tools designed to speed up and simplify complex photo editing tasks without sacrificing creative control. While Luminar Neo stands strong as a standalone application, its real power for many professionals lies in how well it integrates into existing workflows, particularly as a plugin for Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. With that in mind, let’s explore how Luminar Neo functions and how its tools can streamline the editing process while integrating cleanly into existing post-production workflows.

Seamless Integration with Adobe

Photographers who rely on Adobe’s ecosystem will find Luminar Neo’s plugin integration a welcome addition, and installing it as a plugin is straightforward. Once set up, Neo appears under the “Edit In” or “Export to Plugin” options within Lightroom and Photoshop. Edits made in Luminar Neo via Lightroom are saved as new TIFF files, preserving the non-destructive nature of Lightroom’s workflow.

For Photoshop users, Luminar Neo opens as a smart filter layer, allowing further edits back in Photoshop after adjustments are made. This back-and-forth workflow is smooth, and the software rarely feels like it slows things down. Even with large RAW files, export times remain reasonable.

AI Tools That Speed Up Creative Workflows

As a plugin, Luminar Neo acts like a supercharged enhancement suite, offering creative tools that are both intelligent and efficient. Rather than replacing core editing software, Neo augments it with powerful AI-driven features that help photographers achieve standout results in less time. Accessed via Photoshop’s drop-down Filters menu, the Luminar Neoplugin opens as an overlay packed with tools to adjust and enhance photos.

Relight AI is one of the standout tools, especially useful in challenging lighting conditions. It analyzes the depth of a scene to apply targeted lighting adjustments, bringing balance to images with strong backlighting or harsh shadows. For portrait photographers, it can subtly lift facial features without flattening contrast, while landscape shooters can bring detail into shadowy foregrounds without overexposing the sky. The fact that it separates foreground and background illumination with a single slider gives users precise control with minimal effort.

Sky AI goes beyond a simple sky replacement function. It not only swaps out dull, overcast skies with more visually striking alternatives but also intelligently relights the entire scene to match the new sky’s color temperature and brightness. This results in a natural look, avoiding the “cut-and-paste” feel common in lesser sky replacement tools. There’s a library of sky presets included, but users can also upload custom skies, making this feature especially useful for real estate photographers and travel bloggers looking to maintain visual consistency.

Portrait Background Removal automates one of the most time-consuming tasks in portrait retouching: isolating subjects from their backgrounds. With a single click, the AI identifies the subject and removes the background cleanly, allowing for quick swaps or creative composites. While not always perfect at the edges, especially with fine hair or transparent objects, the initial results are impressively clean and can easily be refined further in Photoshop. This feature is a significant time-saver for anyone creating headshots, marketing content, or social media-ready images.

Enhance AI and Structure AI offer quick global adjustments that maintain a natural look without veering into over-editing. Enhance AI combines several adjustments, such as tone, saturation, and clarity, into a single slider, making it ideal for batch-editing or quick client proofs. Structure AI adds detail and contrast only where it’s needed, enhancing textures and edges while protecting skin tones and smooth areas from becoming harsh. These tools are handy when you need to elevate an image fast without spending time fine-tuning a dozen separate sliders.

Together, these AI tools make Luminar Neo a compelling companion plugin. They streamline repetitive tasks, open up creative possibilities, and reduce time spent on labor-intensive adjustments, all while delivering results that hold up under professional scrutiny.

Real-World Test: Fixing Challenging Panoramas with Luminar Neo

To put Luminar Neo’s tools to the test, I ran two of my large panoramic landscape photographs through the plugin, both of which presented a combination of technical and creative challenges. These weren’t ideal shots with minor touch-ups; instead, they were images with real problems: poor lighting, noise, and mismatched exposure across wide, complex compositions. What made them worth saving was the strength of their composition, and Neo gave me the means to bring that vision to life.

The first image captured a scenic desert vista that I photographed in the American Southwest: a lush bloom of wildflowers and cacti at the edge of a lake oasis, framed by mountains in the background. Although the composition had strong visual balance, the lighting was flat and underwhelming, with washed-out midtones leaving the scene looking lifeless.

Using Relight AI, I was able to restore natural depth and contrast, selectively brightening the foreground flora without overexposing the distant peaks or the sky. Enhance AI helped further by bringing subtle vibrancy to the color palette, making the flowers pop just enough without appearing over-processed. Finally, Sky AI was used not to fully replace the sky, but to introduce a touch of dynamic cloud structure that gave the image atmosphere. The transformation was striking, the same composition, now with dimension, light, and presence.

The second image was a panoramic of rolling hills blanketed with rainbow wildflowers, anchored by a towering saguaro cactus in the center and backed by a distant mountain ridge to the right. Photographed during blue hour, the scene had mood, but also issues: the high ISO introduced noticeable noise, and the mountains on the right cast long shadows that left much of the landscape underexposed.

Here, Relight AI proved essential again, as by adjusting both near and far light zones, I was able to lift the shadowy areas without ruining the soft, post-sunset ambiance. The central cactus was brought forward with localized adjustments, helping it hold its role as the visual anchor of the composition. Lastly, Noiseless AI performed impressively on this high-ISO file, significantly reducing grain while preserving detail in the wildflowers and textures of the cactus. The result retained the delicate light of the blue hour while gaining clarity and focus, drawing the viewer’s eye into the scene.

Both panoramas were edited via the Luminar Neo plugin launched directly from Photoshop. While not every slider in Neo was needed, the AI-driven tools we did use delivered results that would have taken significantly longer to achieve manually. More importantly, they allowed me to rescue two images that would otherwise have stayed buried in the archives.

Workflow Enhancement, Not Replacement

One of Luminar Neo’s strengths is how it enhances without disrupting. It doesn’t ask photographers to abandon their current workflow. Instead, it offers fast creative control for tasks where Adobe’s tools might be more time-consuming.

However, some advanced retouchers might find Neo’s plugin more useful for batch or style-focused work rather than pixel-perfect editing. For those deeply embedded in Photoshop’s layer system, Neo’s AI tools feel more like a shortcut than a substitute.

Powerful Post Processing Sidekick

Luminar Neo excels as a plugin for photographers who want AI-assisted creative control without sacrificing their existing workflow. Its integration with Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop is well-executed, and its AI tools offer meaningful time savings with a minimal learning curve.

For professionals and enthusiasts alike, Luminar Neo isn’t just another editing tool. As a plugin, it’s a powerful sidekick, one that blends speed, creativity, and innovation with the reliability of your core software. While not flawless, its benefits far outweigh its drawbacks, making it a compelling investment for any modern photographer’s toolkit.

PetaPixel readers can save 10% on Luminar Neo right now using the coupon code “PetaPixel10.” There’s no better time to see how Luminar Neo can fit into your photo editing workflow, whether as a standalone app or a plugin with your current photo editing software.

Full disclosure: This article is brought to you by Skylum.

Image credits: Photos by Kate Garibaldi