The Best Luminar Pro Tools For Your Editing Workflow

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Luminar Neo can be as easy or as complex as you want it to be. The more I use it, the more I’ve come to realise this fact.

When I’m editing travel shots or portraits of the family, I like to start simple and only layer on the advanced tools (and AI trickery) when I need to.

That’s what makes Luminar Neo a great option for casual shooters and side-hustle creatives alike.

You’re not locked into an AI-only world, but those smart tools are there if you want them.

Let’s walk through the top tools in Neo that I keep coming back to, and a few powerful ones I think are worth knowing even if they’re not in my usual photography workflow.

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Luminar Neo

AI-driven photo editor that lets you enhance your images with speed, precision, and eye-catching results.

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10 Luminar Pro Tools to Take Your Photos to the Next Level

The Develop Tool

 

After I’ve culled my shoot, this is where nearly every image starts.

Whether I’m pulling shadows back in a moody landscape or nudging the white balance on a sunlit family shot, the Develop panel is my baseline.

It’s fully manual, which I like, and gives you all the control you’d expect from other top editing software like Lightroom.

You’ll be comfortable adjusting the sliders on your Exposure, Highlights, Blacks… the whole lot.

You may not consider these ‘pro’ tools, but let me tell you from my experience – any pro photographer worth his/her salt will be starting in the Develop panel too.

Enhance AI

Andrew Dilks

When I want to speed things up, Enhance AI is a lifesaver.

It uses two sliders called Accent and Sky Enhancer, and somehow boosts contrast, exposure, and colour in a way that usually looks pretty natural.

I use it lightly, maybe 20–30%, as a base before diving into manual adjustments.

It’s not magic, but it gets close, and is great when you don’t want to spend the time manually adjusting too many sliders.

I know photographers who use Enhance AI on every photo they take – it’s that handy.

Noiseless AI

Andrew Dilks

This one surprised me.

Coming from a film background, I’m accustomed to a bit of grain (noise).

However, I had a bunch of low-light indoor shots from a recent trip to Tasmania, and they were riddled with noise.

Noiseless AI cleaned them up with zero fuss.

You don’t even have to leave Luminar, which is handy when you’re batch editing.

It works better than the noise tools in a lot of traditional editors, and it’s dead simple to use.

Masking and Layers

For more detailed work, Luminar’s masking tools are useful, and much simpler than masking in Photoshop.

I’ll often use the linear gradient to darken skies or the brush tool to dodge faces in portraits.

You can also combine tools in Layers, which opens up all kinds of creative workflows—like stacking effects, isolating adjustments, and testing those crazier ideas you might have without breaking your base edit.

Wedding photographers like to use gradients to ‘highlight’ their subjects by darkening all the surrounding areas.

I sometimes use a similar technique when shooting portraits where the subject is smaller in the frame.

AI Masking is also in the same toolbar, and it’s impressive, although often a bit sluggish to implement.

It does an OK job of auto-detecting subjects, skies, buildings, and various other objects, giving you a head start without painting everything manually.

Supercontrast

I don’t use this one on every image, but when I do, it’s because I want full control over where the contrast lives.

You can use Supercontrast to split it into Highlights, Midtones, and Shadows.

I find it handy for portraits where you want depth but don’t want to flatten skin tones.

When shooting outdoors, you usually need to lift the shadows in the skin to make the subject pop out from the background.

Being able to control highlights at the same time is useful, so you don’t end up making things look unnatural.

Structure AI and Details

Structure AI adds local contrast and definition, especially good for landscapes, buildings and any kind of gritty urban images in general.

However, it can make faces look harsh if overdone.

If you’ve ever used the Clarity slider in Lightroom and wondered why your subjects look a bit old and wrinkly, you’ll know what I mean!

I tend to use Structure AI with a mask, just painting it where I need a bit more pop.

Details works well in a similar way, by adding sharpening to small, medium, or large detail areas.

You can mask it too, which is great when you’re editing a mix of textures in one frame.

Relight AI

I’ve got to admit that I wasn’t a fan of this tool when it was first released… but it’s growing on me.

Relight AI lets you re-balance lighting between the foreground and background.

Sometimes I’ll use it to fix shots where the exposure looks fine in the histogram but something about it feels off.

It’s subtle but still quite useful, especially for portraits in mixed light.

Portrait Tools

 

I don’t use the Portrait tools much unless I’m editing close-ups of the kids or doing a gift print.

Tools like Skin AI and Face AI are very good if you want a quick polish without looking fake.

You can also slim faces, brighten eyes, or remove dark circles with a couple of sliders – check out the video above for examples.

I can imagine portrait photographers doing boudoir or glamour work would spend a lot of time in the Portrait Tools section.

Anyway, it’s knowing these ‘pro’ tools are there in Luminar Neo if you need them, even if you don’t touch them every time.

Presets and LUTs

When I’m in a rush or want a creative jumpstart, I’ll load up one of my saved Presets.

You can make your own or use the ones from Luminar’s marketplace, although I’ve never felt the need to purchase any yet.

It’s an easy way to apply a signature look across a batch of images, and you can still fine-tune everything after.

LUTs work in a similar way, though I tend to use them more for video reference than stills.

The neat thing about Luminar Neo (and one of the reasons it became so popular), is the way it will suggest a preset for every photo you add to the catalog.

If you upload a photo of a landscape, for example, the preset will be landscape-focused.

Background Removal and Object Erase

If you do product work or thumbnails, the AI Background Removal tool is helpful and effective.

Same goes for the Erase tool, which I use a lot for removing bins, power lines, or random beachgoers who wandered into my frame!

These are the kinds of tools that feel like cheating, but they save hours – especially if you used to do it the tedious manual way.

Pro tip: Background removal works much better than it did this time last year, thanks, I’m assuming, to advancements in the AI processing engine.

Final Thoughts

The beauty of Luminar Neo is that it doesn’t force you to choose between full manual editing and AI-powered shortcuts. You can bounce between both as your image demands.

I discuss more about manual versus AI editing in Luminar in this post.

For my workflow, which is currently hobbyist shots of travel, family, a bit of drone and portraits, Neo hits that sweet spot between speed and control.

…and when you need the big guns, they’re only a click away.

I encourage you to have a play around with all the pro tools Luminar Neo has to offer, no matter your photography editing experience.


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