Skylum announces Luminar Flex, a new plugin

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Luminar Flex plugin allows more photographers to edit with Luminar’s AI-powered technologies to boost creative options and save time using their existing host software.

BELLEVUE, WA – April 4, 2019 — Today, Skylum Software announced Luminar Flex, a plugin that offers unique and powerful editing features to help photographers elevate the creativity of their images.

Luminar Flex features incredible adjustments and effects that can’t be found anywhere else. Luminar Flex plugin fits into almost every photographer’s workflow, integrating with third-party tools like Photoshop, Lightroom Classic, Photoshop Elements and Photos for macOS.

“While our Luminar 3 software has been groundbreaking in terms of offering an all-in-one management and editing platform for photographers, we want it to be the best tool for everyone. That’s why Luminar now comes in two distinct versions,” said Alex Tsepko, CEO of Skylum. “The Luminar Flex plugin lets photographers continue to use their host software of choice, while taking advantage of Luminar’s one-of-a-kind editing features, such as Accent AI, Golden Hour, Details Enhancer and AI Sky Enhancer.”

Luminar, the winner of the “Best Imaging Software” award by TIPA and “Best Software Plugin” by the Lucie Technical Awards, includes powerful filters and editing options that photographers rely on daily as a part of their post-processing workflow.

Unlock beautiful images with creative filters and Looks

Luminar offers more than 50 filters for corrections and enhancements, but one area it shines is offering expanded creative options. Users will find useful filters and stylized Luminar Looks available nowhere else to give their images a unique appearance:

  • Accent AI: Automatically analyzes and corrects photographs using more than a dozen controls at once. Accent AI can be a great substitute for several traditional controls such as shadows, highlights, contrast and more. Think of it as the best Auto button you’ve ever clicked, but you still maintain control.
  • AI Sky Enhancer: Turn gray and uninspired skies into something magical with AI Sky Enhancer. By automatically detecting the sky in a photograph, AI Sky Enhancer makes the necessary adjustments to increase color, clarity, and detail, allowing to boost your outdoor images with a single slider.
  • Details Enhancer: Creates dramatic photos with crystal-clear sharpness. This filter unlocks details for sharp looking images without halos or artifacts.
  • Golden Hour: Brings a warm-toned sunlit effect to your photo This filter emulates the shooting conditions when the sun is low on the horizon (such as shortly after sunrise or before sunset).  This indirect light helps make even dull photos warmer and more dimensional.
  • Orton Effect: Allows enhancements to an image that include glow and focus. This produces a unique look that’s both sharp and blurry at the same time.  It’s perfect to create an emotional feeling in a picture.
  • Image Radiance: Gives an overall “dreamy” look by adding a glow to the lighter areas of the image. This is a great filter to use for portraits and even landscape photos to create soft, saturated results.
  • Foliage Enhancer: Elevate colors often found in spring grass and fall leaves to make landscape photographs that pop off the screen.
  • LUT Mapping: Apply Lookup Table (LUT) files for creative color grading and film stock emulation.
  • Luminar Looks: More than 70 one-click Looks give photographers a speedy jump-off point for creative explorations. Easily dial in the right look with the Amount slider or customize the recipe and save a new Look.

In addition to the AI-powered features that Luminar Flex offers, users can also speed up their workflow by using Workspaces, which are collections of filters associated with specific types of photography. By using built-in Workspaces, or organizing their favorite filters into a custom Workspace, photo editors can realize time-savings and better workflow organization. Luminar Flex also introduces a new set of workspaces to better fit the needs of plugin users:

  • Expert: All essential tools that professional photographers need for image processing.
  • Black & White: Optimized for creating black and white masterpieces.
  • Image Aware: Smart Workspace for fast and high-quality image-aware processing thanks to the power of AI.
  • Intensify: Boost the details and structure in the photographs to get very clear and detail-rich image.
  • Drone & Aerial: Essential tools for quick edits of drone photos.
  • Film Lab: Tools for emulating the style and effects of film photography.
  • Relight and Color: Essential tools for creative photography.
  • Portrait: Optimized for creating beautiful portraits shot under any light.

Also included are several new  Luminar Looks, which allow for quick, customizable edits with the click of a button. These  save time and provide for wide-ranging creative opportunities. Adjust the looks the taste with the strength slider or customize the filer recipe. Skylum partners with top photographers and image editors to design new Looks.  Photographer will find new Looks each month in the Luminar Marketplace, many of them free.

Yet another benefit of Luminar Plugin for Lightroom users is an ability to use Layers and Blending modes. With Adjustment Layers it’s easy to apply any of the filters to flexible layers. These, as well as textures, can be mixed with blending modes for new results or have their opacity adjusted for mixing things together. It is also possible to use textures, images, masks and more for the ultimate in creative filtering.

The Luminar Flex plugin can easily be used with Adobe Photoshop CC and Photoshop Elements, and also ties natively into Adobe Lightroom Classic CC’s external editing system and Photos for macOS’s extensions. In addition, Photoshop users have the benefit of using Luminar Flex with Smart Objects, enabling the ability to revise edits even after closing the document.  Plus they can even record custom Photoshop actions that encapsulate incredible effects using Luminar filters, layers, and textures for huge time savings.

Luminar Flex will have its own development roadmap. Owners of Luminar 2018 and Luminar 3 will receive a free copy of Luminar Flex. With the next major version of Luminar, the plugins workflow will be removed from Luminar with Libraries and will only be available in Luminar Flex.*

Luminar Flex will retail for $59/€59/£54 and is expected to ship on April 4.

The Luminar plugin works in the following host applications

  • Photoshop (Windows & macOS)
  • Lightroom Classic (Windows & macOS)
  • Photoshop Elements (Windows & macOS)
  • Photos for macOS
  • Apple Aperture

To learn more about Luminar Flex, visit https://skylum.com/luminar-flex.

* Note: Luminar Flex is Skylum’s recommended workflow for photographers who want to add the Luminar engine and filter set to their existing photo editing workflow. Luminar 3 is a desktop application (which also offers basic plugin workflows) will become a standalone product only with its next major update.

About Skylum Software

Skylum is a global imaging technology company with offices in Bellevue, USA; Kyiv, Ukraine; and Tokyo, Japan. Skylum allows millions of photographers to make incredible images faster. We automate photo editing with the power of Artificial Intelligence yet leave all the creative control in the hands of the artist. The Skylum Team has won the Red Dot Award, Apple’s Best of the Year, and other top industry awards. We’re the makers of Luminar, Photolemur, and Aurora HDR. To learn more about Skylum, visit http://skylum.com.