Just in time for holiday photos, Skylum has a new extension for Luminar Neo. It's the seventh extension offered this year, and it's called Magic LightAI. The release is scheduled for December 15.
This tool allows photographers to adjust light sources in their photos by adding shining, glowing beams of light for an enhanced image.
“For this winter holidays, we’re releasing the Magic Light AI Extension for Luminar Neo. It’s simply perfect for photos of fairy lights and Christmas trees. You can easily get eye-catching fairytale images that embody the holiday spirit. And by combining Magic Light AI with the Noiseless AI and Supersharp AI tools for night photos, you can achieve enchanting lighting and high-quality pictures.” — Ivan Kutanin, CEO of Skylum.
The new Magic LightAI Extension allows creators to manipulate multiple light sources in a photo. It works best with artificial light sources such as traditional light bulbs, streetlights, decorative lights, and fairy lights that are especially abundant during the holiday season.
The neural network in the core of the Magic LightAI Extension analyzes the photo, looks for any points emitting light, and gives the creator the power to make this light more intense, add beams, and add glow. On top of that, multiple sliders allow even more control over the result, such as Intensity, Size, Number of Beams and Beam Width, Brightness, Glow, Clearness, and Rotation.
The Skylum folks provided a couple of examples. Here's one:
You can see the AI has found the bright lights and added some star-like effects. It should be nice for Christmas Lights or candles.
I tried an early version of the extension on one of my own photos, Allen Street in Tombstone, Arizona.
If you look, you'll see it only worked on a couple of lights on the left side of the street, ignoring the streetlights on the right. Adjusting the intensity controls made no difference. I suspect the lights that didn't work simply were not bright enough. I was using a beta of the extension, and it didn't yet work on Apple Silicon computers unless Luminar or Photoshop were running in Rosetta emulation. I expect that will be fixed for the upcoming release. And I'd like to see the sensitivity increased. I would like to have seen the AI pick up those dimmer lights.
Still, MagicLightAI has some creative uses if it's not overdone, which no doubt will sometimes happen. This is probably the least weighty of the Neo extensions released so far, but it's a nice addition for the holiday season or to add effects to other types of images.
All Luminar Neo Extensions, including Magic LightAI, can be accessed as part of a monthly or yearly Luminar Neo Pro subscription, purchased as part of the 2022 Extensions Pack, or bought separately for those who already own a Luminar Neo lifetime license. Pro monthly and yearly subscriptions are available now and include access to Luminar Neo and all currently available Extensions as well as all Extensions released during the subscription period.
Through December 15, enjoy a special offer on Magic LightAI. You can find all the latest pricing information on the Skylum website.
Luminar Neo is available as a direct download from Skylum, or it can be bought at the Microsoft or MacOS App Store.
Boy times have changed! I bought Neo for $63 and it came with a bunch of new and powerful features (power line removal, AI sky replacement, sun beams, improved layers, etc). Now, they want me to buy a glorified star filter as a *$50* extra (and that's the sale price!)! No thanks!
The other day I posted on Flickr a night-time image wtih some nice starbursts and someone said that I used a nice filter... after reading this article I understand he may have been thinking I had used an extension like this one to achieve the starburst effect on the lights instead of simply stopping down my aperture! 😅