For photographers, whether newbies or professional, post processing of their photos plays an important role. By editing the photos in right way, one can achieve amazing results and take them to next level. Though there are a lot many photo editing tools out there, but Adobe’s Lightroom has constantly been one of the favourite of the photographer community since quite long now. Undoubtedly, Adobe Lightroom is a pioneer in photo editing domain and offers a whole lot of options that make it extremely user friendly and a comprehensive solution. But, with recent updates in the pricing structures to Adobe Creative Cloud, the community has expressed mixed reviews, with many planning to switch out to other available options. But finding the right alternative could require time and research. So, I have been exploring one such tool from the day it was launched, around 2 years back, and can confidently say that it is one of the best Lightroom alternative out there, and that is- Skylum’s Luminar.

Luminar is an all-in-one photo editing tool that comes form Skylum, company that is known for creating great photo editing solutions, including the extremely popular Aurora HDR, the most powerful HDR editing platform. Available for both Mac and PC systems, features almost everything one would find in Adobe Lightroom PLUS many other useful controls and features that make things further easy and interesting. The tool supports both compressed and RAW photo editing with support of almost all major camera manufacturers and devices. The integrated Libraries option makes it easy to manage and arrange your photos, which I found actually a bit more intuitive than Adobe Lightroom. The Virtual Copies, which is an interesting feature of Lightroom, is also something being planned in future releases of Luminar.

A show-stopping feature that got recently added to Luminar is Accent AI. Powered with Artificial Intelligence, Accent AI helps photographers create instantly beautiful photos with just one click. In a matter of seconds, you can take your photos to next level and make them look absolute best! The AI aspect intelligently understands different elements in photos, like- sky, foliage, people etc. and makes cooler corrections and improvements in a balanced fashion.

And all these features are just tip of the iceberg. The list of features is unending- creative filters, advanced contrast controlling, color cast removal, details enhancer, layers and masking, nose reduction, workspaces to manage smooth workflows and the list just literally goes on.

Luminar has been tried and tested by world famous photographers and has soon become their go-to option for photo editing. Furthermore, the straightforward pricing structure of paying one time and getting access to all future updates is like icing on the cake. You just pay for this amazing photo editor once and can get access to new features and enhancements, unlike the monthly/yearly pricing structure of Adobe Creative Cloud.

To summarize, Skylum’s Luminar is truly one of the best Adobe Lightroom alternative available and is something worth trying and exploring.

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