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June 16
7 min. to read
A brand-new FREE update to Luminar Neptune is now available with new features like artificial intelligence, plug-ins, vignettes, and more. All designed to give you fantastic photo editing super-powers.
Today, a brand-new FREE update to Luminar Neptune blasted off, sporting Artificial Intelligence-powered technology that will allow you to make stunning images in seconds, not minutes or hours!
Heading into the Summer, and all the family and vacation photos we’ll be snapping, I was especially excited to take advantage of some of the cool new features of Neptune. The dev team here at Skylum focused on speed, speed and more speed, maybe inspired by the solar winds that swirl around the planet of Neptune at over 1500 miles/2400km per hour! (not kidding)
If you purchased a previous version of Luminar directly from Skylum, simply launch the app and it should automatically ask if you want to update. If not, just choose the Luminar menu and then select Check for Updates...If you don’t yet own Luminar, it’s a great time to pick up a copy or download the trial and start your journey to photo awesomeness!
We’ve talked about the speed of getting things done, so now I’m going to take a small break and talk about performance. I have an older MacBook Pro from mid-2013. I love this machine but know it’s not the fastest starship in the galaxy. Which is why the first thing I did when I got Neptune was a time test!
First, I quit all other apps, launched Luminar Pluto and opened a large file. Then, I did the exact same test with Neptune and saw an eye-popping 30% increase in performance! Check out the performance yourself and let me know your experience in the comments section below.
I don’t want to spoil all the surprises of Luminar Neptune; sometimes it’s pretty fun to simply click around and explore, right? But… I’ll give you some clues. Be sure to look for:
Dramatically faster performance in the Brush, Gradient and Radial Gradient tools. You’ll get smoother editing
If you work with larger files or often find yourself with over 5 images open (since Luminar now supports Tabs), our memory management is much better
Keep a sharp eye out for some subtle UI changes that make Neptune feel cooler. In-app animations make for a more pleasing editing experience.
Many people have asked us for truly custom crop sizes. You got ‘em now!
Finally, an interesting one from our ace engineering team that I didn’t even think about. We added a “local history” feature when you’re using the Transform, Denoise, Clone & Stamp modes. This helps you experiment and try different options before settling into the final look you want - super cool!
Luminar Neptune is a FREE update, and a really nice evolutionary step for our most popular app. As many of you know, we’re working hard on bringing Luminar to the PC, but we’re excited to release this update to the Mac version now, to help you make your best summer photos ever.
If you don’t already own Luminar, get it here. Jump in - the water’s fine!
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