NEW YORK, NY – February 17, 2023 — Skylum, the company behind the well-known Luminar family of photo editing applications, is celebrating its 14th year and Luminar Neo’s one-year anniversary. For well over a decade, Skylum (formerly Macphun) has been pushing the photo editing software market forward. The company has released numerous award-winning photo editing products over the years and was one of the first to introduce artificial intelligence– and machine learning–powered photo editing tools to the consumer market. Today, Skylum continues to push the boundaries with its innovative AI and ML technologies.

Neo release & lots more

For Skylum, 2022 was a year to remember for many reasons. After releasing Luminar Neo in February with the latest in AI-powered editing technology, the company:

●      Released 20 updates over the course of a year

●      Improved Neo’s raw image rendering speed by 30%

●      Launched 7 pro-level Extensions for specialized use cases including focus stacking and upscaling

●      Introduced 183 new creative assets to the Luminar Marketplace that can be used to extend Luminar Artists’ potential in Neo and other Luminar software products

Events, awards, and recognition

Away from the screens, the Skylum team was also quite busy in 2022, running the Skylum Photo Camp in Iceland and making an appearance at Berlin Photo Week, the Zingst Photo Festival, Photopia, The Photography Show, and other renowned industry events.

Skylum products were featured by 75 influential names in the photography industry — including Peter McKinnon, Benjamin Jaworskyj, and Unmesh Dinda — and mentioned numerous times in the international media, including Der Spiegel, TechRepublic, Cosmopolitan, PCMag and CNET.

Luminar Neo was awarded the Red Dot Brands & Communication Design award in the User Interface category and a TIPA Award for Best Imaging Software Enthusiast. All of these recognitions combined with the immense support from Skylum partners ( Clever Photographer, Shotkit, WizardRetouch, and many more) gave the company lots of momentum throughout 2022.

Year of strength and resilience

As a Ukrainian company, however, 2022 was also a year of unprecedented challenges due to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In early 2022, Skylum created the Valid UA Foundation and donated over $325,000 towards the humanitarian needs of Ukrainians.

The company also worked with Skylum Ambassador Albert Dros to create a limited edition Presets pack that collected $194,634 for charity organisations and donated nearly 200 drones to the Ukrainian Army thanks to the incredible support of the Skylum community. With and without electricity, the Skylum team kept the company’s operations going in 2022 to bring all the Luminar artists the best possible product and experience.  

At Skylum, we’re certain that our future — and Ukraine’s future — is bright. As a token of our hope for the future and in celebration of Luminar Neo’s first year, we are now giving away a collection of Peaceful Skies captured by our beloved partners Albert Dros, Edin Chavez, and René Ledrado.

A next-level modular platform

Since the first version of Luminar, Skylum’s mission has been to bring users an effortless and joyful photo editing experience regardless of their photography background. The industry is changing and new trends are being born every day, but our commitment remains unchanged. With each new feature and update, we want to make editing with Luminar even more exciting and give users freedom and inspiration to create — because without creators, the world just wouldn’t be the same.

The Skylum team’s dedication to developing Luminar and empowering photo artists is evidenced in the great advances that have been made within Luminar Neo over the past year. Today, Neo stands at the leading edge of photo editing, and the platform’s modular design allows for the regular release of new Extensions that provide professional-level editing capabilities in an easy-to-use package while maintaining the software’s responsiveness and the intuitive user experience that Luminar products are known for. Throughout 2022, the Skylum team kept perfecting Luminar Neo to give all users even more editing possibilities, and we’re not planning on stopping here.

Thank you for supporting us and being a part of the big Luminar family!

You can learn more about Luminar Neo, professional-level Extensions, and creative assets including Presets, LUTs, Overlays, and Skies on the Skylum website: https://skylum.com/luminar.

About Skylum

Skylum is a global imaging technology company focused on creating tools that make it easier to get things done. Luminar Neo brings you photos just as you imagined them with advanced AI-based technologies that still allow the artist complete control over the final result. Skylum has won the Red Dot Award, Apple’s Best of Year, and Best Imaging Software by TIPA and EISA, as well as several other top industry awards. To learn more about Skylum, visit https://skylum.com.