With Luminar Neo, you have the option to remove power lines and sensor dust stains with just one click. It’s never been easier, and most of all, it takes a lot of work. But is it faster than doing it manually? Or does the automated process take more time in the end?
You have to give it to them, Skylum offers a lot of functions to edit your photos easily. That’s what made Luminar 4, Luminar AI and now, Luminar Neo so popular. With the Luminar Neo, the developers added the ability to automatically remove power lines and sensor dust spots. The last option is very welcome.
Automatic dust spot removal by sensor
You can’t take pictures without risking sensor dust. It seems that some cameras are more sensitive to it than others, and I remember my trusty old Canon EOS 1D X had a lot of problems with it. Sensor dust spots are visible when using a small aperture, which is often done in landscape photography.
Many people have wondered why software developers never add automatic dust removal to their software. It seems pretty easy, and the Luminar Neo is the first device I know of that offers this functionality. With the push of a button, the software will recognize dust spots of the sensor and automatically remove them without having to look at every area of the frame at 100% magnification.
I took an old photo of Rørvik beach in Lofoten. It had a lot of sensor dust spots, and I remember it took ages to get rid of them in Lightroom. So I loaded the photo into the Luminar Neo and tried the automatic sensor dust spot removal tool. To make the dust spots of the sensor easier to see, I added a quick and dirty process to magnify them.
By the way, since I installed the Dutch version of Luminar Neo, its interface is in Dutch. But I think this is no real problem understanding the screenshots.
What I discovered is how amazing this spot remover works. Most of the sensor dust spots are gone. There are still a few left, which means you’ll still have to go through the images to find ones that haven’t been completely removed, or just plain unseen by the software.
Duplicating and removing most of the sensor points is done automatically, saving me a lot of work. Be careful, though, as it won’t do well in the night sky and it can mistake objects for a sensor dust spot.
Automatic removal of power lines
The other option is to automatically remove the power lines. If your image has power lines that you don’t want, Luminar Neo can recognize and remove them for you. This can also save you a lot of time, since you don’t have to do it manually. According to the ad, it works with the press of a button, even in images with a lot of detail. Let’s take a look at some unedited raw files to see how effective Luminar Neo is.
The first example is the famous Erasmus bridge in the city of Rotterdam, Netherlands. It has a lot of cables that aren’t power lines, but Luminar Neo doesn’t know. The results are a bit surprising. I would expect a better match, not a near-random elimination.
Of course, this example is a bit stupid. I took a few pictures with some clear power lines in the frame. The first one is of Hamnøy’s rorbuer, a popular spot for many photographers. It has a few power lines that I want to remove.
Luminar Neo does a great job. The results look great at first and are just one button press. But if you look closely, you will see the mistakes that the software makes. Not smart enough to understand how lines run from one end to the other, leaving traces after erasing. It also completely removes the bulb from the pole, which is odd. See two details of the results in the examples below.
I took another photo with the power lines almost completely unaffected by the surroundings. I guess it is an easy task for this automatic power line removal tool. Again, at first glance, it looks good.
But let’s take a closer look at the details. The instrument also removed parts of the pole and some of the outline of the fisherman’s roof.
Quick removal and lots of extra work
An automatic power line remover is a convenient, but not perfect, tool. It means that you still have to do a lot of extra work to get an acceptable end result. Fortunately, Luminar Neo has added the ability to use a rudimentary layer option, which provides just enough to correct errors caused by the power line removal tool. But finding the error and fixing it will take a lot of time and effort.
Before you start using the eraser, create a new layer of the original by duplicating it. Run the remove tool on the top layer. With the masking option, you can search, find and correct errors. You can mask the finished image and brush over the power lines yourself by choosing the paint option or you can use the erase option by masking the problem areas. Choose whatever you find convenient.
Automated power line removal tools can and will also remove tree branches and perhaps other elements you might not expect. In other words, you will have to rummage through the entire frame to find all the errors, which can take quite a while.
Inference
While the automatic options for sensor dust and powerline removal in Luminar Neo look good, it can take a long time to correct your mistakes. Simply put, you cannot trust these automatic options blindly. Depending on your image, it matters if these options really save editing time. In particular, power lines are perhaps more easily and quickly removed by hand, although I wonder if the Luminar Neo is the best choice for such a task.
What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.
