Luminar Neo from Skylum has added a much-awaited feature: background removal in portraits. Removing an image of a person from a photo is nothing new, but it is generally time consuming if the background is not simple or solid. Luminar Neo does it usually with a single click, and if you’re a professional or an advanced hobbyist, it’s a time saver.
One can easily see the possibilities: improve the background by softening the focus or replace the background entirely. Once Luminar is open and the image is in the editor, all you have to do is select Remove Portrait Background. The image can then be exported as a PNG file for compositing, or you can do the work in Neo using the layer function.
For me, manually masking and separating people from the background is quite a tedious task. My creative fire can be extinguished by this habit. With Luminar’s new Portrait Background Eraser, nothing can slow down creativity. You are free to explore any and all of your wildest ideas. – Ivan Kutanin, CEO of Skylum
Use background eraser
Sometimes you will have to tweak the image selected by the AI and Neo helps with that too. AI helps you skip pixel-by-pixel selections in fine-tuning brush mode. The portrait and background will be highlighted in different colors. Even if you’ve never worked with mask selection, you’ll understand the workflow by following the markings on the brush. The transition brush refines the edges by removing unnecessary elements where the portrait and background are exposed. The Object Brush revives portrait details that might have been discarded by the neural network, while the Background Brush helps to remove extra parts that weren’t detected by the AI.
Background removal will be adopted by portrait photographers, and at a glance, it seems to work as advertised. Working on Mac Studio, the app doesn’t seem to lag when performing these AI-intensive tasks. I don’t see perfect cuts, but with the included tools, I can quickly clean up edges and hairs.
Here is the before image: (Image provided by Skylum)
And then:
I hate using Skylum images, but trying with a few images I have in my archive I see similar results. (I’m a landscape guy, not a portrait photographer so my resources are limited and my portraits are nothing to write home about.)
My thoughts on Luminar Neo
Luminar Neo is quickly becoming a full-featured raw editor, and for many images I can just use Neo and get out without having to jump in and out of Lightroom or Photoshop. On the other hand, the Neo still lacks a few tools that I almost always edit, including a copy and dodge and burn tool. Those features were in the older Luminar app, so I’m hoping it’s only a matter of time before they appear in Neo.
Of course, you can use background extraction in conjunction with other AI tools in Neo. Although pretty good, they could use some improvement. The sky AI mask often needs some tweaking at the edges, and it doesn’t seem to work as well as Neo’s built-in sky replacement tool. I expect all of these tools to improve over time, but as it stands Neo is the best AI-based image editor you can use. Other editors are racing to catch up. What is even more surprising is that the features continued to appear while the Neo development team was in Ukraine during the Russian invasion.
Catch Neo
Luminar Neo with portrait background removal is available today. Of course, all the other current features useful for landscape and general photographers are still there. Existing users can get the upgrade from within their existing software for free. The new architecture is so flexible that it can be easily updated in the future. Luminar Neo is also available in both the Microsoft Store and the macOS App Store. Luminar Neo works as a plugin, so you can keep your images in your favorite photo editor while still benefiting from its powerful AI tools. Neo available for $89 or you can get a special upgrade price if you own other Skylum products.
