I don’t consider myself an impatient person, but I’m sometimes frustrated by the lag I experience when using tools such as Composition AI and Sky AI (i.e., sky replacement).

It’s so slow, in fact, that I don’t even bother working with certain features, such as masking. Personally, I find Luminar 4 just fast enough to be worth using, at least on my current desktop, which uses 12 GB of RAM and a Core i7 processor. Unless you have a PC with the top specs out there, you’re probably going to notice some lag in places, such as when activating AI features, switching between photos, and applying masks. But if you’re already familiar with other editing programs (e.g., Lightroom, ON1 Photo RAW), then the difference probably won’t be huge, and you might find the reduced feature set a little too frustrating. Overall, Luminar AI pushes past Luminar 4 in terms of simplicity and beginner-friendly design. It’s missing a few features present in Luminar 4 (to be discussed in a moment!), plus some tools (e.g., cropping, presets) are more difficult to access.

Unfortunately, Luminar AI’s minimalism does come with some drawbacks. Honestly, when working in Luminar AI, you can feel the difference image organization and editing are cleaner, the whole program feels less cluttered, and you feel like you’re working in a high-tech, futuristic software environment. You should immediately see the improvements made to Luminar AI, such as the loss of top-menu items, the left-hand filmstrip, and more.

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