Choose the photo from the library and start your editing journey. There are five main modes:
Presets
Presets allow you to apply quick edits to your photo, receiving amazing results in seconds. The functionality of presets also allows you to save custom presets and apply your own set of adjustments to other photos.
Navigating Presets List
The Presets icon is located in the bottom menu bar, and it looks like two overlapping squares. When you click on it, it will open the presets tab for you with the list of all presets available in Luminar Mobile. Presets are divided by topic, such as Landscape, Portrait, Travel, etc.
Scroll the list and click on the preset to apply it. When the preset is applied, you’ll see a scrolling wheel with numbers that allow you to set the value of preset strength.
Adding the Preset to Favorites
You can add the Preset you frequently use to the Favorites section for quick access. When a preset is chosen and applied, click the heart symbol, and it will mark the preset as Favorite. The Favorites section is displayed first in the list.
Saving your custom Preset
To save your own adjustments as a preset, you need to open the Preset tab after finishing all the edits in your photo. Click the button “Save as preset” to add preset to your custom presets. You can find all your custom presets after the ones you marked as Favorites.
There is also an option to save your set of adjustments as a preset in a quick way. When you’ve edited the photo, open the menu (it looks like three dots), and choose “Save as Preset” option.
You can save your custom preset during export, too. You’ll see an option “Save as Preset” in the export menu to save this editing as a preset.
Important: the option to save a preset will be greyed out and inactive if no changes were applied to the photo, so there is nothing to save, or you have selected a preset from the default list and didn’t modify the default adjustments.
Deleting the preset
If you don’t want your custom preset anymore, you can delete it by selecting the preset and clicking the trash bin. Confirm your action by pressing “Delete” on the warning pop-up. Deletion of presets is permanent, and they cannot be restored.
Crop
The Crop Tool's inclusion of predefined aspect ratios caters to various display formats, acknowledging the diverse platforms where images are shared today. This feature helps users optimize their photos for social media, print, or digital displays, enhancing the photo's appeal across different mediums.
Undo/Redo: Tap the Undo icon to reverse a recent edit. To reinstate the change, use the Redo icon. These functions facilitate efficient edit management, supporting uninterrupted creative workflow.
More options: press the tree dots button to check more crop abilities.
- Lock/Unlock - best option to avoid miss rotation when you are changing the size.
- Horizon Alignment - use the tool to align photos accurately. Tap the icon to correct tilts or uneven horizons.
- Rotate - with each click, your photo will be rotated to the left
- Flip Horizontally - mirrors your image side to side, swapping left and right. Ideal for adjusting composition flow or creating symmetrical visuals.
- Flip Vertically - instantly inverts your photo, mimicking a reflection across a horizontal axis. Ideal for unique perspectives or composition corrections.
Crop to Aspect Ratios: Reshape images to fit various platforms with ease. Select from original, free-form, square, or social media-optimized ratios (Instagram posts, Facebook posts, Instagram stories, Facebook covers). Ensures your photos look their best across all platforms.
X/V: "Done" to apply cropping changes, "Cancel" to undo and continue editing. Offers flexibility in the editing process, allowing exploration of cropping options until perfection is achieved.
Erase
.
Use the Erase Tool on your iPhone to capture moments without distractions. Eliminate unwanted elements like stray passersby or objects to perfect your photos.
- Use the horizontal slider to adjust the tool size for precision.
- Choose unwanted object
- Once you stop drawing unwanted areas, they will be automatically removed
- Use undo/redo to get the best results
Tip: if you are not satisfied with the result, try to mask the area more accurately by changing the marked area size
X/V: "Done" to apply erasing changes, "Cancel" to undo and continue editing.
Tools
Enhance AI
Using the Enhance AI tool is straightforward—rotate the dial on your iPhone's screen to the right to amplify the enhancement effects. The Enhance AI tool is crafted to give your images a distinctive boost and fine-tune color, detail, tone, and depth with ease. Ideal for enhancing the appeal of vacation photos or adding finesse to portraits, Enhance AI ensures your pictures stand out. This tool simplifies the editing workflow, allowing your images to capture attention and express their mood more effectively.
Develop
The Develop tool is essential for transforming your photos, offering a wide range of color and tone adjustments. It's like a Swiss Army knife for photo editing, perfect for enhancing skies or sunsets on your iPad. With its help, you can easily refine and enhance your images.
- Exposure: Control the overall brightness and darkness levels of your image to achieve the desired lighting effect. Adjusting exposure allows you to enhance or diminish the brightness of the entire image, bringing out or toning down details accordingly.
- Highlights & Shadows: Manage the brightness of the lightest and darkest parts of your image, revealing or concealing details as needed.
- White & Black Tone: Set the extreme points of brightness and darkness for dynamic range control.
Contrast
By adjusting the contrast, you can effectively deepen shadows and highlights, giving your photos more depth and dimension. With a simple slider control, you can fine-tune the contrast to achieve the desired effect, whether you're looking to create bold, dramatic images or subtle, nuanced tones. Experiment with different settings to find the perfect balance for your photos and elevate your editing game.
Color
With the Temperature and Tint controls, you have the power to finely adjust the mood of your images, transitioning effortlessly from cool, serene blues to inviting, warm yellows. Correct color casts with precision, ensuring your photos portray true-to-life hues that captivate viewers and evoke authentic emotions. Whether you're aiming for a chilly winter landscape or a cozy sunset glow, these intuitive adjustments allow you to perfect the color balance and infuse your images with the desired atmosphere.
Saturation and Vibrance
With the Saturation & Vibrance controls, you can elevate the color intensity of your photos to create vivid and eye-catching visuals. Whether you want to enhance the overall saturation for a more vibrant look or specifically boost muted colors, these tools offer precise adjustments while ensuring natural skin tones and vibrant colors remain unaffected. Strike the perfect balance between intensity and authenticity, breathing life into your images with enhanced colors that truly pop.
- Move the slider horizontally for Saturation;
- Move the slider vertically for Vibrance.
Vignette
The Vignette tool adds a subtle touch to your photos by darkening the edges, directing the viewer's focus towards the main subject. By adjusting the slider, you can control the intensity of the effect, making the edges darker by moving it to the left or lighter by shifting it to the right. Enhance the composition of your images and draw attention to the key elements with this simple yet powerful tool.
Structure
To adjust the effect, turn the dial to the right to increase contrast and detail for a sharper image. For a softer appearance, rotate it to the left, which softens the image for a dreamy effect. This feature is ideal for both enhancing textures in landscapes and preserving the natural look in portraits. Structure AI provides flexible control, easily adapting to your creative needs with a simple gesture.
Relight
- Adjusting Background and Foreground Lighting: You'll see two light icons with a slider. The top slider controls the light in the background, adding depth and dimension with a swipe. The bottom slider adjusts the foreground lighting, brightening up or toning down the light on subjects closer to the camera.
- Fine-Tuning Light Depth: Alongside the sliders, there's a dial. Rotating this dial left or right adjusts the depth of the light, allowing you to control precisely how the light falls within the scene. It's similar to moving a light source closer or further away in a real 3D space.
Relight AI in Luminar turns your device into a sophisticated tool for manipulating light in photos, simulating the control of a 3D lighting studio with just swipes and taps. It analyzes photos in a unique way, creating a virtual 3D map to distribute light naturally and realistically across the scene. This advanced feature enhances your images with photorealistic lighting effects, making it perfect for illuminating subjects in shadows or adding warmth to features. It's an intuitive solution for improving lighting in your photos, ideal for both amateur photographers and enthusiasts looking to correct or enhance lighting without complex equipment.
Skin AI
The SkinAI tool analyzes your image. It can automatically enhance and retouch a person’s skin while giving you complete control over how the content-aware adjustments are applied. Additionally, SkinAI can eliminate various skin imperfections, including acne, freckles, and moles. It can also smooth the skin, but make sure small details like hair and eyelashes are sharp.
- Amount: This slider smooths the skin and removes unwanted variations while preserving texture and detail.
- Shine Removal: Excessive shine on the forehead or cheeks ruins an otherwise perfect photo. The Shine Removal tool generates realistic-looking skin to restore patches of the face that were washed out by excessive light. This slider adjusts the intensity of the Shine Removal effect.
- Skin Defects RemovalAI: Select this checkbox to remove skin defects in a portrait automatically.
Body AI
The Body AI tool analyzes your image and can automatically enhance and retouch a person’s body while giving you complete control over how the adjustments are applied. It allows for natural-looking body sculpting, helping to slim, reshape, and refine body contours without distorting the background. Whether you want subtle adjustments or more pronounced changes, Body AI offers a seamless way to achieve your desired look while maintaining the integrity of the original image.
- Shape: This slider allows you to adjust and refine body contours for the waistline area.
- Abdomen: Use this slider to resize the abdomen area.
Landscape
When you open the Landscape section, you'll find three distinct symbols, each serving a unique purpose in your photo editing arsenal. Designed for landscape, real estate, travel, and nature photography, this tool enhances your images with just a few taps, making them stand out.
- Golden Hour: Bring the warm, soft glow of the golden hour to your photos, enhancing the ambiance without having to wait for that perfect time of day.
- Foliage Enhancer: Turn the greens in your photos from drab to fab. This slider is a game-changer for nature shots, automatically boosting the vibrancy and natural beauty of foliage and greenery.
- Fog: Clear away the mist and unveil the scene beneath. Ideal for cityscapes, landscapes, and aerial shots obscured by fog or haze, this tool adjusts contrast, clarity, and color to reveal the hidden details.
Curves
Curves are essential for adjusting brightness, darkness, contrast, or color in your photos. It's a powerful tool for subtly shaping the mood and feel of your images.
- Color Selectors: The Curves tool allows you to adjust brightness using white, red, green, and blue selectors, enabling channel-specific enhancements. To enhance the sky in your photo, utilize the blue selector to adjust the curve for desired effects. These selectors facilitate adjustments for the entire image or individual color channels, providing precise fine-tuning capabilities.
- Control Points: You can use up to 10 control points to adjust specific areas of your image. Each point acts as a tool for enhancing different aspects. To add drama and depth, drag a point up to darken and increase contrast. To lighten the mood, pull a point down. Placing multiple points across the curve allows for nuanced adjustments to convey your desired story through the image.
Details
The Details tool enhances good photos into breathtaking ones. It sharpens and clarifies your images, bringing out life-like detail. Whether refining a landscape or portrait shot, mastering this tool can transform your photos from nice to exceptional.
- Small Details Slider: The Small Details slider enhances intricate patterns and textures in your photos. Starting at 0, where there's no effect, sliding to the right gradually brings out the smallest details. It's akin to adjusting a microscope to reveal hidden elements. However, be cautious not to slide too far to the left, as it may make your photo appear washed out.
- Medium Details Slider: The Medium Details slider refines broader strokes in your image, such as tree bark or fabric folds. Starting at 0, where there's no effect, sliding to the right sharpens these medium-sized details, enhancing texture and depth. Conversely, sliding to the left softens these details, which is useful for achieving a dreamlike or ethereal effect.
- Large Details Slider: The Large Details slider fine-tunes the sharpness of your photo's global contours, like the horizon line in a sunset or skyline silhouette. At 0, your image remains untouched. Moving it right enhances the crispness of object outlines, giving the photo a defined look. Sliding left softens these contours, often creating a more subtle, painterly feel.
- Sharpen Tool: The Sharpen tool adds a finishing touch to ensure everything in your frame is in perfect focus. It's great for drawing attention to specific elements and enhancing overall clarity. However, be cautious: excessive sharpening can introduce graininess, resembling digital dust. Use this tool carefully to maintain clear, crisp images without turning them into grainy memories.
Monochrome
The Monochrome tool unlocks the timeless elegance of black-and-white photography. Whether you're drawn to classic cinema or seek to add drama to your photos, this tool is essential. It transforms colorful images into stunning black-and-white masterpieces. But it's more than a conversion; it's a canvas for creativity. You control how each color translates into shades of gray, empowering you to highlight the beauty hidden in contrasts and textures.
When you use the Monochrome tool, you'll find sliders for Cyan, Red, Yellow, Green, Magenta, and Blue. Adjust them left or right to control the brightness of each color as it's converted to black and white. This allows you to guide viewers' focus, evoke emotions, and set the mood. Experiment with each slider to see its effect on different elements in your photo. Remember, in black and white, nuances matter most.
Sky Adjustments
Sky Replacement in Luminar Mobile revolutionizes your photos by seamlessly swapping out skies, allowing you to transform landscapes or cityscapes with breathtaking, dramatic skies. With just a few taps, you can select and adjust the perfect backdrop, bringing your creative vision to life.
**Please note that this tool requires a minimum of 15% of the sky in your photo to work properly.
Scroll through the available sky options to find the perfect match for your photo. Simply tap on your preferred sky to apply it, and if you particularly like one, you can mark it as a favorite to easily access it later. Additionally, you have the option to upload your own sky by scrolling to the top right and pressing the "+" button.
Once you've chosen and applied your desired sky, press the Adjust button at the top to access more settings. Swipe left or right to switch between different adjustment sections.
- Position: you can use the centered area or tap the white buttons for more precise positioning of the sky.
- Flip Horizontally: option mirrors the sky from left to right, providing versatility in your compositions.
- Power Icon: is a small yet significant feature that allows you to quickly preview the sky effect on your image, facilitating decision-making and enabling rapid creative iterations.
- Global: setting affects how the texture of the new sky blends into the scene
- Close Gaps: fills in small details or holes not initially covered by the replaced sky. Adjust this setting as needed, especially if your image contains intricate details like trees or wires.
- Fix Details: address any imperfections around the edges of your new sky, ensuring a seamless integration with the rest of the scene.
- Brightness: allows you to adjust the lightness or darkness of the new sky, ensuring it matches the overall tone of your photo.
- Warmth: alters the color temperature of the sky.
- Defocus: blurs the sky, particularly useful when working with a shallow depth of field and foreground objects.
LUT's
Enhance your images effortlessly with the filters in Luminar Mobile. Simply scroll through the options, select the desired filter, and apply it with a tap to instantly change the mood or tone of your photo. When applying a filter, you can tap the heart icon to favorite it, ensuring that the LUT will be prioritized and displayed at the top of the list for easy access. Additionally, once you've selected your preferred filter, you can adjust the intensity to achieve the perfect effect.
Preview Original
The ability to check the original file instantly by pressing and holding on the image is a thoughtful feature. It allows users to quickly gauge the impact of their edits, fostering a deeper understanding of how each adjustment affects the overall look of their photo. This immediate feedback loop is invaluable for fine-tuning edits.
Share
Once the magic is complete, it's time to save and share your photo. Simply tap the Share button located in the Tools, Sky, or LUTs sections. You can either "Save to Photos" as a new file or select "Share" to access all the main iPhone sharing options.