Luminar Neo’s Portrait Tools are designed to help improve portrait photos in a natural yet pleasing way. They can help to highlight and improve the primary features of a person’s face by using artificial intelligence to recognize facial details. These tools require that the face fills at least 25% of the frame for the best results. If multiple faces are present, the tool will handle them (provided that the faces are large enough to be detected).

1. Select an image in your library or open a single image

2. Scroll to the Portrait Tools section in the Edit sidebar

3. Choose the desired tool from the list

Studio Light is an innovative tool designed for portrait photographers to effortlessly recreate the striking lighting effects typically reserved for costly studio equipment. This remarkable tool rejuvenates older photos and imparts a fresh and captivating dimension to your portrait photographs. Use this tool to apply an accent of light to your portraits.

Understanding Studio Light settings

Before we start, let's pause briefly to explore and grasp the intricacies of each Studio Light setting. Here's a breakdown of the Studio Light settings:

Brightness: This setting allows you to adjust the overall image's brightness, making it brighter or darker.

Smooth: Use this option to fine-tune the shape of the shadows cast upon the subject.

Light Contrast: This adjustment modifies the contrast of the light applied to the entire image.

Plus Icon: Click the plus icon to apply additional light sources to the image—Right-click on a square to hide or remove a light source.

Amount: Adjust the Amount to apply a light source that shines on the subject.

Hue: Alter the Hue setting to change the light source's color, illuminating the subject.

Saturation: Saturation determines the intensity or strength of the Hue.

Depth: This setting allows you to make the light's texture and pattern on the subject either softer or sharper.

Start with a light source pin

Begin by placing a light source pin on the image. To introduce the desired illumination level onto the subject, manipulate the Amount slider. It's worth noting that the Amount setting specifically controls the strength of the light on the subject rather than affecting the entire image. When you add a light pin to the image, you can fine-tune its placement. By moving the pin closer to or farther from the subject, you can precisely control the positioning of the light source. This action influences how the light is distributed across the subject, mimicking the behavior of studio lights or flashes.

Adjust the light for the overall image

Adjust the lighting settings for the entire composition to achieve a darker and moodier image. To darken the overall image, reduce the Brightness to a negative value and raise the Light Contrast. This will result in a general darkening effect, causing the added light source on the subject to become more pronounced. Additionally, you can fine-tune the "Smooth" setting to control the shape and positioning of shadows on the subject.

Apply a second light source

Select the plus icon and modify the "Amount" setting to introduce an extra light source into the image. Shift the pin's position to illuminate the subject's face, simulating the effect of incorporating an additional studio light or flash. You can independently modify the strength and power of each light source.

Apply a third light source and add color

Let's incorporate a third light source and infuse some color into the scene. Like before, click on the plus icon and adjust the "Amount" setting to add a light source to the image. Position the pin to cast light on the subject's head. For a touch of color, begin by fine-tuning the Saturation strength and then choose a Hue.

Light Customization

Each of the added light sources can be independently customized. Click the last box in the row next to the Plus Icon. The most recent light source is in the front, and the first is at the end, Now that the light source is selected, toggle on the Light Customization option. Four additional settings are available: Texture, Pattern, Scale, and Position. Let’s explore the purpose of each of these settings.

Texture: Refers to the visual quality of light between the light source and the subject. In portrait photography, this element is often called a Gobo or Go-Between. You can choose from various textures or even incorporate your custom ones. For now, let's keep this setting at "none."

Pattern: Shapes the light source on the subject. Choose between Strips or Dots.

Scale: This enables you to amplify or diminish the pattern applied to the subject.

Position: Allows for precise light source adjustment along the XY axis for accurate positioning.

Adding the final touches

To refine the light sources, click on each one next to the Plus Icon. The adjustments you apply are specific to each light source, giving you complete control. Additionally, you can use other Luminar tools to enhance your image further. Once you've completed your adjustments, you can export your image for sharing on social media or safekeeping.

Key Takeaways

Studio Light provides a versatile toolkit for refining the lighting in your images. Starting with a light source pin, you can finely control the illumination on your subject by adjusting the Amount slider, emulating the behavior of studio lights or flashes to achieve your desired lighting effect.

To further enhance your composition, you can manipulate the overall image's lighting settings by modifying Brightness, Light Contrast, and Smooth. This allows you to create moodier and more captivating images while highlighting the subject's lighting.

Adding multiple light sources is also a straightforward process with Studio Light. By using the plus icon and adjusting the Amount setting, you can introduce extra light sources and position them precisely to illuminate different parts of your subject. This level of customization enables you to craft dynamic and visually stunning photographs.

Furthermore, Studio Light offers the flexibility to customize each light source independently. You can experiment with textures, patterns, scales, and positions, giving you the creative freedom to create unique and captivating lighting effects. Whether aiming for realism or artistic expression, Studio Light empowers you to bring your vision to life.

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.

The High Key tool emulates the look achieved by high key lighting, where the main light source slightly overexposes the subject. This technique produces bright, high-contrast images and is often used in fashion and beauty photography.

Standard Settings

• Amount. This slider allows you to set the intensity of the High Key effect.

• Standard High Key. This slider affects the image globally.

• Dynamic High Key. This slider is more limited in its effect, considering skin tones as it applies the High Key effect to the image.

• Blacks. Use this slider to maintain contrast in the darkest areas of your image.

Advanced Settings

• Glow. This slider controls the behavior of the brighter areas of the photo.

• Contrast. This slider affects the overall contrast in the image (the relative difference between the lightest and darkest areas).

• Saturation. This slider determines if the overall image becomes washed out or stays richly saturated.

When capturing photos, placing the area behind a subject out of focus is often desirable. The Japanese word bokeh is used to describe the aesthetic nature of the blur produced in these out-of-focus areas. Traditionally, to achieve this effect, it often takes a high-quality lens and involves shooting at a wide-open aperture like ƒ2.0.

Luminar Neo offers the Portrait BokehAI Tool to simulate this effect and allow it to be used on most portrait photos. It works on any portrait image – regardless of the lens used or the lighting conditions.

Amount

When you adjust this slider, artificial intelligence recognizes people in the frame, including those in groups or unusual positions, and creates an initial mask that separates them from the background. Then, by moving this slider, you adjust the amount of blur in the background.

Brush Control

In most cases, the initial mask created by the Amount slider is ready to use. If you want to refine the initial mask, use these controls. This can be useful to refine complex masks, for example, adding an object held in your portrait subject’s hands.

These brushes refine the mask:

• Focus. Used to define the active area of the mask. The parts of the image that are selected will remain in focus.

• Defocus. Used to identify areas as the background and to remove focus in this area.

• Restore. Painting with this brush reverts back to the original automatically generated mask in the areas where a stroke is applied. It is useful if you want to restore an area to the default selection that was originally created.

These controls refine the brush you use to refine your mask.

• Radius. Adjusts the size of your brush.

• Softness. Adjusts the softness of the effect by feathering the edges of the brush.

• Opacity. Sets the opacity of the brush.

Useful mask shortcuts

You can use these handy keyboard shortcuts to make painting your mask easier.

Background

The Background controls help you refine the quality of the bokeh or background blur. These are essential controls to be adjusted to match your personal taste.

• Brightness. Controls the overall exposure of the background. You can lighten or darken the background to further offset your subject.

• Highlights Glow. Adjusts the brightness of the brightest areas of the background, adding a soft glow.

• Warmth. Refine the color temperature of the background by adjusting the amount. A negative value will cool the image by adding a blue tone, and a positive value will warm the image by adding a gold tone.

The BodyAI tool shapes a subject’s torso and abdomen.

• Body. This slider slims or adds volume to a subject’s torso.

• Abdomen. This slider pinches in a subject’s abdomen to remove volume.

The FaceAI tool selectively targets a subject’s face, eyes, and mouth using face recognition technology. It’s even intelligent enough to recognize a side profile portrait.

Face

• Face Light. Adjust the lighting of a face without impacting the rest of the scene. Emulate a flash or reflector aimed at the face.

• Slim Face. This is a valuable technology to contour and shape a face realistically. Make the face proportionally smaller and naturally slim, achieving more attractive results in your portraits. It’s also helpful to correct lens distortion on a face.

Eyes

• Iris. This drop-down allows you to change the color or overall look of the iris. You can choose between Blue, Brown, Green, Grey, Hazel, Honey, Mint, and exotic looks (Cat and Owl). The Original option leaves the iris color unchanged.

• Iris Visibility. This slider allows you to adjust the intensity of the Iris setting. Increasing its value makes the Iris adjustments more intense while decreasing it allows more of the natural iris color to show through.

• Iris Flare. This slider adds a flare to the lower portion of the iris. Adding flare can make darker irises brighter and more visible.

Mouth

• Lips Saturation. Enhance the color of the lips.

• Lips Redness. Increase the redness of the lips.

• Lips Darkening. Lower the luminosity of lips.

• Teeth Whitening. Brighten all smiles in a portrait.