Luminar NEO GenExpand function released

I already mentioned in the weekly review that my articles will be published later this week because Skylum is releasing something new.

Introduction

By the time you read this article, Luminar NEO will be available to the public with the GenExpand extension. This makes GenExpand a seamless addition to the GenErase and Genswap extensions. I have already been able to try out the beta a little.

You can find GenExpand under the other extensions, such as HDR or focus stacking and not under the edit menu.

I decided not to record a video, as the process and operation is practically the same as with the GenErase extension already presented, for which I have created a video.

Operation

As already mentioned, GenExpand is called up from the catalog. There, however, the image is displayed relatively small and does not fill the entire area. I don’t quite understand why you can’t enlarge the view here.

The few control elements for GenErase are then relatively lost at the bottom of the screen. As with the cropping tool, you can then drag the border in all directions beyond the actual image.

In the text field, you can enter additional information if you want to generate other image content in addition to the pure format-related resizing.

Results

In most cases, the pure enlargement is handled quite well.

However, it is sometimes noticeable that the resolution is lower than that of the original image. This problem also exists with Photoshop and here too the recommendation is to enlarge the image in several steps.

For example, I have also tried to add further elements by selecting text. In this example, this worked quite well, but there were also many failed attempts in which other objects were only partially inserted.

Errors

In addition to the problem that the added/extended image parts have a noticeably lower resolution, there is unfortunately also the problem that transitions into the extended area are not correct in terms of brightness and color.

Unfortunately, these are problems that make the enhanced image appear suitable for social media in low resolutions at most, but in no way meet professional requirements.

Conclusion

At the moment, this extension is a nice toy with which you can experiment and have fun, no more and no less. If at least the craftsmanship were in order, i.e. transitions were consistent in terms of color and brightness, you could accept that the objects used might not be quite right. Skylum still needs to do a lot of reworking and optimization to make the extension really usable.

Nevertheless, such AI enhancements are the sign of the times, and they are getting better. By the way, you can now purchase Luminar NEO with a Christmas discount using the code TUXOCHE.

ciao tuxoche