How to use AI-powered templates in the Luminar image editor [sponsor]

Achieve amazing results as if you had an entire graphics department working for you is easy with templates in the Luminar AI image editor. By leveraging artificial intelligence to understand the strengths and weaknesses of every image, templates make it easy to automatically correct common capture problems and apply enhancements across multiple images at once. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to use templates in Luminar AI.

Meet Luminar AI

Luminar AI from developer Skylum is a comprehensive Mac and Windows photo editor that’s fully powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. With AI helping understand the strengths and weaknesses of every image, Luminar makes it a cinch to automatically correct common problems and achieve a shared look across multiple photographs with a few clicks.

Heavy focus on AI means you can get creative as Luminar takes care of all the boring tasks.

The hero image illustrating templates in the Luminar AI imaged editor for Mac and Windows

And you don’t need to be a photographer at all, nor do you need to know much about image editing. With Luminar AI, you’ll get awesome results right from the start.

How templates in Luminar AI work

Taking advantage of artificial intelligence, the app picks the right template for each image. This is great as you don’t have to spend hours sorting through all of them like an animal! Batch editing is supported so you can quickly achieve a shared look and feel across multiple photos. After applying a template, the images will look like they were taken during a single session.

AI analyzes a photo’s contents to identify problem areas and objects of interest, like a person in the foreground, clouds over mountains in the background, cloudy skies, and so forth.

An image illustrating the technology that powers dynamic templates in the Luminar AI imaged editor

Armed with that knowledge, the app suggests a range of template-based improvements. A template may easily incorporate complete workflows that are tailored to your particular image. Traveled a hundred miles for the perfect landscape shot, but got bad weather?

Templates in Luminar AI for Mac

Choose a suggested edit, like making the sky clearer or adding sun rays, boosts the image!

The best thing about Luminar AI is its rich support for custom templates for some completely unique looks. With custom templates, you can fully customize how you want your images to look like, as well as apply those looks to a bunch of images at once with just a few clicks.

For detailed information about creating custom templates, visit the Luminar website

How to work with templates in Luminar AI

Templates are grouped into collections based on image types they process, like Portraits or Landscapes. The app suggests several templates to bring out the best in your image, but you can also audition each template in order to make corrections and finely tune adjustments.

To get started with templates, open a photo, and click the Templates tab. Suggested edits for the photo can be found below the For This Photo heading near the top-right corner. When switching between images, your template options change accordingly — this is the AI at work.

Templates in the Luminar image editor

The For This Photo section shows you suggestions based on the contents of your photo. For instance, should AI find a face, you’ll see templates specific to editing images of people. Shot a landscape or cityscape? Luminar will offer appropriate suggestions for those styles.

Scroll through the suggested templates to see how they improve the image. If you don’t like the first one you picked, scroll down in the sidebar to view more categories and reveal other template options. Play around with the different possibilities until you find something you like.

Templates in Luminar

You can also play with the strength slider near the bottom-right corner for subtler or more intense results. As you’re moving the strength slider, you’ll notice that doing so automatically changes all of the effects that the selected template has applied to your image.

To make further touch-ups, click the Edit tab. In this section of the app, you can customize the template’s enhancements to your liking or start from scratch. The best thing about templates is batch editing—simply assign a template to a series of photos for a unified style in no time!

The Edit section in Luminar AI

Wrapping it all up

Templates power a refined workflow in Luminar, and they can be applied to single images or a series of photos. You get the best of both worlds: the power of 1-click AI editing and the freedom to tweak each template to your liking for those times when you need a truly custom look. Or, you can get old school by skipping the template process altogether and edit manually.

For further information about Luminar AI, read the manual and the official FAQ.

Pricing and availability

Available for Mac and Windows, Luminar AI can be downloaded from the Mac App Store or directly from Skylum. Your download includes both a standalone app and appropriate plugins for Apple’s stock Photos apps as well as Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom Classic.