As a professional designer, I love editing photos. Until recently, that meant hooking up your digital camera to your computer to import them, and opening said photos in a desktop program (e.g. Photoshop). However, the iPhone has made it incredibly easy and convenient to capture and edit photos all on the same device.
With the advent of apps like Instagram, editing a photo to make it look hip and cool is as easy as tapping your finger on a premade effect. The problem with using premade effects in most photo editing apps is that you don’t have control over how your photo is being changed. This downfall, however, is not the case with Luminance. After the jump, find out why this feature, and others, makes Luminance one of the best photo editing apps available in the App Store.
Library
When you open up Luminance for the first time, you’re greeted with a message instructing you to capture a photo from the app (done by tapping the camera button in the bottom bar), or adding a photo to your Library (done by tapping the plus icon on the top right corner). If you have multiple photos stored in your Library, your photos are displayed as a grid of thumbnails, similar to the built-in Photos app.
The Library is the first page that will display when you open up Luminance.
In addition to capturing and importing photos, you can delete photos from the Library. To do so, tap the Edit button in the top left corner, tap the photo(s) you wish to get rid of, and tap the Delete button in the bottom right corner.
From the Library, you can copy edits you've make to a photo and paste them on another photo.
Another extremely cool feature that is accessed in the Edits menu is the ability to copy the edits you’ve made to one photo and paste said edits on another. This is extremely useful if you’ve captured a series of photos and want them all to have the same feel.
Effects
When you’re ready to edit a photo, tap on the photo’s thumbnail and a growing animation is performed, placing your image into the middle of the screen (a simple, but very cool effect). Once you’ve selected a photo, the top menu bar will present three different views (Effects, Filters and History), which are represented by the FX, slider and clock icons.
Luminance includes 19 premade effects that can be applied to your photo.
On the effects page, you can add on a premade effect by tapping any of the thumbnails in the bottom ribbon (thumbnails show a preview of the what the effect will look like on your photo). Luminance offers a total number of 19 premade effects, which is three more than Instagram, but can’t compete with the number of filters found in Magic Hour or FX Photo Studio.
Filters
When you’ve found an effect you like, or decide to start your editing from scratch, tap the Filters icon in the top navigation bar. If you previously selected an effect, a list of filters will already be populated below the photo. From here, you can make adjustments to the filters or add new ones.
When you select a premade effect, you can adjust the filters used to create the effect.
For the sake of this review, let’s say you decide to edit a photo from scratch. Your first step will be to add a filter, which is done by tapping the plus button located below your photo. A new menu will slide up, presenting you with a list of adjustments and effects (which are not to be confused with the premade effects).
You may choose from any of the following filters:
- White Balance
- Exposure
- Brightness/Contrast
- Hue/Saturation
- Tone Curve
- Colors
- Sepia
- Split Toning
- Vignette
Anyone that has used Photoshop or Photoshop Elements will be familiar the majority of filters offered in Luminance (especially Brightness/Contrast and Hue/Saturation). Tap on a desired filter and the menu will slide down, presenting a new set of controls. Most filters utilize sliders to adjust the strength of the filter, which work well for the most part; however, I sometimes found it difficult to be precise with where I wanted the slider to end up.
In addition to sliders, the Colors filter as uses icons to make adjustments to your photos.
Once you’re satisfied with how the filter looks, you can toggle it off and on by tapping the switch icon, located to the right of the filter’s name. This is a handy feature that allows you to view how much of a difference the filter has made to your photo. When you’ve added multiple filters to a photo, toggling the filters off can also give a feel for the stages you’ve made to your edits.
Toggling filters off and on allows you to see the different between your edited and original image.
If you wish to delete a filter, you can do so by swiping over the filter and tapping the delete button. Additionally, you can tap the Edit button located below your photo, tap the red icon on the left-hand side, and tapping delete. From the Edit menu, you also can change the order is which your filters appear, which can have a small but noticeable impact on your photo.
The order is which you arrange your filters will make have an impact on how your image looks.
The best thing about Luminance is that it saves your edits forever. At any time you can come back into the app, open up your photo, and make adjustments to your filters or add new ones. Some apps, like Photoshop Mobile, also offer the ability to tweak your filters after making your initial adjustments. However, once you’re done making your adjustments, you have to apply the filters to your photo, losing the ability to make further changes.
One glaring omission in Luminance is the ability to crop, scale and rotate your image. While these features are ideal to have, it’s nice that Luminance is one of those photo apps that requires you to crop your photo before you can add filters or effects (e.g. Instagram and Magic Hour).
History
One excellent feature that Luminance offers, which is missing in nearly every other photo editing app, is the ability to view your history of edits. To view your history, tap the clock icon in the top navigation bar. From here, you’re presented with a list with every single adjustment you have made to your photo. If you scroll to the bottom of your photo, you can tap on “Original” to return your photo to its original state.
You can view every edit you've made to an image on the History page.
Conclusion
Luminance may not offer a lot of features, but for what it does do, no app does it better. The option to select premade filters that are editable is found in very few apps (Magic Hour is another); and unlike most, your edits are saved forever, allowing you to make additional edits to your photo at a later time.
My only gripe with Luminance is the lack of a crop, scale and rotate option, as well as the functionality of the filter sliders. On my wish list of future additions, I’d like to see a tilt shift effect and the ability to save a combination of filters as a preset, which can be shared with other Luminance users.
For the low, low price of ninety-nine cents, Luminance is app definitely worth looking checking out.