In recent months Skylum has begun releasing a series of extensions to Luminar Neo that are essentially add-ons enabling optional functions within the app. As previously reported, I've purchased several of these extensions and found them quite useful in my work.
While recently browsing blog posts and You Tube videos, I've found a bit of controversy has erupted over two of these Luminar extensions - Upscale (which I do not own) and Supersharp (which I do have installed on my computer), both of which feature face recovery options. The problem seems to be that the extensions do not actually enhance facial features as advertised but instead replace them with features taken from other faces. This seems a somewhat bizarre claim, but after having seen examples posted on the web I would have to agree that this is in fact exactly what the extensions are doing. While the final results are generally quite attractive, the faces themselves have been altered to the point that their features no longer fully correspond to their real life counterparts, though of course a close resemblance still remains.
To me, none of this is really a problem since I rarely photograph portraits these days and in any event have other apps, such as Topaz Labs Photo AI, that perform face recovery quite well. I can understand, however, why professional portrait photographers and even casual users may be upset with the results of their Neo edits. On the other hand, some subjects may actually prefer these stylized versions. When in the past I did shoot portraits I found my clients almost always preferred an idealized and more flattering version of themselves to an exact depiction.
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