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Stephen Walton
Author: Skylum
If you’ve ever taken photos of a picturesque lake or river and later realized later that the color of the water turned out looking duller than you expected, then the Luminar Neo photo editor has just the tool you need: Water Enhancer AI.
Water Enhancer AI is perfect for editing images that contain a body of water, from the sea to a swimming pool, taking them from boring to brilliant in just a few steps.
In this article, we’ll explore the basic features of this tool, the effects it can achieve, and go through an example step by step, so you’ll be ready to edit any of your water photos to perfection.
Luminar Neo is an award-winning, AI-powered photo editor, available for Windows and macOS. It’s an easy-to-use app with an intuitive interface for photographers — especially beginners, hobbyists, and semi-professionals.
Developed by Skylum, it was first released in 2022 and continues to be updated with new features and improvements. Now it has over 20 AI-based tools designed to minimize routine and streamline the photographer’s editing workflow, including innovative generative features and an expansive array of other editing tools for refining and enhancing photos.
Water Enhancer AI is a new tool for Luminar Neo, released in April 2024, that helps you bring out the best in photos with aquatic scenes by highlighting the natural beauty of any water features.
You can also tweak water’s brightness, contrast, and color with intuitive sliders and select the precise area you want your effects applied to.
Use it on photos that contain a body of water — including seas, oceans, lakes, rivers, and even swimming pools — so long as the AI can detect it.
In addition, there’s the capability to manually specify the areas you want to apply the effects to.
The main advantage of this tool is that the Water Enhancer AI feature is universal and allows for quick, precise, and seamless adjustments of any water bodies in your photos, as well as fine-tuning of brightness, contrast, and depth.
There is no need to use various tools and time-consuming workflows when you have just one tool that provides an all-in-one solution.
With this tool, you can enhance and change water color in your images in a whole new way. Adjust the blue tones in any body of water, enhancing the vibrancy and depth of oceans, seas, and pools.
Experiment with green tones, giving rivers and lakes a distinctive look that compliments lush scenery or contrasts vividly with other landscapes.
Results will always look natural, since you can also balance the contrast between the enhanced colors and the original hues of the water, for a pleasing and lifelike photo.
Try increasing the brightness to make the water appear more inviting, or decrease it for a moody vibe. Give the water extra texture and depth by tweaking it with a higher contrast, or lowering it for a softer, more uniform surface.
And if you’re worried the AI is not going to detect the full area of water, you’ll still have full control over the precise results, as you can draw over the specific region that needs adjustments and apply them selectively.
The Water Enhancer AI tool uses artificial intelligence to improve the natural beauty of water in photos.
The AI analyzes your photo and applies a mask to the water area in seconds. After that, you can play around with the sliders to customize brightness, contrast, and color to make the water clearer and more vibrant.
Water Enhancer AI will apply your changes to the selected area. Of course, advanced composition controls like drawing, erasing, and restoring water areas ensure the enhancements blend seamlessly with the original scene.
Let’s explore the main tools and controls for Water Enhancer AI:
You’ll also find these additional tools:
Now let’s take a photo and quickly apply Water Enhancer AI with a step-by-step approach.
1. Select a photo in your Luminar Neo Catalog and then move to the Edit tab. Find the Water Enhancer AI tool in the Landscape tools section.
2. Find the Amount slider and pull it to the right to increase the effect of the slider. The tool automatically detects the water area in your photo and creates a mask. You can see the mask when you hover over the image. It is represented by a red Overlay. The Amount tool controls the intensity of the effect you apply, so you can play with it to decrease or increase the effect.
3. The next sliders, Blue and Green, will add to the blue and green tones of your photo. You can also pull them to the desired amount, watching the effect applied in real-time. See how the water changes to a blue hue when the Blue slider is pulled up?
4. Adjust the Brightness and Contrast as needed. These sliders are self-explanatory, you can increase the Brightness to make the photo more vivid, and increase contrast for a more colorful photo.
5. Here is a before and after effect of this photo that was improved with just four sliders (Amount, Blue, Green, and Brightness).
Sometimes, the AI may detect water incorrectly. It may miss tricky details, or cover up something that isn’t water.
In such cases, you still have full control over the area of the adjusted effect. Let’s find out how to adjust the mask with the controls in the Refine Area tab.
1. After you apply the Amount slider to your photo, Water Enhancer AI automatically creates a mask.
2. Go to the Refine Area tab and select Erase. Choose the size and softness of the brush, and erase the area that doesn’t need to be masked.
3. Select Draw. Choose the size and softness of the brush, and draw over the area that the AI has missed.
4. After you’re satisfied with the mask, you can apply the effects of Water Enhancer AI.
Water Enhancer AI is available both for Luminar Neo subscribers, as well as the owners of the Luminar Neo lifetime license. Find out more about Luminar Neo on Skylum’s website.
You can also try Water Enhancer AI along with the other innovative tools with a 7-day free trial of Luminar Neo.
Experience the world of photo editing AI with Luminar and get $10 USD OFF 12 and 24-month plans when you enter the promo code ‘iPhotography’.
(iPhotography may make small commissions from links in this article.)
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