The Accent AI Filter is part of the new Luminar Neptune – a major update to Macphun’s best-selling photo software. It’s a photo filter powered by artificial intelligence technology. Welcome to a brave new world!

Accent is the name of the new photo filter from Macphun. If you’ve been in video and photography long enough, you know that accent lighting focuses light on a particular area or subject, being used to help lead the eye of viewers to things you want them to see in the frame. Accents can be explored in different ways, sometimes as a subtle enhancement, even through the use of colored gels, to organize the hierarchy of elements within the frame.

Macphun’s photo filter, Accent, seems to follow the exact same logic. The Accent AI Filter in Luminar uses artificial intelligence to analyze different areas of an image based on its structure, objects, dark and light zones, colors and other parameters. As a user moves the slider, the filter intelligently and automatically “understands” what each area on the photo is lacking and improves it. Moving the slider can also adjust the intensity of changes, making the picture look more natural or revealing a more dramatic look, depending on the desired effect.

Macphun presents Accent as the smart filter that spares you from moving multiple sliders. While I praise the idea, I must admit, being old school, I am always afraid of many of those modern day technologies, that while making photography wizardry accessible to more people, sometimes seem to give us a “one size fits all” solution. Hopefully, this is not the case, something I will be able to try when the Luminar version for Windows comes, next July.

Accent AI Filter, in the mean time, is available for Mac users, as part of new Luminar Neptune – a major update to Macphun’s best-selling photo software. The most significant innovation in Luminar Neptune is exactly this new photo filter powered by the artificial intelligence technology developed in-house by Macphun’s Research and Development Lab.

According to Macphun, “the new Accent AI Filter allows anyone to create stunning images with a single slider instead of using dozens of adjustments and controls. It takes just a second and
one swoosh of a slider to remarkably improve a photo.”

To put it simply: the Accent AI Filter in Luminar is a substitute for dozens of traditional controls like shadows, highlights, contrast, tone, saturation, exposure, details and many others. It eliminates tedious manual editing for hobbyists who want superb quick results and creates a fantastic foundation for further advanced image manipulation for pro photographers.

“Our mission to make complex photo editing tasks simple and fun led the team at our R&D Lab to explore Artificial Intelligence technology for image enhancement,” said Kevin La Rue, Vice-President at Macphun. “The Accent AI Filter emerged as a ground-breaking way to make perfect images instantly, incorporating the power of dozens of filters into one convenient tool. This is something other photo software is missing; and what’s more important, it’s something that all photographers will greatly benefit from,” concluded La Rue.

Luminar Neptune also introduces a new workspace called Quick & Awesome. As the name implies, the workspace consists of 3 essential filters which quickly create fantastic results: the aforementioned Accent AI Filter, Saturation & Vibrance and Clarity. Using the Accent AI Filter gives users amazing instant results, however if there is still fine-tuning to be done, the other two filters can quickly help improve the photo without any extra effort.

Luminar Neptune includes many other updates: plug-in integration with Aurora HDR 2017 and Creative Kit allows users to seamlessly access their favorite features from Macphun’s other products. Faster masking/brushing, an improved Vignette filter and better memory management are among other notable changes.

The latest update of Luminar is available, as mentioned, for Mac only. In July , Macphun will be launching a “public beta” of Luminar for PC to give Windows users the first taste of the powerful all-in-one photo editor for creating bold images in minutes.