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Photolemur Reviews

Photolemur Reviews

By Zoltán G.Zoltán G. Verified by Adam B.Adam B. Last updated: December 12, 2024User reviews (0)
Overall
4/5
(2)
Features
(4)
Price
(4)
Customer service
Pros
  • Incredibly quick and easy to use program
  • Impressive, non-destructive automated results
  • Simple batch processing
  • Cheap price for a tiny package
  • Absolutely minimal effort required
Cons
  • Minimal control over final look
  • Limited effects, and high price for extra
Table of contents

When Henry Ford started the first production line, it was unlikely that he anticipated the path that automation would take. Now robots can climb stairs, help organize our homes and our day-to-day needs, and even take care for the elderly, but what about creative endeavors? Will robots one day take over our artists, film makers, or musicians? It’s a scary thought, but it’s perhaps one that developer Skylum has on its mind with Photolemur. With this small piece of software the Luminar creator has created a tool that uses AI to edit your photos for you, making the necessary adjustments invisibly to automatically enhance your photography. If image editing isn’t interesting to you and you’d rather put zero effort into the task of perfecting your images, then Photolemur – which is just a one-off payment rather than a subscription – is the only photo editing solution out there that can do just that.

$11 per license with Photolemur bundle
If you find you have need for multiple Photolemur licenses to install it across multiple PCs, then you should consider the Family package, which provides five copies of Photolemur for $55, essentially costing only $11 per license.
Save 31% on Photolemur

Features

The first thing you should know about Photolemur is that it was clearly a purposeful decision from the start to keep the program as svelte and lightweight as possible. This means there aren’t many features or menus to get your head around and getting to grips with the process is perhaps the smoothest of any photo editing software.

A small splash screen is all that appears after launching and from there it’s a case of just dragging the images you want to edit across or selecting them from a browser screen. Everything is streamlined and kept as minimal as possible; it’d really be impossible for anyone to struggle to figure out Photolemur. But there’s also a pleasing quality to the software, too, with buttons that animate as they’re clicked or screens that expand and grow when opening.

Editing

Basic editing
Red eye removal
Cropping
Painting & drawing
Background removal
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The whole point for there being so few features boils down to the very reason for Photolemur’s existence. It uses artificial intelligence to scan your image and detect what adjustments need to be made, automatically making them for you. This process occurs immediately after opening an image, a neat sci-fi style screen denoting the actions being taken.

This may sound similar to the ‘Auto Enhance’ features of so many other photo editing tools, but while it’s not clear exactly what the algorithm does or how it detects the changes that need to be made, the alterations it makes are more than just adjusting a few brightness, saturation, and contrast sliders.

Tools and effects

The official Photolemur website details a list of processes – from dehazing and lens correction to color recovery and tint matching – that are applied with the algorithm when opening an image, and it’s clear in the results that these are more than just basic adjustments. It’s impressive to see how easily and quickly the software produces bright, colorful, and sharp results without any destruction to the quality.

But it’s no surprise that there are limitations. The first of these are the “styles”, Instagram-like effects that heavily adjust colors, contrast, and other such attributes to create a more stylized image. They’re good for adding a particular mood to a photo but with only six of these available, it’s a little too restricted. The software does invite the user to download and install additional styles, but as of writing the in-app link sends users to an empty web page where, presumably, Skylum will make new styles available later.

Then there’s the fact that there’s no real control over the final result. In keeping with the strong focus on simplicity, Photolemur only allows the user to adjust a slider to control – as a percentage – how heavily the enhancement or style is applied. While this keeps things simple and easy to use, it’s hard to overlook just how little control the user has.

Additional extras

That’s not to say there isn’t any control. A couple of toggleable tools can be used to improve portrait photography – which is to say images primarily of faces – and the AI clearly makes different adjustments based on whether these are active. And again, the results with these tools are great: “Face Enhancement” softens the skin and increases the exposure among other things, while “Eyes Enlargement” slightly and without damaging the image helps to make the subject’s eyes ‘pop’ a little more.

There’s also “Automatic Lens Correction”, but try as we might we couldn’t seem to find a way to disable this function in any of our test edits. This feature seems to be permanently active – grayed out, even – and is supposed to resolve issues like lens distortion, chromatic aberration, and vignetting that can occur with certain digital camera lens.

And that’s absolutely it for Photolemur’s various functionalities, which is admittedly severely limited when compared to the more fully-rounded packages of other photo editing suites. It is worth adding that the addition of a before/after comparison slider is much appreciated, and highlights just how effective the software’s automatic adjustments really are.

Import and export

Import and export
# file types6
JPEG
PNG
GIF
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While many programs with a laser focus on the casual user only allow JPG and PNG, the addition of support for RAW files (alongside TIFF) of digital cameras is important since it lets users edit the highest quality file type available to them. Unusually, there’s also an 800×600 pixel restriction on imported images.

In terms of exporting, the options are JPG/JPG 2000, PNG, TIFF, PSD, and PDF. The initial exporting screen is limited but offers enough for the basic user to follow and understand. However, it’s the advanced options that are particularly impressive, allowing for a host of more complex save options – particularly the selection of an RGB mode – to best tailor the resultant file to your needs.

This is particularly useful for batch processing images – a handy aspect of Photolemur – but renaming is a little bugged in that choosing custom text doesn’t allow for sequential numbering, meaning batch processing multiple images with matching text always saves each image as the same file name, essentially overwriting the same file with each new export in the queue.

Sharing

Sharing
Social media sharing
Email attachment
Photo gallery
Cloud storage
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It’s clear that Photolemur’s target audience is the casual user, professional editors and amateur photographers wanting to learn more will certainly appreciate the greater depth and control available with other photo editing suites and this tiny package just won’t live up to those standards.

What is surprising, then, is that there are no in-built options to directly upload to social media platforms like Facebook or even Flickr. Interestingly, when proceeding to export, the button will pop up with a separate “Disk” option; it’s a strange additional step ahead of the actual exportation menu, which suggests that perhaps further sharing options will be added into the software in the future.

Platforms

Platform support
Web app
Mobile optimized
macOS
Linux
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Currently only Mac and Windows users can use Photolemur, which is a little surprising considering the level of user that it is aimed at. For those on PC the options are Windows 7, 8, and 10, while Mac owners will need macOS 10.11 and earlier.

However, the developers have publicly revealed that a web browser and mobile version of the software is in the works, so we can probably expect to see the software expand beyond these initial platforms over time.

But a rare yet very much appreciated addition is how Photolemur can also be integrated as a plug-in for Adobe’s Lightroom, so long as it is downloaded from the website and not the App Store. This is a useful way of circumventing the lack of features in the standalone version, leveraging the powerful AI system of Photolemur but with the added benefit of being able to make further tweaks where required.

Using Photolemur as Adobe Photoshop's plugin

Pricing

Skylum makes a point of its pricing model on the Photolemur website, highlighting how it isn’t available as part of a subscription but a one-time $35 fee. While this isn’t particularly unique, it shows at least that the company has a customer-orientated attitude when it comes to pricing – at least for the base package.

However, it is possible to buy style packs, expensive $12 add-ons that provide extra styles to use in the software. This is a little cynical since currently there seems to be no free downloadable styles, each purchase only adds a single new style, and the software itself has a very small number of styles already available.

But this is easy to forgive this when there are so many ways of getting Photolemur on the cheap. From seasonal deals or timely discounts to bundle savings or cheaper costs when upgrading, Photolemur does it all to reduce its already low price. There’s even a completely free version that does have some heavy restrictions – particularly watermarks – but can be used for as long as you like to test the capabilities of this AI-driven software.

Free
$0
Free forever
Powered with AI
Lens correction
Color recovery
Tint matching
Raw files support
Watermark on images
No batch processing
Limited size of pictures
+$12 additional styles
Single License
$35
One-time payment
Powered with AI
Lens correction
Color recovery
Tint matching
Raw files support
No watermarks
Batch processing
No image size restrictions
+$12 additional styles
+$15 version upgrade
Family License
$55
One-time payment
Powered with AI
Lens correction
Color recovery
Tint matching
Raw files support
No watermarks
Batch processing
No image size restrictions
+$12 additional styles
+$15 version upgrade
Payment options
Visa
Mastercard
American Express
Discover
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Customer service

Customer support
24/7
Live chat
Email
Phone
Show all

Considering how easy Photolemur is to use, it’s quite surprising just how many – and how varied – ways there are to get to grips with the software. The website is home to a user manual (which can be downloaded), an FAQ for basic questions surrounding accounts and the tool itself, a blog for news and tips about the software, and even a community forum should you want to post your question there.

Getting in touch with the team itself isn’t quite so easy, with a contact section hidden away at the bottom of the support page. It’s an inquiry system that first requires answering some questions, which only slows the process of getting in touch. There is also Twitter and Facebook for more immediate responses.

Bottom line

By all rights there should be a lot to complain about with Photolemur, since compared to so many other photo editing suites it is very, very barebones. But that’s the entire concept from the very beginning: a tool designed to make editing as effortless as possible. It is true that the software does have some issues, particularly with the failure of batch renaming and the rather underhand strategy of selling extra, overpriced styles when the base software itself is so lacking in this regard.

Photolemur.com

However, in spite of these drawbacks, there’s no denying that in a way Photolemur is revolutionary, really removing practically all manual effort from photo editing. If you just want your holiday snaps to look their very best before uploading to social media but don’t want any of the hassle of photo editing, then for a very fair one-off price Photolemur is certainly a tool worth checking out.

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