James

3/19/2025•3 min read• 856•Updated 6/11/2026

Remove Anything from a Photo with Luminar Neo

How to use Luminar NEO to remove elements from an image using AI

Imagine that you've taken a great picture, got the composition, timing, and exposure all spot on, except it's been photobombed or something you didn't notice when taking your picture stands out like a sore thumb in post!

Well, worry no more. For years you could have used Adobe's Photoshop to erase the whatever from your image, but that took a lot of time and knowledge to do. Photoshop isn't the easiest software program to learn, and usually takes years to master.

AI Post Processing Editors

A couple of months back, at my own cost, I bought a copy of Luminar Neo, a post production photo editor from Skylum. I'd been using one of their other products, HDR Aurora for sometime, to make HDR images, but was intrigued to find out what else I could do with Skylum's software, which was marketed as having lots of Artificial Intelligence built into the latest version.

So, I decided to road test it I used an image that I took last year on my iPhone 12 mini. I liked the image a lot, the colours and street decorations were perfect, but the lady in the middle of the image taking her own picture was in the way. So too was the graffiti. Using Luminar Neo, I was able to get rid of both elements. Easily, and with just a couple of clicks of the mouse.

The screenshots below show the steps, but I put together a short video to show the steps in a bit more detail.

An image showing a lady and graffiti that we're going to remove from the picture — Before - Both the lady taking the picture and the graffiti make the image a bit too distracting for me

An image showing the lady and graffiti removed from the picture — After - with the lady taking her own picture removed, and the graffiti also removed to help make the image have more impact.

The first step is to open Luminar Neo , and load in the image that you want to work on:

An image showing how Luminar Neo makes it easy removing unwanted items from pictures

An image showing Luminar Neo and the GenErase AI removal tool

Select 'GenErase' from the menu on the right, to open the GenErase screen. From here you just need to select the size brush to work with, and paint over the items that you want to remove from the image.

An image showing the GenErase button menu

An image showing the before we remove the lady and the graffiti in the Luminar Neo viewframe

An image showing how to use Luminar Neo to outline all the objects that you will remove with GenErase AI from the picture

Click to erase and remove, and then you're looking at the final result below:

An image showing the results of using Luminar Neo to remove objects from pictures - it looks as though the objects were never there. — The final image, with the additional shadow removed from the foreground, which is also hard to see that it was taken out...

My final thoughts

I'm finding Luminar Neo a great tool to work with, especially for creating fast edits to my workflow, creating images more quickly than before for social media channels, etc. If you are interested in getting your own copy, use this affiliate link, which will get you an additional 30% off - Luminar Neo by Skylum

If you're also finding it a useful tool, or have tips to share, please leave a comment below!

#Post Production Editing #Video #YouTube

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