Kicking the tires on the new Radiant Photo V2

We tried out the freshly-released Radiant Photo V2. We wanted to see how it would do while processing a Milky Way photo in just a few, automated steps!

What is Radiant Photo V2?

Radiant Photo analyzes each image and suggests edits that it feels are best for each photo. Rather than applying presets, it attempts to bring out color, detail, and light individually for each photo. After this, you may use additional controls to tweak the photo further if you wish.

Radiant Photo V2 is the next generation of this. It recognizes the content of your photos and selects the ideal optimization. But of course, you can also adjust everything manually.And it does so without the cloud, locally on your device. It corrects colors, color casts, and addresses dynamic range automatically, using intelligent sliders and a customizable workspace to optimize your images quickly.

What I liked about the first version is that it allowed you to do this, but still adjust many parameters to my liking if necessary.

Milky Way photos are some of the more challenging photos that a photographer might need to process. I was curious to see how Radiant Photo V2 would handle this.

Processing Mobius Arch with Radiant Photo V2

Radiant Photo V2: It automatically adjusted everything in a matter of seconds upon import.

Just like the first version of Radiant Photo, it automatically identifies the kind of photo you have, and adjusts for it based on machine learning.

Radiant Photo V2: Adjusting the parameters in the Color section.

From there on, you can adjust various parameters in the Color section to your own liking.

Radiant Photo V2: I decided to examine the Develop Section’s settings, starting with “Landscape – Night.”

Radiant Photo V2 has reorganized everything. Above, we began experimenting with the Develop Collection parameters, beginning with “Landscape – Night.” This is located on the left, where the Preset section was formerly located in V1.

Radiant Photo V2: I’ve adjusted the Super Contrast and Depth to my own liking in an effort to bring out the Milky Way even more.

As with the first version, Radiant Photo V2 allows you to easily make tweaks to its Develop Collection or Workflow. It’s not supposed to be a “one size fits all,” and every photo is a little different.

Radiant Photo V2: Here, I am adjusting the Color section slightly.

The Color sliders allow you to make tweaks to various parameters in the Color Menu.

Radiant Photo V2: Finishing Tools are exactly that, just for creating the last adjustments. Here, I am primarily reducing the Highlights slightly to make sure I retain a little more color and detail in the brightest parts of my photo. That said, Radiant Photo V2 does a good job of not “blowing out” highlights with their parameter adjustments.

The Finishing Tools are very similar to the previous version, allowing you to make some final adjustments before saving the file.

Radiant Photo V2: Saving some of the adjustments as my own preset in the Develop Collection section. As with the first version, I like that you can leave a long title and description in the Preset.

Although Radiant Photo V2’s power is in its analysis and suggestions of each photo, it’s still nice that you can create presets to further tailor something to your own liking.

Workflows are on their way

Because we have an early version of Radiant Photo V2, we could not evaluate many of its Workflows. These sound like they would be very powerful. Workflows are sold separately from the Radiant Imaging Labs website.

Landscapes Workflow

This is a workflow intended to customize the user interface for, well, Landscapes. It features Develop settings (all hand-tuned to specific scenes). In all, there are 16 intelligent scenes: astrophotography, beach, cityscape blue hour, cityscape day, citiscape golden hour, cityscape night, desert, fields, forest, landscape, landscape blue hour, landscape golden hour, landscape night, mountains, waterfall, and Auto Radiant.

Birds Workflow

This is a rather unique and unexpected Workflow. Radiant Photo claims that this is the world’s first dedicated intelligent software for bird photographers. There are 14 intelligent scenes. These include Birds of Prey, Flamingos, Fowl and Gamebirds, Herons, Cranes and Pelicans, Hummingbirds, Kingfishers and Woodpeckers, Ostriches and Emus, Penguins, Pigeons and Doves, Shorebirds.

Pets Workflow

For those who consider their pets to be like children, there are several styles of technical and creative edits for popular photography category: Auto Radiant Pets, Birds, Cats, Dogs, and Horses. It would be interesting to see how much overlap there might be between this Birds section and the Birds Workflow. If you have more unusual pets such as the rare and elusive Pushmi Pullyu, you might have to contact Radiant Photo about that!

Portraiture Workflow

This features tools for portraits, of course, including 10-point skin detection, intelligent color cast removal, custom film and color grading LUTs, 11 intelligent scenes, and new scenes for outdoors scenes and groups.

A word about AI

Radiant Photo wants to make it clear that they are trying to make your existing pixels the best they can be while keeping you in complete control of your image. They do not generate new pixels. They do not generate new images. And they do not transfer personal data from you to their servers. Every edit is processed locally on users’ devices, ensuring the fastest speed as well as privacy and security.

Read more about Radiant Photo V2 on their press release.

Mobius Arch, Owens Valley, with the Milky Way and Comet C/2023a, and the glorious Sierra Nevada Mountains in the distance.