AI Photo Editor - Lumii

Review by eFreeware

Most photos taken on a phone need something done to them before they look the way we pictured. A background that distracts, a face that could use smoothing, colors that fall flat next to everything else in a feed. The usual fix is a stack of separate apps, one for filters, another for cutouts, a third for text. Lumii, from InShot Video Editor, tries to fold that stack into a single editor, and it has clearly found an audience: more than 100 million installs and a 4.7 average across just over a million ratings.

The pitch is broad. Lumii is a free Android app that combines ordinary adjustment tools with filters, effects, background removal and a set of AI-assisted edits, and it is aimed at people who want presentable results without studying photo editing. I think the appeal is obvious for anyone who posts regularly and wants one place to do the work, though the breadth is also the first thing to weigh, since an app that tries to do everything rarely does everything equally well.

A fit for casual editors and small sellers

The people I would expect to get the most from Lumii are those editing for a feed rather than for print. The filters, presets and template collection are built around social sharing, and the crop tool supports multiple aspect ratios, which suggests the app expects your photo to end up somewhere with a fixed frame. If you take a lot of portraits or group shots and want them cleaned up quickly, the automatic retouching and enhancement tools are the parts worth looking at first.

Small sellers and makers who photograph products on a phone are another plausible audience. Cutting a subject out and dropping it onto a preset background is the kind of task that normally means paying for a desktop tool, and having it in the same app as color and text tools saves moving files around. Hobbyists who enjoy experimenting will find plenty to poke at too, particularly the blend and glitch sections.

What I would keep in mind is that Lumii is a general-purpose editor, not a specialist one. Someone who needs precise color management for print, or who edits raw files as a matter of course, will find the toolset here organized around quick, good-looking results. That is a deliberate direction rather than a flaw, but it does define the kind of work the app is built for.

Filters, effects and the tools you reach for first

Filters are the entry point. Lumii ships with more than a hundred filters and effects, grouped into styles such as Film, LOMO and Retro, along with presets designed for social posts. You can also save your own custom filters, which matters more than it sounds: once you settle on a look, being able to apply it again without rebuilding it from scratch keeps a set of photos consistent.

Effects run alongside the filters, covering glitch treatments like VHS and vaporwave, light leaks and double exposure. The glitch effects have adjustable strength, so you can dial them back to something subtle rather than committing to the full look. For blending two images, there is a dedicated double exposure tool with templates to start from, which is a friendlier route into that technique than building the blend yourself.

Underneath all of this sit the basics: brightness, contrast, highlights, shadows, warmth, sharpness and exposure, plus free-form rotation and cropping across multiple aspect ratios. There are also curves with four color options and HSL adjustments covering eight color channels. Those last two are the controls that separate an editor from a filter app, and having them available is the most interesting part of the app.

Cutouts, retouching and the AI-assisted edits

Background removal is handled automatically. The app erases or repairs unwanted areas, cuts a subject out, and lets you place the result on one of its preset backgrounds. In practice this is the feature that turns a snapshot into something usable for a listing or a profile picture, and the developer bills the one-tap background change as a headline capability.

The AI-assisted edits cover several jobs. There is an enhancer for sharpening and cleaning up image quality, described as turning portraits and group photos into high-definition results, and an auto retouch that smooths skin, whitens teeth and clears blemishes in a single tap. Quick Erase and AI Remove both deal with unwanted objects, the second detecting and removing objects automatically. There is also an avatar tool for creating 3D cartoon and anime-style portraits.

Portrait work gets its own set of tools: background blur, bokeh light effects and mosaic for hiding faces or blurring details you would rather not publish. Text is covered as well, with a range of fonts and preset styles you can apply to a caption or label. Taken together, these are the features that would push me toward Lumii over a plain filter app, because they cover the edits people most often want and cannot easily do by hand on a phone.

Templates, drafts and picking up where you left off

Lumii includes templates organized by theme, covering retro film, aesthetic, urban and journal looks, intended to give you a finished composition rather than a single adjustment. For anyone who finds a blank editing screen intimidating, starting from a template and swapping in your own photo is a reasonable way to work, and it is faster than assembling a look piece by piece.

The app also keeps an editing history and supports multiple draft workspaces. That means an edit in progress does not have to be finished in one sitting, and you can keep several projects on the go without them overwriting each other. For anyone who edits in short bursts between other things, this is a small feature that removes a real annoyance.

The most recent update adds better support for Android 16 and foldable devices, along with performance improvements. Foldable support is worth noting if you own one, since photo editors often handle the changing screen shape poorly, and the developer lists smoother editing as part of the same release.

Free to install, with ads and purchases

Lumii is free to download, and it carries ads. It also offers in-app purchases. It is worth reading the purchase details in the app itself before you commit to anything.

The developer calls the HSL tools advanced. I would treat that as a statement of intent rather than a guarantee about every feature. If you are deciding whether to install, the sensible approach is to try the tools you actually need and see how the free experience treats them.

The install figures suggest plenty of people have made that judgment already. A 4.7 average from over a million ratings is a strong signal for a free app in a crowded category, though ratings measure satisfaction with what people expected, not whether the app matches your particular workflow.

How it compares with the alternatives

The obvious comparison is a dedicated background removal tool. Those tend to suit people who want cutouts done with more care and fewer distractions, and who are happy to handle color, text and effects in the same app. Lumii's advantage is having the cutout, the filters and the retouching in one place, which is worth more than it sounds if you edit often and dislike exporting between apps.

Against a professional desktop editor, the trade is control for convenience. Lumii gives you curves, HSL and selective adjustments, but it is built around tapping and previewing rather than building a look from the ground up. If your editing is occasional and destined for a screen, that trade favors Lumii. If it is regular and destined for print, it probably does not.

There is also the question of a subscription-based editor. Those often bundle a large library of presets and cloud features, and they charge accordingly. Lumii sits at the other end: free to install. Which is better depends on how much you edit and whether you would rather pay once in attention or in money.

A practical choice for phone-first editing

Lumii covers a lot of ground for a free app: filters and effects, automatic background removal, retouching, object removal, blur and bokeh, text, templates, curves and HSL adjustments, plus drafts and history. The developer has kept it current, with the latest release adding Android 16 and foldable support. For someone who wants one app to handle the edits they actually make, that combination is hard to argue with.

The caveats are the ones that come with the territory. It is free to download. It is a general editor rather than a specialist tool, so anyone with narrow, high-precision needs will find it oriented elsewhere. The number of features also means you will likely spend a little time finding the tools you care about.

My recommendation is straightforward. If you edit photos on your phone for social posts, profile pictures, listings or family shots, and you want filters, cutouts and cleanup in one place without paying up front, Lumii is worth installing and trying against your own photos. If your editing is professional and precision-driven, this is not the tool that will replace your usual workflow.

What's new in version 3.071.221

📲 Better support for Android 16 & foldable devices. ✨ Smoother editing with improved performance.