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Luminar Essentials – AI EnhanceThe Essentials Tools Panel in Skylum Luminar is a set of filters. They are some of the most frequently used tools in image post-processing workflows. This article is an ultimate ... Read more The post Luminar Essentials – AI Enhance appeared first on Photography...
The Essentials Tools Panel in Skylum Luminar is a set of filters. They are some of the most frequently used tools in image post-processing workflows. This article is an ultimate guide to the AI Enhance Tab, which sits within the Essentials Tools Panel.
The tab consists of just two adjustment sliders, which wield a lot of image processing power. AI Enhance makes the process of image post-processing extremely easy. In many ways, they enable the same edits as the Light Tools Panel. The difference is Artificial Intelligence (AI), which automatically performs a series of adjustments to your image. AI Enhance gives the user complete control over how much of the effect is applied to their image.
Luminar AI Enhance Tab
AI Accent – Analyses your image to intelligently determine changes needed to shadows, highlights, white and black balance, contrast, tone, exposure, details and more.
AI Sky Enhancer – Is able to detect the sky portions in the majority of images presented to it. It even recognises the differences in an image between the sky and water elements such as oceans, streams and lakes.
AI Sky Enhance is then able to automatically analyse and enhance colour, texture, saturation, brightness and tone. The most powerful feature in this AI, is the accuracy that it detects the boundaries between the sky and other objects, even in complex images, and without creating fringes of colour at the transitions.
Edit Mask – All of the AI tools in Luminar also contain an Edit Mask option. This pull-down menu allows you to selectively paint the AI Enhance filter to regions of the image that you choose. Giving you even more creative power over the effect.
AI Accent Example
Here is an example of AI Accent taking the slider all the way to 100. You can see from the image just how this has globally affected all pixels in the image. The sky colour has more saturation, and greatly improved contrast. There is improved texture and contrast in the rocks and mountains.
Of course in this example we took the slider to 100. But you can choose to scale the effect back to achieve a natural look.
AI Sky Enhancer
Using our same example image, but this time taking the AI Sky Enhance to 100. You can see how the AI has intelligently detected the sky and only applied the filters to those regions. The sky colour is saturated with additional contrast.
Again, this is with the slider to 100, and the effect is a little too oversaturated, but can easily be dialled back.
Edit Mask Capability
To use the Edit Mask from the drop-down menu, you first apply either the AI Sky Enhancer or the AI Accent filters. Then selecting Brush in the Edit Mask drop-down menu, you can paint the areas of the image you want to affect.
You can change the brush size using the bracket keys:
- [ = Smaller Brush
- ] = Larger Brush
You can also change the flow of the effect for finer control over the edit.
This Luminar Essentials article forms a suite of interactive guides on the Skylum Luminar photo editing software. If you found this useful, please check out our other Luminar articles and how-to guides in the Learn Photography section of our site.
If you don’t yet have a copy of Luminar, but would like to purchase one, you can get a copy from the Luminar website.
The Photography Group are affiliated with some of the biggest names in the photographic industry, and with whom make this page possible:
Adobe – Adobe creative applications are the benchmark in the industry. Photography focussed plans start at £9.98/m inclusive of VAT for Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop plus 200Gb of document storage.
Adobe Stock – Whether you need a stock photo, stunning graphic, HD video, or photoshop template, Adobe Stock has the perfect asset to help you tell your story.
DJI – Fly as you are! Discover DJIs range of drones and gimbals.
EZ Prints – Offer a huge range of photography-related giftware, including prints, canvas, stationery, cards, home decor, and more.
Joby – Joby has designed mounts, cases, lights, stands and grips with a user-centric approach. The end result is a range of functional yet playful, innovative yet easy to use products.
Luminar 4 – Revolutionary tools and AI technologies give superpowers for creative photo editing.
Manfrotto – Discover Manfrotto’s exciting world of accessories and solutions for photographers and videographers. Carefully designed for your unique photography or videography experience.
SmugMug – Start selling your photos online!
Vaonis – The company that brought us the STELLINA, and revolutionised astronomy, making it accessible to a broad audience from anywhere in the world, even in the heart of the city.
The post Luminar Essentials – AI Enhance appeared first on Photography Group.
Luminar Essentials – Light Tools
The Essentials Tools Panel in Skylum Luminar is a set of filters. These filters are frequently used in any image post-processing workflow. This article is an ultimate guide to the ... Read more The post Luminar Essentials – Light Tools appeared first on Photography...
The Essentials Tools Panel in Skylum Luminar is a set of filters. These filters are frequently used in any image post-processing workflow. This article is an ultimate guide to the Light Tools Tab in the Essentials Tools Panel.
Light Tools Tab
The Luminar Essentials Light Tools are a selection of sliders to adjust the colour and tonal balance in an image. They are the foundation for any other adjustments you are going to make to your image, and for this reason, sits at the top of the Essentials Tools panel.
White Balance – Is a global adjustment affecting the intensities of all the colours in an image. The main aim of this adjustment is to render neutral colours correctly to the eye. If you are working with a RAW file, you get a set of pull-down options, to choose from. If not, then you can use the eyedropper to select an area in the image that should be pure white.
Temperature
This slider adds warmth or coolness to a shot. What it essentially does is add yellow for more warmth and cyan for a cooler colour tone. It globally affects all pixels in the image.
Tint
This slider is for when you need to remove a colour cast from an image. It does this by increasing either the amount of green or magenta tones. It globally affects all pixels in the image.
Exposure
This slider globally adjusts the luminance of the image. Moving the slider to the left darkens the image to simulate a lower exposure, and to the right a brighter image, to simulate an increase in exposure.
Smart Contrast
This slider globally adjusts the ratio of tones in an image. The Smart Contrast is a great tool for enhancing the colour, textures, highlights, and shadows. Moving the slider to the left reduces the difference in colour and brightness, and moving to the right increased the colour and brightness. The software prevents the shift in colours from impacting the details in the image, which is why its called Smart Contrast.
Highlights
This slider pinpoints the bright areas of the image. A left slider movement makes highlights darker, and a right slider movement makes them brighter. It’s a very useful tool when you only want to adjust one tonal range within the image.
Shadows
This area pinpoints the darker areas of the image. A left slider movement makes the shadows darker, increasing the number of shadows. A right slider movement makes the shadows brighter, reducing the amount of shadows.
At the bottom of the Light Tools Tab, sits an Advanced Settings button.
Clicking this brings up two further sliders, Whites and Blacks, as well as a curves adjustment tool.
Whites – Adjusts the white point of the histogram and white tones in the image.
Blacks – Adjusts the black point of the histogram and black tones in the image.
Expressing this in a different way, the White slider allows you to control how many pure white pixels there are in an image, and the Black slider does the same but targets only the black pixels.
Luminar Essentials Curves Adjustment Tool
The Curves Adjustment Tool is a graphical tool that does everything that the sliders do in the Light Tools tab, plus a little bit more! But it comes in a graphical interface. Many users find this method of adjustment a little daunting, but it is easier than you may think.
At the top of the tool is 4 radio buttons, one is a global adjustment, the other three target Red, Green & Blue. Next is a gradient curve adjustment, and finally a contrast slider at the bottom. The easiest way to explain the tool is to go through those adjustments in reverse order.
Contrast Slider Adjustments
Moving the bottom-left button adjusts the black point of the histogram i.e. moving the button to the right increases the black tones and darkens in the image.
If you move the bottom-right button adjusts the white point of the histogram i.e. moving the button to the left increases the white tones and lightens in the image.
If you move the bottom-centre button, it adjusts the mid-tones of the histogram. Moving to the right darkens the mid-tones and left lightens them.
Gradient Line Adjustments
You can make direct edits on the gradient line by left clicking at any point on the gradient line. When you do a draggable dot appears, and you can push and pull the line. You can add multiple draggable dots anywhere along the line. The most popular edit using this method is to add a slight S-Curve. This has the effect of tightening the black-white contrast and boosting the mid-tones.
RGB Adjustments
Finally, by left-clicking on the Red, Green, & Blue radio buttons, you can directly edit these colour channels in the histogram. This is useful, if you want to replicate the effect of a coloured lens filter, or if you want to saturate or desaturate a specific colour. The method of editing is the same as above. You make edits by clicking on the line and dragging. Here is an example using the red channel to apply a red filter:
This Luminar Essentials – Light Tools article forms a suite of interactive guides on the Skylum Luminar photo editing software. If you found this useful, please check out our other Luminar articles and how-to guides in the Learn Photography section of our site.
If you don’t yet have a copy of Luminar, but would like to purchase one, you can get a copy from the Luminar website.
The Photography Group are affiliated with some of the biggest names in the photographic industry, and with whom make this page possible:
Adobe – Adobe creative applications are the benchmark in the industry. Photography focussed plans start at £9.98/m inclusive of VAT for Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop plus 200Gb of document storage.
Adobe Stock – Whether you need a stock photo, stunning graphic, HD video, or photoshop template, Adobe Stock has the perfect asset to help you tell your story.
DJI – Fly as you are! Discover DJIs range of drones and gimbals.
EZ Prints – Offer a huge range of photography-related giftware, including prints, canvas, stationery, cards, home decor, and more.
Joby – Joby has designed mounts, cases, lights, stands and grips with a user-centric approach. The end result is a range of functional yet playful, innovative yet easy to use products.
Luminar 4 – Revolutionary tools and AI technologies give superpowers for creative photo editing.
Manfrotto – Discover Manfrotto’s exciting world of accessories and solutions for photographers and videographers. Carefully designed for your unique photography or videography experience.
SmugMug – Start selling your photos online!
Vaonis – The company that brought us the STELLINA, and revolutionised astronomy, making it accessible to a broad audience from anywhere in the world, even in the heart of the city.
The post Luminar Essentials – Light Tools appeared first on Photography Group.
Deep Space Photography with the VAONIS Stellina
This article covers Deep Space Photography using the VAONIS Stellina smart telescope. Since the invention of the telescope over 400 years ago, mankind has been fascinated with the cosmos. Whilst ... Read more The post Deep Space Photography with the VAONIS Stellina appeared first on Photography...
This article covers Deep Space Photography using the VAONIS Stellina smart telescope.
Since the invention of the telescope over 400 years ago, mankind has been fascinated with the cosmos. Whilst stargazing is now accessible to anyone and only requires a modest investment into a telescope, photographing deep space requires technical know-how, and specialised equipment.
The earth rotates around the sun at 30km/s (67,000mph). The surface of the earth also rotates around its axis moving at a speed of 460m/s (1000mph). Most objects in deep space are invisible to the naked eye, and light-years from earth. To successfully photograph deep space, you need to be able to identify where to point the telescope, how to track, and how to focus.
For this reason, deep-space/astrophotography has long been the exclusive domain of enthusiasts and specialists. The introduction of the VAONIS Stellina in 2019 changed this and brought deep space photography to the masses. Here is an introductory video by VAONIS.
Using the Stellina
Setting up and using the Stellina is child’s play. Rather than looking through a telescope, the human interface is through an app on your phone or tablet. After levelling Stellina on its tripod, you initiate the device by switching it on. Initiation takes about 10 minutes, and you then choose a target that you are interested on the app, Stellina then takes care of everything including pointing, tracking, focussing. You can then view the object on your device live, or share it.
Here is another short video from VAONIS demonstrating just how easy the Stellina is to use.
As far as what the app enables you to explore, you can view nebulas, galaxies, clusters of stars, planets, and even our own moon. In theory you can set the telescope up outside and then tether to your phone or tablet inside in the comfort of your home. In practice, you need to be relatively close to the unit or you will lose signal. Losing signal is not a big issue, but it does mean that you need to reinitialise the unit again.
The app gives you personalised recommendations on what to observe based upon your geolocation, the astronomical calendar, and notes about the secrets of the Cosmos. So there really is no guesswork. Regarding geolocation, the Stellina uses the signal from your phone to determine this. This system does work very accurately in practice, albeit it does take around 5 minutes.
Stellina Technical Aspects
The stills images are only 6.4Mp, which compared to what we have become used to with digital cameras does not seem a lot. The utility of the Stellina though is not in a single stills photo, but rather that you can stack images. For instance, this picture of the Carina region is a massive 550Mp stacked image. This starts to give you an idea of the capability of this device, and the quality of what you can achieve.
Regarding size and weight, the unit is 12.5kg including its tripod and is 49x39x13cm; which is packable in a backpack for transportation. The unit runs for around 5 hours on one 10,000mAh battery, so if you are on the road you may want to consider taking two or more batteries with you.
The Stellina optics consist of a refractor telescope with a 400mm focal length and 80mm aperture and 50x optical magnification.
The CMOS sensor behind the glass can output processed JPEGs, or you can choose to download RAW (TIFF) images which you can process yourself in a standard image post-processing software.
In terms of key features, as well as autofocus pointing and tracking which we have already mentioned, the Stellina includes a dew heater to ensure the optics are always in optimal conditions and a light pollution filter.
The light pollution filter is a game changer, as it allows you to take images of the cosmos wherever you are in the world, even in a city.
Click here if you are interested in all the technical specs.
Water Resistance:
IP53
Lens:
Doublet ED doublet
with lanthanum glass
Focal Ratio:
F/5
Image Format:
JPEG ; TIFF ; FITS (16-bit raw images)
Mount:
Alt-azimuth
Focus:
Automatic
Field Derotator:
Mechanical and automated
Included with purchase:
Tripod Gitzo (1,3kg/2.2lb),
10 000mAh portable
battery
Aperture:
80 mm (3.15in)
Sensor:
1/1.8″ CMOS Sony
Field of View:
1° x 0.7°
Alignment:
Automatic initialization
with star field recognition
Image Processing:
– Adapted to each object
– Real time image stacking
Dew Control:
Integrated Heater
Control:
Smartphone/Tablet
Focal Length:
400 mm (15.75in)
Image Resolution:
1/1.8″ CMOS Sony
Magnification:
Optical 50x
Digital 100x
Pointing:
Automatic
Light Filter:
Light pollution – City Light Supression (CLS)
Where to buy
Purchase of the Stellina is directly from the VAONIS website accessible here, and costs €4000. This sounds expensive until you consider that it is about the same as a decent digital camera and prime lens combo. The unit comes with a 2 year warranty, and free delivery.
Deep Space Photography with Stellina – Conclusions
The Stellina is an outstanding telescope and can take some unique images of the cosmos, regardless of your location.
If you enjoyed this article, check out some of our other articles and how-to guides.
The Photography Group are affiliated with some of the biggest names in the photographic industry, and with whom make this page possible:
Adobe – Adobe creative applications are the benchmark in the industry. Photography focussed plans start at £9.98/m inclusive of VAT for Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop plus 200Gb of document storage.
Adobe Stock – Whether you need a stock photo, stunning graphic, HD video, or photoshop template, Adobe Stock has the perfect asset to help you tell your story.
DJI – Fly as you are! Discover DJIs range of drones and gimbals.
EZ Prints – Offer a huge range of photography-related giftware, including prints, canvas, stationery, cards, home decor, and more.
Joby – Joby has designed mounts, cases, lights, stands and grips with a user-centric approach. The end result is a range of functional yet playful, innovative yet easy to use products.
Luminar 4 – Revolutionary tools and AI technologies give superpowers for creative photo editing.
Manfrotto – Discover Manfrotto’s exciting world of accessories and solutions for photographers and videographers. Carefully designed for your unique photography or videography experience.
SmugMug – Start selling your photos online!
Vaonis – The company that brought us the STELLINA, and revolutionised astronomy, making it accessible to a broad audience from anywhere in the world, even in the heart of the city.
The post Deep Space Photography with the VAONIS Stellina appeared first on Photography Group.
2019 Travel Photographer of the Year (TPOTY) Exhibition
Followers of the Travel Photographer of the Year (TPOTY) competition in the UK, maybe interested to attend their free open-air exhibition in London. The exhibition will take place at the ... Read more The post 2019 Travel Photographer of the Year (TPOTY) Exhibition appeared first on Photography...
Followers of the Travel Photographer of the Year (TPOTY) competition in the UK, maybe interested to attend their free open-air exhibition in London. The exhibition will take place at the Coal Drops Yard, Kings Cross, and will exhibit over 170 photographs from the 2019 competition. The London exhibition will be open between September 29th September and October 25th.
This will be the first public showing of the winning shots from the 2019 (TPOTY) and includes entries from professional and amateur photographers from around the world. The winning photographs provide a fascinating view of our planet, with photographs presented including entries from high-end cameras to iPhones and everything in-between.
TPOTY has also announced that visitors to the exhibition will be able to vote for their own favourite image, for a chance to win a range of prizes. The main prize is a one-day private photography lesson with TPOTY founder Chris Coe.
If you are interested in entering the 2020 competition yourself, then the closing date for entries is the 2nd November. Competition entry can be made through their website.
Here is selection of images that will be on display in London:
TPOTY 2019 Selection of Images
“Agra, India. This is 9 exposures taken over 10 minutes using the multi-exposure function of the Canon 6D MkII. Canon EOS 6D MkII, 70- 300mm lens, F7.1, 1/800s, ISO 400”
“Ung Hoa, Hanoi, Vietnam. A female worker collects bundles of incense in Hanoi, Vietnam. Canon 1Dx, 24-70mm lens, f/2.8, 1/1250s, ISO 200”
“Torres Dell Paine, Patagonia, Chile. A 4-month old puma kitten gives a loving hug to his mother. Canon EOS-1D X Mark II, 200-400mm lens, f4, 1/1250s, ISO 1250”
“The Aegean Sea, Island of Skiathos, Greece. My son and two of his friends decided to do a bit of freediving. I set them a task and enjoyed the youthful banter as they set about trying to co-ordinate their efforts. It was amazing the good time we had – doing something so simple – no gadgets, electronics or high value spend. Just fun. Canon 5D Mkiii, Sigma 15mm fisheye, f/8, 1/1600sec, ISO-1600”
For more Photography News, check out the news section of our site
The post 2019 Travel Photographer of the Year (TPOTY) Exhibition appeared first on Photography Group.
Adobe Lightroom – Post Processing Workflow
In this article, I will cover a typical post-processing workflow using the Adobe Lightroom software. Adobe Lightroom is packed with so many features, that it can be a little daunting; ... Read more The post Adobe Lightroom – Post Processing Workflow appeared first on Photography...
In this article, I will cover a typical post-processing workflow using the Adobe Lightroom software. Adobe Lightroom is packed with so many features, that it can be a little daunting; particularly if you are just starting out.
However, there are a standard set of processes that you typically go through to give you a well-balanced image. I think of these as a baseline for anything else that you might want to do in Lightroom. This baseline also gives you a workable image that you can use either online or for printing.
Setting up our Workspace
For our starting image, I am using a picture of Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, photographed at sunset. But, because I didn’t use a graduated filter to balance the exposure, the resultant image is somewhat dull. Fortunately, the image was photographed in RAW, so there will be a lot of detail in there that we can draw out.
To get started, I opened the image up in Lightroom Classic, and left-clicked the Develop Module.
One of the main things I look at when post-processing an image is the histogram. An optimum histogram tends to look like a bell shape and means there is a good distribution of pixels from white to black, and everything in-between. We can see from this image that the histogram peaks at the right-hand side, indicating the image is a little bright – whites and highlights. The peaks on the left-hand side indicating too many blacks and shadows.
Here is an example of an optimal bell-shaped histogram from another image. We are unlikely going to be able to get to something like this with our example image because we are not starting from a correct exposure. But, we will be able to make some improvements. I typically start my work-flow by correcting the white balance.
Correcting the White Balance
We correct the white balance by left-clicking the white balance slider in the Basic Panel. The Basic Panel is located at the top of the Develop Module. There is a little know technique that I use for setting the white balance, and is my first top-tip:
Press and hold the ALT key before left-clicking the Whites slider.
What this does is temporarily replace your image with a black mask. You then move the Whites slider until you just see white pixels peeking through the mask. Then just dial that back very slightly so you can’t see any pixels peeking through. I have seen For our example, this was +37.
Correcting the Black Balance
We correct the black balance in much the same way as whites, by pressing and holding ALT whilst left-clicking the Blacks slider.
This time, however, we get a white mask and slide the slider until we can just see black pixels. But rather than dialling back slightly, I leave the setting there. For our example, I increased the blacks to +13.
Now we have the black and white pixel balance set correctly, we can take a look at the highlights and shadows. Unfortunately, there is no semi-automated way to do to the highlights and shadows, it needs to be done by eye.
Correcting the Highlights & Shadows
I started with the shadows. The foreground in the image was still quite dark, so I lightened the tone by left-clicking the shadows slider and bringing the up to +41. I then did the reverse for the highlights, as the sky was too bright. I lowered the highlights right down to -91.
You can see from Figure 5 (below), that we have a more tonally balanced image, and the colours from the sunset are starting to shine through. Also, take a look at the small histogram, you can see that our edits have pulled the tones away from the extremes. There is more work to do though, as the image is still a little flat.
Image Presence
Still in the basics panel, there is a section called Presence, it consists of Texture, Clarity, Dehaze, Vibrance & Saturation.
- Texture helps to enhance or smooth textures in images and does it in a way that doesn’t destroy details or add noise. It’s great for nature photography for adding detail to feather, or for architecture to add details buildings. It’s also good to smooth skin. For our example image, there is enough texture in the architecture so I left the dial at datum.
- Clarity is another contrast slider but focusses purely on the mid-tones of an image, rather than the whole image. It’s great sharpening the midtones but also adds a little texture. Because our image needs a boost in the mid-tones I increased this to +27. Any more than this and the texture started to be too noisy.
- Dehaze is essentially another contrast slider, but the focus is on the highlights. The idea is that it replicates the removal of water particle haze in your skies. Kind of like a polariser filter. I increased this to +16. You need to be careful with dehaze, a little goes a long way, and a lot of dehaze adds noise to your image.
- Saturation is used to adjust all of the colours in the photo. I added a little saturation +13. This is another effect that you want to use sparingly though, as it can make your images look radioactive.
- Vibrance is essentially a saturation slider, but only affects the colours in the image that are unsaturated, and protects those that are already saturated. I personally find Vibrance better suited to portraits, I therefore left this at zero.
Tone Curve
One of the final edits I typically perform is in the Tone Curve Panel. The Tone Curve Panel sits underneath the Basic Panel. You can use this panel make further adjustments to the whites, blacks, mid-tones, and highlights. You can in fact make radical changes to your image in this small little panel.
For a standard work-flow however, I typically add a little S-Curve to the histogram. This has the effect of further tightening the Whites and Blacks and pushing up the mid-tones and highlights. It gives your images a little more punch to make them stand out.
You do this by left-clicking on the line, and then dragging the curve.
Adobe Lightroom – Final Edits
As a final edit, I will typically zoom into the image and check whether we introduced any noise during the post-processing workflow. If there is, then I scroll down to the Detail panel and add a little Colour and Luminance denoise.
If you enjoyed our this article, please check out some of our other articles and how-to guides.
If you don’t have a copy of Lightroom and are thinking of getting one, head over to their Website
Here are some other Lightroom articles that may be of interest to you:
Lightroom ArticlesAdobe Lightroom Classic Post-Processing Workflow
Drawing Straight Lines with the Adjustment Brush
The Photography Group are affiliated with some of the biggest names in the photographic industry, and with whom make this page possible:
Adobe – Adobe creative applications are the benchmark in the industry. Photography focussed plans start at £9.98/m inclusive of VAT for Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop plus 200Gb of document storage.
Adobe Stock – Whether you need a stock photo, stunning graphic, HD video, or photoshop template, Adobe Stock has the perfect asset to help you tell your story.
DJI – Fly as you are! Discover DJIs range of drones and gimbals.
EZ Prints – Offer a huge range of photography-related giftware, including prints, canvas, stationery, cards, home decor, and more.
Joby – Joby has designed mounts, cases, lights, stands and grips with a user-centric approach. The end result is a range of functional yet playful, innovative yet easy to use products.
Luminar 4 – Revolutionary tools and AI technologies give superpowers for creative photo editing.
Manfrotto – Discover Manfrotto’s exciting world of accessories and solutions for photographers and videographers. Carefully designed for your unique photography or videography experience.
SmugMug – Start selling your photos online!
Vaonis – The company that brought us the STELLINA, and revolutionised astronomy, making it accessible to a broad audience from anywhere in the world, even in the heart of the city.
The post Adobe Lightroom – Post Processing Workflow appeared first on Photography Group.
Luminar – Post Processing Workflow
In this article, I am going to step through a typical post-processing workflow in Luminar. When enhancing their photos, many people only ever use the Luminar Looks panel. It’s true ... Read more The post Luminar – Post Processing Workflow appeared first on Photography...
In this article, I am going to step through a typical post-processing workflow in Luminar. When enhancing their photos, many people only ever use the Luminar Looks panel. It’s true that you can get some good starting points or ideas on how to enhance an image from this. However, every image is different, and a Luminar Look was only ever really designed around a single image.
The great thing about Luminar is that a standard post-processing workflow is designed for creative workflow. The steps are simple and intuitive. This allows you as the image creator to focus on being creative.
Opening our image in Luminar
To start, I opened the starting image (Figure 1) into Luminar. The image is slightly under-exposed, and the shadows are just too dark. However, there is a lot of detail that we can draw out from this image using Luminar. We should be able to make this rather flat looking image stand out.
Luminar AI Enhance
I selected the Essentials panel by left-clicking the sun symbol on the right-hand side menu. Then I left-clicked the AI Enhance tab. This tab offers us two options:
AI Accent. This one little slider analyses and fixes more than a dozen aspects of your photo. AI Accent looks at shadows, highlights, contrast, tone, saturation, exposure, and details, and then intelligently corrects your image.
It’s always a good idea to start with AI Accent in your post-processing workflow, as it gives you such a good baseline to start from. Increasing the slider from zero then allows you to decide how much of the enhancement to apply to your photo. This really is a huge timesaver compared to other post-processing software, because in those you need to edit each aspect individually.
Anyhow, for this image I set AI Accent to 64. This really brought out the details in the foreground pebbles as well as lifting the shadows in the mountains. The sky though was still a little dull, so I moved onto the AI Sky Enhancer Tab
AI Sky Enhancer. This slider is specifically for the sky, as its name suggests. Luminar analyzes and detects the sky in an image to improve the texture, tone, and colours of the sky. I upped this to 18 and has improved the tone and colour in the sky portion of the image. Any more than that and the sky started to look a little over-saturated.
Luminar Light Adjustment Tab
Next, I left-clicked the Light Tab in the Essentials panel. It’s right at the top of the Essentials panel options. I also left-clicked the Advanced Settings tab options to bring up the histogram.
As expected, Luminar AI Adjustment has already done a pretty good job balancing the image. However, the highlights in the sky were still a bit bright so I reduced these to -15. Likewise, I wanted to lift the shadows a little more so raised the slider to 16.
As a final edit in this panel, I added a little s-curve to the histogram curve. An s-curve has the effect of pulling the histogram in at each end to tighten the whites and blacks in the image. It also lifts the mid-tones, and gives the image more punch. To do this you literally just left-click on the line. This adds a draggable edit dot.
Noise Reduction
Pushing the colour balance and tones in the image has the tendency to add noise to the image. I therefore typically take a look at any noise in the image as a final step in the post-processing workflow. I could see a little noise in the sky region, so I left-clicked the Denoise Tab and gives is two options.
Luminosity Denoise. The Luminosity noise slider targets greyscale noise pixels in your image I upped this to 28.
Color Denoise. The Color Denoise slider targets the coloured pixels in your image. I upped the this to 17.
Tip: It’s easy to get carried away with noise removal, but too much and your images become washed out and lacking detail.
Luminar Workflow – Conclusions
Our starting image had good composition but lacked contrast and colour balance. With a few simple edits in Luminar we have fixed that, and are left with a usable image.
If you don’t have a copy of Luminar AI, and are thinking of getting one, then check out their Luminar Website.
If you found this article useful, then please check out our other Articles & How To Guides.
Here are some other Luminar articles that may be of interest to you:
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Luminar Workflow – Post Processing
Compositing Sunrays with Luminar
Using Layers to Change Hair Colour in Portraits
Is Luminar Better Than Lightroom
Realistic Sky Replacement using Luminar
Luminar vs Lightroom a feature comparison
Luminar 4 Sky Replacement storing presets
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