Made With Luminar: Dolbadarn Castle

This shot of Dolbadarn Castle was taken on August 18, 2016.

ISO 500 f/11 1/100sec 50mm

Usually, with photos included in this series, I show the original file. I opted not to with this post because one of my children was in the original file. Other first adjustments included white balance and an increase in the luminance of the greens and yellows in the image. I did also crop this image. The Luminar Look, Past Days, was added at 100% with adjustments to the split toning and texture amount filters.

Added to Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge, Decayed or Rusty.

 

The Made with Luminar Series

This image is part of a project I am calling Made with Luminar. What the images in this series have in common is the software used to edit them, Luminar 3. As with my usual blog posts particulars of the camera settings can be found in the caption below the image. I’ll then explain what other filters and edits have been applied, often mentioning what layer and therefore order that they were applied. The text of these posts includes any Luminar “Looks” that have been applied to the photo. Each look is a series of presets that are applied to the photo. Where applicable I will mention what changes I have made to any of the looks. A full explanation of looks is available here on their website, https://skylum.com/luminar/user-guides/chapter-14-working-with-luminar-looks

You can assume basic edits have been applied. My most common edits are cropping, detail enhancement, and vignette. Specific questions or thoughts on the image are welcome in the comment section below.

Cheers!

Wordless Wednesday: Serengeti

ISO 25 f/2.2 1/2198 4.2mm

ISO 25 f/2.2 1/2198 4.2mm

Added also to Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge, Fences and Gates.

Cheers!

What I Am Working On: Lots of Layers

I have a small Canon Powershot that is a bit older and doesn’t work as well as it once did. One of the situations where I still find myself using it is outings on rainy days. So, it is the camera I had with me on a visit to Blenheim Palace:

ISO 200 f/2.7 1/125sec 4.3mm

I liked the rain on the window and the table and chairs just waiting to be used. When I shot this photo though, I thought that I would really like to see it in black and white. So, that is what I have created:

ISO 200 f/2.7 1/125sec 4.3mm

Now while I was sure I wanted to make a black and white version, what I wasn’t settled on in advance was what type and style, would it be stark or dreamy? tint or not? Because I was very aware of my indecision, I made my various edits on different layers. This image has five layers: 1. Basic edits including luminance and sharpening. 2. The crop. 3. A black and white filter. 4. My custom vintage look filter. 5. Vignette.

I think a fair question, particularly if you are new to using layers, would be why bother putting things on separate layers? Two reasons, first it makes single effects easier to control. I could tweak the vignette confident I wasn’t disturbing the other edits for example. The second reason is that when you are working with layers, each layer has it’s own eyeball icon, making it easy to hide the effect of the layer. That makes it easy to compare your edit with different combinations of edits applied. For example, once I had applied layer 4, I could turn off layer 3 and see how I liked the edit that way. So, the short answer is flexibility, that is what working with multiple layers get you.

An additional tip? Name your layers. In Luminar 3 you do that by double-clicking the text and typing in what you would like. In this case, layer 3 was called “B&W” and layer 4 “Custom vintage”. Doing this helps you keep straight what edits are on what layer.

Your questions and comments are welcome below.

Cheers!

Added to Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge, Table & Chairs.

Made With Luminar: Budapest Black and White

From the Danube, I took this photo of the Liberty Statue:

ISO 400 f/8 55mm 0.2sec

I do really like the colors and light in the evening sky but I was curious to try a black and white edit:

ISO 400 f/8 55mm 0.2sec

To achieve this edit I applied the Luminar Look, Dramatic Landscapes B&W, then made additional adjustments to the whites, blacks, and shadows sliders. You can leave a comment below about this particular edit. I do think I will be making a color version eventually as well.

Cheers!

Added to Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge, Clouds.

The Made with Luminar Series

This image is part of a project I am calling Made with Luminar. What the images in this series have in common is the software used to edit them, Luminar 3. As with my usual blog posts particulars of the camera settings can be found in the caption below the image. I’ll then explain what other filters and edits have been applied, often mentioning what layer and therefore order that they were applied. The text of these posts include any Luminar “Looks” that have been applied to the photo. Each look is a series of presets that are applied to the photo. Where applicable I will mention what changes I have made to any of the looks. A full explanation of looks is available here on their website, https://skylum.com/luminar/user-guides/chapter-14-working-with-luminar-looks

You can assume basic edits have been applied. My most common edits are cropping, detail enhancement, and vignette. Specific questions or thoughts on the image are welcome in the comment section below.

What I Am Working On: Using the History Button

It’s fair to say that when you are editing photos, sometimes you like the potential of an earlier version of your work, and you would like to revisit it. That is when the history button can be a very useful feature of editing software. This morning I was working with this file:

ISO 250 f/11 55mm 1/15sec

I wanted to make a black and white version. After a few basic edits including a crop, white balance adjustment and luminance boosting, I added a custom look I had created in Luminar. After a few more tweaks, I had this black and white edit:

ISO 250 f/11 55mm 1/15sec

I like this edit so I saved a version of it. But is also true that at one point in the editing process, I liked another idea and I wanted to revisit it.

The other idea came at a point in the edit after I had applied my black and white look but before making the final adjustments. At that point I had experimented with the slider that adjusts the amount of the look applied to the photo. Because I was applying a black and white look to a color photo, the result was that the color version begins to show through. I ended up really liking that effect. So after I had saved my version above I went back in the history to where I had been working with that slider and started reworking the edit from that point. Here is the resulting color edit:

ISO 250 f/11 55mm 1/15sec

This ability to go back through your history and rework from a certain point can be very helpful if you are interested in creating more than one version.

Your thoughts and comments on the edits are welcome in the comment section below.

Cheers!

Added to Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge, Any Kind of Geometric Shape and Cee’s Flower of the Day.

Made with Luminar: Geroldsau Waterfall

Located in the Black Forest region of Germany, the Geroldsau Waterfall is charming:

ISO 320 f/11 55mm 1/25 sec

I was interested in creating a black and white version of this image:

ISO 320 f/11 55mm 1/25 sec

It has the Luminar Look, Dreamy Landscape, applied with additional adjustments to the shadows, soft glow, and vignette sliders.

The Made with Luminar Series

This image is part of a project I am calling Made with Luminar. What the images in this series have in common is the software used to edit them, Luminar 3. As with my usual blog posts particulars of the camera settings can be found in the caption below the image. I’ll then explain what other filters and edits have been applied, often mentioning what layer and therefore order that they were applied. The text of these posts includes any Luminar “Looks” that have been applied to the photo. Each look is a series of presets that are applied to the photo. Where applicable I will mention what changes I have made to any of the looks. A full explanation of looks is available here on their website, https://skylum.com/luminar/user-guides/chapter-14-working-with-luminar-looks

You can assume basic edits have been applied. My most common edits are cropping, detail enhancement, and vignette. Specific questions or thoughts on the image are welcome in the comment section below.

Added to Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge, Moving Water. Its square companion post is here.

Cheers!

 

What I Am Working On: Working With Color

When it comes to working with color within an image, there are a lot of ways you can approach it. This week I was editing this image, shot at Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin:

ISO 400 f/2.2 1/17sec 4.2mm

Shot with my iPhone, this is an image I like a lot and think that there would be many potential editing possibilities. For this particular editing session, my interest was in the red tones in the image, which have a warm almost salmon tone to them. Here is my edit:

ISO 400 f/2.2 1/17sec 4.2mm

To get this look, I dropped all the saturation sliders except for red, that I left at 0. Then I moved the red luminance slider to 60. It’s a matter of personal preference, but I often find I prefer working with luminance rather than saturation when giving a particular color a boost. This edit has been cropped slightly to straighten it. I’ve increased the small details slightly, in place of sharpening, and added a “soft glow” filter set to 18.

So, that is what I am calling my red edit. What do you think of the result? feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

Added to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, Red and Cee’s Black & White Challenge, Starting with the Letters K or L.

What I Am Working On: Technical Difficulties, Please Stand By

Sometimes photo editing is really difficult and I’m not even talking about the actual editing, I’m talking about the editing software itself. I’ve crashed out a few times on a few different software applications, but this time, it’s Luminar 3. I’m back in business again. I’ve learned a few things and had a few things I already knew reinforced. The most important thing that I already knew is to backup your work. Please do this. Because I do this, my Luminar 3 crash was not utterly devastating. When considering how to approach your backup, I would advise you whatever software you are using, to make a high-quality jpeg version of your final edit. This is in addition to the backup of your drives that you are already doing.

What I learned is that Luminar 3 is not currently capable of handling a large library. In my subsequent research on how to rethink my approach, I found this Matt Suess video to be a really good starting point. In the video, he offers a few options of how to work around this library issue. I would recommend watching it and then considering which variation you might want to apply or modify for your library set-up.

This crash was a complete drain on my creative energy and time in general. I keep track of the time I spend on photography and this past week, this crash took 11 hours of work time to fix. This does not include the backups I ran of my drives. Hopefully, the fix will hold. As of the writing of this post, it seems solid.

This photo is my first edit under my newly revamped set-up:

ISO 200 f/11 1/200sec 55mm

This photo has a total of four layers. The first was some basic edits, a crop and details enhancer. The second was a Luminar Look applied called Camden Fade. It is an analogue film style look. The third was my black and white conversion layer. I applied a blue filter within the black and white conversion and then increased the yellow luminance. The fourth layer includes a filter called the Orton effect and a vignette.

The original file is this one:

ISO 200 f/11 1/200sec 55mm

This is a file that I very possibly will be revisiting. I like the black and white edit, but I also think the color edit alternatives here are interesting.

Do you like this particular interpretation? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

Added to Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge, Bricks or Stone and Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Monochrome.

What I Am Working On: Using a Brush

Among my files that I am working on this week is this one:

ISO 1000 f/11 1/25sec 55mm

This qualifies as a snapshot. I had just a moment to catch the “who me?” expression on the bird’s face just as he was standing near the warning sign. What I wanted to do was make the story more front and center. A crop was an obvious choice. I thought also I might like this in black and white.  The edit is here:

ISO 1000 f/11 1/25sec 55mm

I’ll call this a black and white with a cheat. I did a layer with my initial edits like the crop and some clarity. Then I did another layer with a the black and white edits. This particular black and white is done with a yellow filter, that ended up being the interpretation that I prefered. Then I added a final layer. I took a brush to that layer, made it the size of the bird’s eye and set the opacity to 35%. I was erasing just a bit off the black and white layer, just on the eye. So the final edit has a hint of color to the bird’s eye. I use the brush fairly regularly in my editing process. I don’t always think about setting its opacity, but that is a small but impactful way to make use of the tool. My final edit was a vignette that is centered on the eye, further accenting the look the bird was giving me.

What do you think of the final image, does the story pop more? Do you like the touch of color? Feel free to comment below.

Cheers!

Added to Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge, Signs.

 

Wordless Wednesday, Berlin Wall

ISO 40 4.2mm f/2.2 1/33

Cheers!

Added to Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Detail, Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge, Shadows, and One Word Sunday, Change.