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.

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: 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.

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.

What I Am Working On: Fiddling

This photo was taken at Menin Gate, Ypres Belgium.  It’s a massive WWI monument that has a Last Post ceremony every evening at 8pm:

ISO 500 18mm f/11 1/100 sec

Being that it was June, there was quite a bit of natural light after the ceremony. The light gave the monument a nice glow. I liked the color version of this photo, but was interested this week in creating a black and white version:

ISO 500 18mm f/11 1/100 sec

This edit has two layers to achieve the mix of black and white with red. On the black and white layer, I focused on bringing out detail like the names on the wall. On the layer where I was adding the red color back in, I also dropped the luminance slider of the reds, creating a muted tone that worked with the black and white of the rest of the image. Getting the colors and the black and white layers to where I wanted them and then blending them took quite a bit of fiddling. No formulas or rules here, just a do I like this better? how about now? kind of approach.

Do you like this particular interpretation? This is definitely a shot that I will be working with again to create a color version as well. Your comments are welcome below.

Cheers!

Added to Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge, Flower of Any Kind.

What I Am Working On: It Just Might Suprise You

A lot of my photography is outdoors with the natural world as subject matter. As a result, a lot of my photos are color images. In my mind, color is really the default. When I took this image, I was thinking in color:

ISO 400 18mm f/11 1/1000sec

This recent shot was taken on a beautiful morning along the South West Coast Path. It was a color and light filled morning, but when I went to edit this photo, I was only partially happy with the results. So, I wandered off and did some other things, kind of thinking over this edit in the back of my mind. A bit later, the back of my mind suggested I try a black and white edit.  So I did:

ISO 400 18mm f/11 1/1000sec

This is the result, which I am much happier with. When I edit a photo into black and white, the first step is usually to bump up the contrast and saturation. It makes for a terrible color image, but it usually then makes for a more interesting black and white image. Having done that, I then made my black and white edits. This has a yellow filter applied. I then applied a filter to soften the image a bit but removed it as I think the texture in the image is an interesting component, and one that I wanted to leave in.

Nature images are most often presented in color, what do you think of this in black and white? your comments are welcome below.

Cheers!

Added to Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge, Vanishing Point and Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Creativity.

What I Am Working On: How to Lose My Work

I think I am going to file this too: never do this again.

It all started out well enough, I was looking at this file, taken at Hadrian’s Wall:

ISO 800 22mm f/14 1/800sec

It’s nice but needs a bit of work. So, from that I created this version:

ISO 800 22mm f/14 1/800sec

Before dealing with the exposure, I applied a crop. I’ve used the rule of thirds overlay for this because, as I suspected, there was a stronger composition lurking within the original file. Then I considered the exposure; this image was created using the shadows slider to lighten the shadows, then I moved the black and white sliders around until the image looked good to me. I sharpened the photo by increasing the details sliders just a bit.

Then I created this black and white version:

ISO 800 22mm f/14 1/800sec

That is now lost for all time. I state in a very dramatic fashion.  Here’s what I did wrong. After making this version and saving off a blog-sized copy, I went back in the history to the color version and did the steps to add a watermark. I saved off my blog-sized copy of that. Then when I dropped the history tab again to go back to the black and white version, all that history was gone.

Two things, somehow that seems like that shouldn’t have happened and at the same time, I feel like I should have known that would happen. So yes, I should have saved a full-size version of that black and white prior to mucking about in the history. In Luminar, the way I am doing that (when I am doing things properly) is to export it to my hard drive labeled as a version. In my formatting on my drive, this version would have been: file number + Lum + BW.

Instead, I have just a smaller, blog version. So, I am writing this cautionary blog post to remind myself to do it differently next time.

What do you think of my color version versus the black and white? I have to say that I personally prefer the color, in my opinion, there is a bit of something that just didn’t translate into the black and white. Feel free to leave a comment below.

My Instagram version is here:

View this post on Instagram

Hadrian’s Wall near Haltwhistle. I’m thinking about wide open spaces this morning. #thingsiseewhilewalking #mondaymotivation #madewithluminar #hadrianswall

A post shared by Amy Maranto (@marantophotography) on Mar 11, 2019 at 1:44am PDT

Cheers!

Color version is on Picfair.

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