What I Am Working On: Editing Small Details

I was working with this file:

ISO 800 f/11 1/30sec 21mm

In prior work sessions, I had worked with other similar files, creating a few different color interpretations. For this one, I had in mind a black and white version. Something a bit glamorous I was thinking (yup that is what I was thinking) for this photo. On the first layer, I did my basic edits, cropping and luminosity were two of them. Then I created a second layer and went searching for a look in Luminar that would closely match what I was thinking. I found it in the look called “Old Hollywood Glamor”.  Close to perfect but not exactly, so I created a third layer. This layer was really about details. Little changes that made a big difference. The first thing I did was to use the small detail enhancer and I bumped the slider up to 23. But really I only wanted those details in the petals of the snowdrops, so I used a brush to paint that in and leave the rest of the file untouched. Then I experimented with the vignette, a lot. I changed it’s location, size, and amount all several times.  Here is the final version:

ISO 800 f/11 1/30sec 21mm

If you are new to editing and reading this post, I’d like you to take away the idea that sometimes small things like a vignette can make big changes in your final photo. Vignette controls are often simple and easy to understand how to use. It makes for a good confidence builder as you are mastering the basics and then moving on to more complex editing.

Regardless of your ability and level of experience with editing, your thoughts on this version are welcome in the comment section below.

Cheers!

Added to Cee’s Flower of the Day. Picfair version is here.

Made with Luminar: St. Peter’s Basilica

Yesterday I posted this photo:

ISO 250 f/0 1/400sec 16mm

As a companion photo, I have this image:

ISO 1250 f/9 1/100sec 22mm

Both photos were edited in Luminar 3. The first photo has the look, Dreamy Film, applied at 65%. The second photo has the look, Documentary Film, applied at 100%.

The first photo was shot from the top of St. Peter’s Basilica and the second from the ground looking up to the Basilica in the skyline. Not only does where you chose to shoot your photo change perspective of the subject but it is my opinion that how you choose to edit it does as well.

Your thoughts on either image are welcome below. This post is a response to Lens-Artist Photo Challenge, Change Your Perspective.

Cheers!

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.

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: Memory

Decorating for Christmas was in full swing this past week. A favourite ornament of mine is this one that was a gift from my Mom:

ISO 800 f/8 1/13sec 55mm

For this edit, I was going for a nostalgic feel, something that film and vintage filters tend to express. In this case, the filter is called “vintage film” and was a good starting point:

ISO 800 f/8 1/13sec 55mm

Luminar Look applied, Vintage Film set at 78%.

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!

Added to Lens-Artists Challenge, Nostalgic.

Made with Luminar: Increasing the Chill

In a recent post featuring a photo from the Kilmainham Gaol Museum, I talked about the use of color to convey a mood. Today’s post is related, just approaching the edit in a different way.  Here is the original file:

ISO 3200 f/11 1/13sec 21mm

The edits made below were to make this already chilling jail seem colder:

ISO 3200 f/11 1/13sec 21mm

You can let me know in the comments section if you think this is successful.  The first edit was to crop, straighten, and remove the lens distortion from this image. I also dropped the highlights slider. That was all on the first layer. On layer 2 I’ve applied the LUT, Cool Blue B&W, and adjusted the amount to 62. On layer 3 the filter Matte look was applied with an amount of 42 and a fade of 20. Layer 4 has the Accent AI filter and a vignette.

This edit was inspired by the Len-Artist Challenge, Cold.

 

Cheers!

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.

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: Editing the Landscape

I do a lot of photo editing and it is easy to get into the habit of using the same filters every time.  In order to encourage myself to try different things, I watch a lot of tutorial videos on Youtube. I feel free to adopt some suggestions and leave others, but I think it is important to understand that most photo editing software has lots of options and so knowing what is even available is important.  One of the files I was working on the week was this photo, taken at Mt. Snowdon in Wales in 2016:

ISO 800 f/13 1/800sec 50mm

It was a fabulous view, even if this particular file doesn’t really seem to suggest that. I was also watching this tutorial on Youtube. It’s specific to editing a landscape in Luminar which is the software I am using, but I would say that the suggestions made can be applied in other editing software as well. One of the first suggestions was to use the dehaze slider. Now that happens to be a slider I almost never use but for this file, it seemed like a really good starting place. For this edit below, I then went on to use the sky filter, the foliage enhancer, the HSL panel for luminance, and the small details slider for sharpening. The final edit was this one:

ISO 800 f/13 1/800sec 50mm

I think this edit is a pretty close representation of what I saw that day. From there I decided to do a more creative edit. This particular edit has two additional layers, the first was the Luminar look, Overlook, added with modifications and the second layer is an AI filter and vignette. Here is that version:

ISO 800 f/13 1/800sec 50mm

I like it also but will readily admit it is not what I saw. The Picfair version of it is here.

So which version is better? which do you prefer? Feel free to let me know in the comments below.

Cheers!

Added to Tuesday Photo Challenge, Back Catalog.

 

Wordless Wednesday, One photo, Three interpretations

ISO 500 f/4.5 1/125sec 50mm

Picfair version here.

ISO 500 f/4.5 1/125sec 50mm

Picfair version here.

 

View this post on Instagram

Monday morning here I am. #orchid #flowers #mondaymotivation #madewithluminar

A post shared by Amy Maranto (@marantophotography) on Oct 7, 2019 at 12:23am PDT

Added to Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Filling the Frame and Cee’s Flower of the Day.

Cheers!

Made With Luminar: Snowdrops with Film Fade

This image is the first of a new series that I am starting on the blog. It is a result of a new workflow routine that I have been experimenting with. I have been trying out new filter combinations within the Luminar software that I am using and this series will be a way of documenting that.  If you are interested in filters, I’ll be naming the ones used. If you just like to look at photos, feel free to just enjoy these posts in that way.

ISO 400 f/11 55mm 1/100sec

Luminar Look applied, Expired L12, with an adjustment of the LUT mapping from 15 to 7.

Added to Cee’s Flower of the Day Challenge.

Picfair version here.

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. The text of these posts include the 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 other 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!

What I Am Working On: Morning Stretch

Fall has officially arrived. Feel free to disagree with me, but in my house, fall happens when school re-starts. One thing that fall brings for me is a shift back to a routine that accommodates school and related activities. It can does compete with my photography related pursuits. Call it creative tension. It happens that I do my best creative thinking early in the morning. So, I capitalize on that the best I can. Most mornings you will find me first thing in front of my photo files. Yesterday it was these two files:

ISO 2500 f/11 1/15sec 55mm

ISO 2500 f/11 1/15sec 55mm

This is a Bengal eagle-owl. The brown and golden tones on this bird are really beautiful. So, my first file I edited just to showcase that and kept the edits to a minimum. Here is how that turned out:

ISO 2500 f/11 1/15sec 55mm

I’ve cropped the image, increased clarity with the small details slider in Luminar 3, and added a vignette which I centered on the eagle’s eye. I was happy with the edit, but for the other file, I wanted to be a bit more creative while still keeping the eagle looking as it did in real life.  Here is what I came up with:

ISO 2500 f/11 1/15sec 55mm

For this edit, I added another layer that has what Luminar 3 calls a “look” basically each look is a grouping of various presets that you can apply and then modify if you like. In this case, I applied the look, then added a mask and erased the look off of the eagle.

I was pretty happy with the outcome of these two edits. Then the rest of my day started, early morning photography time was over. What happens next with these photos? Well, probably not a whole lot.  The second one did make an appearance on my Instagram:

View this post on Instagram

Needing a weekend like… #friyay #weekend #owl #bengaleagleowl

A post shared by Amy Maranto (@marantophotography) on Sep 5, 2019 at 10:29pm PDT

I’ll keep these files in part because I just think this is a pretty bird. To me, that’s a good enough reason. I also enjoy working with files like this to experiment with new editing ideas.

What do you think of the edits? is there a time of day where you feel like you are more creative? Feel free to comment below.

Cheers!

Added to Tuesday Photo Challenge, Fall.