Made with Luminar: Starting Point

I think it is very helpful to think of photo editing presets as a starting point. This image is a case in point:

ISO 25 f/2.2 1/962sec 4.2mm

After a few basic edits for the original file, I applied the Luminar Look, Intersection. I liked it but it wasn’t interpreting the scene the way I had intended. I thought it was a good starting point though. By changing some of the settings within the preset I arrived here, a photo that is fairly dark with streaks of light. That was my vision for this image. I’m using the little bit of light to represent hope in what is a pretty dark time. This photo was shot on a Saturday night at a time where it is usually loud and bustling. The virus has changed the vibe a lot.

Your thoughts are welcome below and this post has been added to A Photo a Week Challenge, Light and Dark.

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!

Made with Luminar: Dublin Black and White

Today I was working with this image shot in Dublin in February:

ISO 800 f/11 1/250sec 28mm

I went with a black and white interpretation:

ISO 800 f/11 1/250sec 28mm

Luminar Look applied:

On one layer, Architecture Smooth, filter left at 100%. On another layer, Aerial Dreamy, with the radiance slider dropped and vignette moved and edited. This filter also left at 100%

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!

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: A Place in my Heart

It’s been almost two years since I was in Tanzania and I still find it difficult to exactly express why this trip was so important to me. Even harder is to distil that thought into a single image. I have many files from that trip that I have chosen to keep but have not been through the editing process yet. The lens artist photo challenge for this week prompted me to go through them and this is the image that floated to the top of my imagination:

ISO 400 f/18 1/200sec 73mm

The vast landscape that was teeming with life. The humor of being caught in a wildlife traffic jam. The color of the landscape itself. These are all things that appeal to me in this image. For this particular image though, it is the inquisitive zebra that is the story. My edits reflect this. The crop and placement of the vignette are the most simplistic edits I have applied to accomplish this. The other technique I used was after applying a filter that gave this photo a bit of a vintage memory look, I used a brush at 20% to remove the filter a bit on the zebras in the foreground.  The final edit is this:

ISO 400 f/18 1/200sec 73mm

What do you think of this edit? Feel free to leave a comment in the comment section. Because this was also a part of my Made with Luminar series, the next part of this post will spell out some of the details of the edit.

This photo was created for and added in response to the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Pick a Place. The Picfair version is 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.

Luminar Look applied: Past Days. The texture within the look was reduced and the filter is set to 74% application. A mask was added and the filter was brushed out with a 20% opacity brush over the zebras in the foreground. A few more spots of the texture in the sky were erased.

Cheers!

Made With Luminar: Snowdrops in the Morning

ISO 400 f/11 1/160sec 55mm

Luminar Look applied, Morning fog, filter lowered to 70% and brushed out completely in parts of the flower.

Picfair version here.

Added to Cee’s Flower of the Day challenge.

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: Building Blocks

Sometimes my process of creating an image can involve many steps. The first can be as simple as what is going on around me or what I might be looking at online. For this particular image, I pulled it out to work on because, as you will see in the link at the bottom, Tuesday’s Photo Challenge is stone. The photo Frank used in the prompt was shot in Ireland. So, I thought it would be interesting to also create a stone image from Ireland. Here is the image I started with:

ISO 3200 f/11 1/80sec 18mm

I liked this image because of the story I saw in it, and went about coaxing what I saw in it, out of it. What follows is a series of screenshots of the various stages of construction. First is the overall general edits:

Shows the first basic steps.

I adjusted the whites (up) and blacks (down), boosted the luminance of the reds, oranges, and yellows, then I sharpened a bit by increasing the small details.

The next layer, I labelled “Desaturation layer”. On this layer, using the HSL sliders, I removed the following colors: green, aqua, blue, purple, and magenta:

Where I remove most of the color.

For the final layer, I added my custom made look called “Amy Black and White Pinhole”:

In a minute I would add back in a hint of color.

I have a blog post about creating a saving a custom look here. Then I set about editing that look for this particular photograph, and the end result is this:

ISO 3200 f/11 1/80sec 18mm

I did things like adding the saturation of the reds and yellows back in. I’ve also tweaked the amount of the “Orton Effect” filter and set the vignette in a better way for this particular scene.

Writing out these steps has been an interesting experience as well. It has taken longer to do that then execute the steps, or at least it felt longer. Creating the image, in this case, was pretty simple because the final edit was something that I had already seen in my mind and I had a fairly decent idea of how I was going to go about getting it to emerge.

Thanks for reading this far. Feel free to leave and comment below. This photo has been added to Tuesday Photo Challenge, Stone. If you are like me and enjoy looking at stones, there is a camera installed at Stonehenge, I find it calming and visit a few times a week. The photo from this post was taken at Kilmainham Gaol, a prison in Dublin that is well worth touring.

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: Mixing it Up

Sometimes it is fun to try a different approach to your photo editing. It can be a way to create a unique image of a familiar place. This was one of my photos of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Athens:

ISO 800 10mm f/22 1/200 sec

It’s a very imposing structure and a popular photo spot. For frequent readers of this blog, you may notice the little church tucked away on the right-hand side? That’s the church you saw in my recent post about creating a vintage photo look.

When I took this particular photo I was interested in two things. First, the story that I see of the man walking past and looking up at the cathedral. Second, what I think he is looking at, the mosaic in the facade. These are the things I want to emphasise in my final photo.

This is the outcome of my edit:

ISO 800 10mm f/22 1/200 sec

My first edits were done while the file was still in full color. I cropped the image and got rid of the security camera on the left.  I boosted the details and also the luminosity of the image. Then on a second layer, I converted the image to black and white. I added a mask and used the brush tool to reveal the color of the mosaic.  Luminar 3 has a filter called “top/bottom lighting” and that is what I used next instead of a vignette. The filter allows you to pick a focus point. I put that point on the man who is looking up. You can also change the axis of the filter, I tilted it on an angle; then pulled the top portion up towards the mosaic. From there I made the top darker and the bottom lighter using the sliders provided. I think this helps the image tell the story I was after, but what do you think? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

Added to Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Unique.

 

 

What I Am Working On: Vintage Photo Look

I shoot using a digital camera and have now for years. Recently I inherited a film camera and have got it up and running, my first roll of film partially shot. I’m enjoying it, but doubt I would ever fully make the transition back to film.  I love the look of film photography though, so it is something that I edit my digital files for frequently. I often use presets as a point of starting to create a film look, but don’t have a particular one that’s a favorite. So, I decided to try my hand at making my own preset. First I found some instructions on what filters to use to create the look. The detailed instructions I used are in this video. I didn’t follow all the settings exactly, but I think that video is a really good starting point, including some basic explanations, that make it easy to follow. I experimented using this file:

ISO 500 10mm f/22 1/125 sec

This is the Odeon of Athens, part of the Acropolis complex, it is in active use today. My final vintage look file turned out like this:

ISO 500 10mm f/22 1/125 sec

I was really pleased with the settings that I used, so I saved them as a preset. The video gives instructions for Luminar, but really it would apply to most photo editing software. Settings you are changing to create this look include things like saturation and curves, standard things found in most software.

Do you like vintage photo looks? Have a favorite technique? feel free to share your thoughts below. If you are interested in film photography, I would recommend Down the Road, it’s a combination of camera reviews, film photography related discussion, and personal essays. Extensive film photography knowledge is not necessary to enjoy the blog and Jim is good about responding to comments.

Cheers!

Added to A Photo A Week Challenge, Urban.

What I Am Working On: Editing the Sky

When you live in England, chances are you are going to want to edit the sky in your images. I was working on some images shot in the Peak District including this file:

ISO 800 10mm f/20 1/200sec

There is a lot about this landscape image that appeals to me. It’s going to need some help to pop a bit though. About a week prior I had watched a video that included a bit about sky enhancements in Luminar. The technique is explained starting at 15:41. I liked the tip as a starting point, and so I modified it a bit to suit me. First, I edited the photo in general, I’ve boosted its luminance, boosted the details, and adjusted the white balance. Then I watched the video bit again. Here is my final edit:

ISO 800 10mm f/20 1/200sec

I liked the sky tips from this video enough to create a workspace for it in Luminar, here is a screenshot of what that looks like:

The filters applied to the sky

The video does not mention making the sky edit its own separate layer, but that is what I have done here. By creating this set of filters as a workspace, I can add a new layer and then set this workspace for this layer. This allows for the flexibility of just modifying these edits, instead of trying to manipulate the whole image.

Do you like the final result? Have questions about what I chose to do? Feel free to comment below.

Cheers!

Final edit added to my Picfair portfolio here.