Made with Luminar: A River Runs Through It

This photo, taken from the grounds of Chateau Gaillard, shows the Seine River in the French countryside. It was taken with my iPhone:

ISO 25 f/2.2 1/538sec 4.2mm

A beautiful spot on a beautiful day. I kept the edits on this photo pretty basic:

ISO 25 f/2.2 1/538sec 4.2mm

I did a small crop and other basics with whites and blacks and the detail enhancer slider. I’ve then added the Luminar Look, Sleepy Forest and set that to 58%. Your thoughts on the edit are welcome below and this post has been added to the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, A River Runs Through It.

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.

On the Bank of the River Seine

This post started with a visit to Chateau Gaillard, which is a castle that was built by Richard the Lionheart and sits on the bank of the River Seine in Normandy, France. As you can see from this original shot, it was a beautiful day:

ISO 200 22mm f/16 1/200sec

My first edit was this one:

ISO 200 22mm f/16 1/200sec

I was initially happy with it, but decided last week to take another shot at it and here is the second edit:

ISO 200 22mm f/16 1/200sec

The first change, was a minor one to the cropping. The second was to change the tones just a bit before applying other boosting edits like changes to the sky and sharpening. None of these second edits were massively different than the first, but overall I like the second version better.

What do you think, do you prefer one version over the other or are these similar enough that you don’t have a particular preference? Your thoughts and comments are welcome below.

Cheers!

Added to Tuesday Photo Challenge, Bank.

Older Picfair version here, newer one here.

What I Am Working On: Creating a Watermark, Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of my journey into the world of creating a watermark in Luminar 3. Part 1 is here. The shot I am using for this post was taken at Château-Gaillard and that is the River Seine that is snaking through the photograph:

ISO 200 f/16 1/160 70mm

As you can see, I have managed to add a watermark. I reported in my last post that I was having trouble getting the curves slider in Luminar to work. When I contacted Luminar about the problem, they requested that I send a video of what steps I was taking. Turns out I was attempting to manipulate the curves slider in the wrong way.

Curves looks like this:

Screen shot of Curves

I was attempting to move the orange dots, so that it would look like this:

Screen shot of what I wanted.

This step is what makes the lettering that says “Maranto Photography” white.  I was attempting to pull the orange dots from left to right when instead they needed to go up and down. Luminar was pretty fast about getting back to me once I submitted the files, less than a day. So I was happy with their customer service.

Here is the original, unedited, file:

ISO 200 f/16 1/160 70mm

Nice that the fix was that easy. Wish it had occurred to me to try it this slightly different way, but oh well! Your thoughts on the photo, its edits or the watermark are welcome below.

Cheers!

A Photo a Week, The Great Outdoors.

Picfair version here.