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3 Landscape Walkthrough

Most of this book covers how to use Luminar’s tools to improve your photos. Before we get into the specifcs, though, I want to walk through a few images to help you get a sense of how to edit from start to finish. That involves making a realistic appraisal of what a photo needs and choosing which tools to use. Sometimes it can be just a few slider adjustments, while other situations call for adjustment layers, masks, and creative choices.

If you’re new to Luminar or photo editing in general, some of what I discuss may be unfamiliar. Don’t worry: everything is discussed in more detail throughout the rest of the book. If you’re an experienced editor, this chapter may reveal more about Luminar’s workflows.

I’ve chosen a landscape photo for this section because editing landscapes includes a lot of the techniques that are useful for editing any type of photo: working with tone, color, composition, and occasional effects.

Keep in mind that these steps are how I approached the editing process. With a couple of exceptions, you can work on different aspects of the image in any order (such as color before tone), depending on what the photo needs.

Evaluate the Photo

The first step, after the image is in Luminar, is to figure out what needs improvement. The photo may have obvious shortcomings, such as being underexposed or having an uneven horizon. Or, you may have a vision of the end result and need to work your way to that result. Identifying these issues leads you on the editing path.

In the case of this photo (Figure 3-1), several things need work:

 •The image is underexposed. Not only does it appear dark overall, I can see the tones in the histogram are weighted toward the left edge. What little there is at the right side doesn’t reach the far edge, indicating that none of the tones are close to full brightness.

 •The photo has a blue color cast due to the rainy, overcast day during which it was shot. This is actually a little surprising because I set my camera’s White Balance setting to cloudy (revealed in the Info panel), which is designed to warm up cool scenes. However, I’d also attached a neutral-density filter to the lens to darken the overall scene and let me take a long exposure that makes the waterfall look smooth; the filter has made the image more blue.

 •I shot the image in September, and although it was too early for the explosion of fall color, you can see that some of the leaves have begun to change from green to orange. I want to bring more attention to the foliage.

 •Compositionally, I like how the image is framed, but the cliff rocks at the bottom of the photo pull my eyes away from the bridge. Cropping them out removes some of the lovely water, so I’ll minimize those areas in other ways.

 •To me, the person standing on the bridge makes this photo more interesting. It conveys the sense of scale of the waterfalls and draws the viewer’s eye. However, I can also picture a version with no person, so we’ll try to erase them from the scene.

FIGURE 3-1: The original, unedited raw image.

That sounds like a lot! Let’s see how to tackle these steps.

Get Luminar’s Opinion

Nearly every photo I bring into Luminar starts with a generous helping of the AI Accent slider in the AI Enhance tool. Sometimes the results are exactly what I want and I’m done with that image. More often it gives me an idea of how to proceed.

Although the AI Enhance controls affect things like exposure and color, those controls (in the Light and Color tools) are not affected. I’ll sometimes use AI Accent at around 50 to start, and then make further adjustments to the image in other tools.

In this case, AI Accent has improved the overall exposure, but the color is still off and the orange leaves are still drab (Figure 3-2). Therefore, I’ll click the tool’s Reset button () to undo the edit.

FIGURE 3-2: Pushing the AI Accent slider almost to its maximum setting addressed only a few of my issues.

Adjust Exposure

To overcome the darkness, run to the Light. I want to increase the exposure overall, but simply blasting the image with the Exposure control can often be heavy-handed. There’s also a danger in blowing out the white highlights in the waterfalls, so I’ll take a more measured approach that yields better results.

First, in the histogram, I click the top-right triangle that appears when I move my pointer over it to turn on the white clipping indicator; that will tell me when areas are overexposed.

Next, I’ll push the Exposure slider to bring up the overall exposure. Some of the whites get clipped (marked in red), but that’s OK for now (Figure 3-3).

FIGURE 3-3: Increasing the Exposure value brightens everything, which is often too much.

The image is brighter, but it’s also washed out. As you can see from the histogram, the left side is completely bare, revealing a lack of truly dark pixels. I’ve brightened all the midtones, but now there’s a lack of contrast.

I could increase the Smart Contrast slider, but it affects the current range of tones, not the overall distribution; I’d see more contrast, yes, but that gap at the left edge of the histogram is still there. Instead, I’ll click the Advanced Settings button and then drop the Blacks value until the histogram tones stretch almost all the way to the left (Figure 3-4).

FIGURE 3-4: Decreasing the Blacks value significantly balances out the histogram.

The histogram is now nicely stretched across the full range of tones, though I’d like to see more brightness in the midtones. For that, I prefer to increase the Whites slider and nudge the Shadows slider, although that pushes the exposure too far to the right. To compensate, I’ll back off on Exposure.

As you can see, working with these controls is always a balancing act. I like to illuminate a scene with Whites versus Exposure because the adjustments are more targeted; Exposure is really a big light cannon.

At this point, I can’t ignore the giant streaks of red indicating blown out pixels, so it’s time to drag the Highlights slider to the left until the clipping indications disappear (Figure 3-5).

FIGURE 3-5: Reduce Highlights to prevent clipping at the high end.

Adjust White Balance

It’s time to fix the white balance and warm up this image. Luminar has a few different tools that could work, such as the Remove Color Cast slider in the Color tool, but the White Balance controls in the Light tool will do just fine.

White balance is especially important in a photo like this where water is a central feature, because off-color water streams are a fast indication that the color temperature of the image is wrong. To make the adjustment, I’ll select the White Balance eyedropper and then click a neutral gray—in this case, a spot on the bridge (Figure 3-6). I can make the same adjustment by moving the Temperature slider a bit, but the eyedropper gets me close to a more appealing color temperature.

FIGURE 3-6: That’s more like it: warming up the white balance removes the blue tint.

Since I’m looking for a warm, colorful appearance for this photo, I’ll increase the Temperature value a bit higher (8844) than what the eyedropper picked (7732). That introduces a slight color cast on the water, but I’ll deal with that later.

Punch Up the Foliage

With the exposure and white balance adjusted, it’s time to get creative. To make those almost-orange leaves more dynamic, I’ll open the Color tool. It may be tempting to increase the Saturation and Vibrance sliders—MORE COLOR!—but the greens are already pretty prominent. So, let’s take a more tactical approach by clicking the Advanced Settings button to reveal the individual color controls.

When I select the orange button and increase the Saturation slider, and also decrease the Hue slider slightly, the drab, pale-orange leaves become more like what I have in my mind. I’ll also tweak the yellow channel, increasing Luminance and Saturation to draw out more color from amidst the green (Figure 3-7