Developing a photo
The process of getting a photo to look natural or to match your recollection of a scene is developing the image. During this stage, the goal is to create an image whose tone and color appear natural and accurate. Luminar offers many powerful, easy-to-use tools to improve your image. Let’s develop a few images to help you get familiar with the new clutter-free user interface and the most common essential tools you will use.
Luminar 4 can be used in three different ways:
As a comprehensive photo library catalog to help organize and view your images.
As an image editing plug-in for other photo editing tools from Adobe and Apple
As a standalone image editing application
For this example, launch Luminar as a standalone application. You are welcome to download and use the sample image or choose your own image.
You can add a photo to Quick edit one of three ways.
Click the Add Button Menu to open Images for Quick Edit
File > Open Images for Quick Edit
Press Cmd+O (MacOS) or Ctrl+O (WIndows)
A system dialog box appears. Navigate to where the image(s) you want to edit is located.
Select the image you want to edit. (You can select multiple photos using modifier keys like Shift or Cmd/Ctrl.)
Click Open. If Filmstrip is enabled, images appear on the Filmstrip side panel. If multiple images are selected the first image selected will be opened in the Edit View window ready to edit.
Choose an image you want to develop. The Essential Tools are the main tools to use to quickly edit an image.
Sample of a Quick Edit
Step 1: AI Accent. With the help of artificial intelligence, AI Accent analyzes the photo and automatically improves the color, details, tone, and depth of the image. These are adjustments you normally do on your own, but it’s faster using AI Accent.
Step 2: AI Structure. AI Structure boosts hidden details and improves local contrast where needed. It’s content-aware, automatically identifies objects like people and faces, skin, skies and improves them. Notice how it adjusts the landscape without overprocessing the cowboys and horses. Adjust Boost to intensify the effect.
Step 3: Vignette. A Vignette darkens or lightens the edges of your image. This is an old technique to emphasize the accents on photos. The effect typically leaves the central area unaffected while the edges are shaded or lightened. Luminar goes further by letting you place the center point of the vignette anywhere in the image you like. A good vignette is hardly noticeable but draws the viewer’s attention to an element in the scene. Turing the tool on and off will help you see the difference.
Step 4: Exporting the image. Edits made to an image are stored in Luminar and are not applied to the image until it’s exported. This non-destructive workflow means we can return anytime and make additional changes or modify the changes already made. Click the Export button on the Top Toolbar to apply the changes and for additional options to export the image for printing or sharing on social media.
Reviewing before and after image
