Luminar 4.3.0. (7006) Update – First looks!

There are visible performance improvements in this update!

The changelog is as follows…

Luminar 4.3: Better performance and extra convenience

We’ve been working hard to bring you the best version of Luminar 4 to date. Take a look at what’s new in the 4.3 update.

FEATURES & IMPROVEMENTS

NEW Search tool

Located in the top menu bar in the Gallery view, Luminar’s Search tool allows you to effortlessly find images in your library and accelerates your editing workflow. Quickly and easily find images by name, folder, date, or extension for straightforward library management.

Performance improvements

Raw files now open faster (depending on your computer’s specifications), and all tools including AI Augmented Sky have been greatly optimized to work twice as fast – or three times as fast in the case of Accent AI.* As a result of decreased memory use, sliders are more responsive and there’s less lag when using multiple tools.

* Note: Speed improvements depend on computer hardware.

500px integration

In the Export menu there’s now an option to share your photos to the global 500px online photo sharing community. Conveniently add a title, description, and keywords – and even mark NSFW content – prior to uploading.

AI Augmented Sky improvements

If you want to deliver a cosmic feel to your photographs, check out the new Space Shuttle 1 object. Also, you can now easily flip and position sky objects.

Instant Looks previews

Just hover your mouse over a Look to see a live preview. You can also quickly return a photo to its unedited state with the new Reset Adjustments button.

Other improvements in Luminar 4.3

In addition to the changes mentioned above, you’ll find many other convenient improvements throughout the software. We hope you enjoy them!

Optimized Crop & Rotate workflow and faster access to this tool

Comfortable access to folders with custom skies in AI Sky Replacement and sky objects in AI Augmented Sky

Optimized masking tool workflow for pleasant and fast editing

Support for more cameras

Improved translations for all supported languages

Better Magic Mouse workflow

BUG FIXES

Thanks to feedback from Luminar Artists, we’ve greatly improved Luminar’s performance. We’ve fixed over 10 major bugs for Mac that could lead to crashes or unexpected results. You can find more information on these fixes here.

That’s all for now! We’re sending you lots of love, and we hope you enjoy this update. Please share the images you create with Luminar 4.3 on 500px and on social media. And don’t forget to use the hashtag #madewithluminars

Lightroom Classic 9 – Nik Collection 3 and Luminar 4 not showing up?

If you are like me, you probably store your presets along with the Lightroom catalog for an easier, automated backup.

Unfortunately, applications like Nik Plugins, ON1, Luminar and more will put their plugin data into the default Lightroom folders which are different from the catalog folder.

So, if you are not seeing all the edit options in Lightroom, then, it is a simple fix.

Just copy the following folder:

/Users/<Your Name>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/External Editor Presets

To

<Your Lightroom Catalog Folder>/Lightroom Settings/External Editor Presets

Just make sure Lightroom is not running when you copy the folder. That’s it. Done.

Let’s see how this is done in the following video.

Now when you start Lightroom, you will see all the edit options.

#Lightroom #Luminar #Nik #Post #Photography

Nikon D850 ISO 25600 – Usable with Topaz DeNoise?

I have been experimenting with my D850 for a few months now and I will share some of my findings regarding the ISO response for wildlife.

As one would expect, the ISO response is a lot better than compared to my earlier D7500. In fact, it turns out to be twice as good for my kind of shots.

Normally, I try to shoot as close as practically possible and try to get as much detail on the subjects given the light and exposure I can achieve.

Then, I tried to push the ISO to the limits which, one normally would not do. Today, I tried it at the highest native of 25600 but, in low light. Around 7 pm on a cloudy day.

The idea was to see what I could get from the D850 and use Topaz DeNoise to try and make the images usable.

Let’s see how this experiment went…

#photography #nikon #Topaz #noise #iso

Creating Textures in Photoshop 2020 and more…

Photoshop has built-in actions for a variety of functions that not many people that I know of actually use.

Not that I personally use those a lot, but, these built-in actions can save a huge amount of time if you need to do anything similar.

Before we look at the actions, there are a couple of points to keep in mind…

1. If you invoke Photoshop from Lightroom, you will get all kinds of errors and this is definitely a bug in the Lightroom-Photoshop workflow.
2. In case you get any errors while running these actions, just reset the settings for Photoshop by pressing CMD+OPT+SHIFT and then clicking on the PS icon to start PS. You will be prompted to reset the settings and just click okay on that.

Now that we are done with the issues, let us take a look at all the goodies we have already built into Photoshop.

#Photography #Lightroom #Wildlife #Photoshop #Nikon

Lightroom Auto-Mask in Photoshop? Yes, there is one!

Sometimes, when I already have made some edits in Photoshop and find that I missed out some small areas when using the auto-mask in Lightroom, it was a pain using a brush to fix it.

Turns out that Photoshop not only has an equivalent to the Lightroom auto-mask feature but, it is far more powerful in the way you can control how the auto-masking works.

So, without spending any more time on explaining this, let us open a raw file in Photoshop and see how this works…

Photography #Lightroom #Wildlife #Photoshop #Workflow

Luminar 4 – Why layers are practically useless

To my way of thinking, working with layers implies the ability to precisely mask areas or subjects and apply effects based on the selections or masks.

This is exactly what makes the Luminar 4 layers practically useless. The implementation of the masks/selections is similar to using a paintbrush app vs something like Photoshop.

In Luminar, you only have the fixed brush and gradient tools for the masking. There is no option of something like an edge/tonal detection auto-mask (as in LR) or the perfect brush in ON1 Photo Raw 2020.

This means that you cannot really do clean masking or selection of any subject. Since you cannot make a clean mask, the whole purpose of layers is defeated.

Although there is a luminosity mask in Luminar 4, the same issue makes it practically useless. There is no control over the luminosity mask as in LR (which is not great) or ON1 (which is far better than LR).

While Luminar 4 remains a choice over LR and ON1 for noise reduction and the AI-based image enhancement features, the layers can be ignored almost completely.

The only place you can use layers is when you have shots where you can apply one of the blending modes in Luminar 4 and achieve the effect you want. Other than that, forget layers in Luminar till they have better masking tools.

#Photography #Luminar #Post

Lightroom-Photoshop Image Compression Workflow Bug Fixed?

Finally, Fixed?

Not quite…Still 50% away for now!

Photography #Lightroom #Wildlife #Photoshop #Workflow

Lightroom 9.3 and Photoshop 21.2.0 Updates

These updates were released a few hours ago and we will take a brief look at both to figure out the changes.

Of course, the individual features and internal changes will follow in a later video…

Photography #Lightroom #Wildlife #Photoshop #Nikon

Nik Collection 3 – What I would like in the next update

Even after all these updates and features, the one thing that is still lacking in the Nik Collection, and some others as well, is the almost total lack of attention to the UI/UX and consistency of usage.

Let us look at the latest version of the Nik Collection, one by one, and see what I mean by this.

Inconsistent menus, zoom, pan, navigation, buttons and settings. No standard shortcuts apply where they could.

#Photography #Nik #NikCollection

White Backgrounds with Lightroom, ON1 Photo Raw and Photoshop

I have already shared how to create black backgrounds earlier, but, this one is going to be slightly different as we will also discuss a bit about the original exposure and which shots lend themselves well to a white background.

Do not confuse a white background with a high key image. High key images are those that are mostly light and white which is not true for just a white background image.

We will go through the process of making a white background in Lightroom, Photoshop (with and without Topaz Mask AI) as well as ON1 Photo Raw.

Yes, I have recently installed the trial version of Topaz Mask AI and so far, not very impressed as far as wildlife is concerned. Still learning more about it and experimenting…

This would also give us a reasonable comparison as to what one can do with each.

So…This is an image from my rooftop shooting today and this is what we will use in this session. Let’s start with this in Lightroom and then we will look at the same in Photoshop and finally in ON1.

First, the shot itself. As you can see from the base EXIF, this is overexposed specifically for a white background. I have avoided the wall behind the bird and it’s mostly the floor of the roof in the background. The angle of the shot is just over the bird to do this.

Similarly, when you have grey and/or overcast conditions, you can always look to overexpose a bit to create similar effects. Even low light conditions are good for this as long as the subject is close enough. In this case, the bird is just 6 meters away.

Now that we already have a dull background, let’s see how we can make this image pop a bit…

First, we apply my wildlife preset to this and tweak it a bit for a white background. Then, as with the black background, we use the adjustment brush and mask the background around the bird and then pull up all these sliders to make it white.

Do keep in mind that we can only do black or white in Lightroom, anything beyond that, you would have to look at some other application.

Okay, now, let’s remove the mask and try the same in Photoshop.
First the select subject.
Now, let’s try the Topaz Mask AI

Finally, let’s do the same in ON1 Photo Raw…We will use the local adjustments here with the perfect brush which is the equivalent of the auto-mask in Lightroom.

#Photography #Post #Topaz #Photoshop #ON1 #Lightroom