Missouri Sunrise ... revisited.
This is a pic I grabbed on the way to visit with OBG so I could take shots of the solar eclipse last August '17... I just shot it with my smartphone since I was driving and didn't have a good place to pull over to get my DSLR out for a better quality shot.
Typically, on the majority of my pics, when I'm shooting in RAW format ( this one wasn't raw, it was originally processed in camera like any JPG is )... I only process a shot in order to get it to the way it looks naturally ( much like what in camera processing is doing, only I get more control with a RAW image ). I posted the original some time back... this one... I decided to play with it some with a new RAW photo editor/processor I got called Luminar that is just now being developed for Windows computer after being pretty successful on the Mac side of things.
Anyway... because I got the new software, I wanted to play around with it to see what it can do and if I liked it etc. The biggest improvement of this software vs Lightroom ( LR ) is the ability to use layers for the processing, editing and enhancing you may be doing. That alone makes it really handy to control what you are doing to a pic and go back and make changes to what you've already done. It doesn't have some features that LR has that are also really nice... things like a photo library to select what you plan on developing ( edit ), lens perspective corrections and watermarking to name a few. Luckily, this program can also be used as a plugin from within LR effectively extending it's capabilities so you can take advantage of both programs features.
What changes did I play with that enhanced the shot ( since I don't typically do that )... First, I used a denoise filter to get rid of some graininess. Then I used something to add "structure" which helps bring out more details, then I used what they refer to as an Accent AI filter that brings up shadows, defines things and probably adds a little saturation to the colors. After that I removed a little Color Cast to get the colors a little more natural looking. Next I did something I usually never do.. I added a feature that wasn't even there... the Sunrays are faked. I have to admit that was really fun, despite its something I normally wouldn't think of doing. The final part was to add back some saturation in order to actually get the original colors I saw back into the shot since some of the other processes actually took some of that out.
Anyway... If you are looking for an inexpensive program ( currently on sale for about $60 ) for image processing... then it's worth a little time to look at Luminar from Skylum.
This is a pic I grabbed on the way to visit with OBG so I could take shots of the solar eclipse last August '17... I just shot it with my smartphone since I was driving and didn't have a good place to pull over to get my DSLR out for a better quality shot.
Typically, on the majority of my pics, when I'm shooting in RAW format ( this one wasn't raw, it was originally processed in camera like any JPG is )... I only process a shot in order to get it to the way it looks naturally ( much like what in camera processing is doing, only I get more control with a RAW image ). I posted the original some time back... this one... I decided to play with it some with a new RAW photo editor/processor I got called Luminar that is just now being developed for Windows computer after being pretty successful on the Mac side of things.
Anyway... because I got the new software, I wanted to play around with it to see what it can do and if I liked it etc. The biggest improvement of this software vs Lightroom ( LR ) is the ability to use layers for the processing, editing and enhancing you may be doing. That alone makes it really handy to control what you are doing to a pic and go back and make changes to what you've already done. It doesn't have some features that LR has that are also really nice... things like a photo library to select what you plan on developing ( edit ), lens perspective corrections and watermarking to name a few. Luckily, this program can also be used as a plugin from within LR effectively extending it's capabilities so you can take advantage of both programs features.
What changes did I play with that enhanced the shot ( since I don't typically do that )... First, I used a denoise filter to get rid of some graininess. Then I used something to add "structure" which helps bring out more details, then I used what they refer to as an Accent AI filter that brings up shadows, defines things and probably adds a little saturation to the colors. After that I removed a little Color Cast to get the colors a little more natural looking. Next I did something I usually never do.. I added a feature that wasn't even there... the Sunrays are faked. I have to admit that was really fun, despite its something I normally wouldn't think of doing. The final part was to add back some saturation in order to actually get the original colors I saw back into the shot since some of the other processes actually took some of that out.
Anyway... If you are looking for an inexpensive program ( currently on sale for about $60 ) for image processing... then it's worth a little time to look at Luminar from Skylum.
