Jan 4

Jan 4 This is why I love Luminar

I have been trying to re-create a certain shot of mine for a while (the first image on this page). The original image was taken some time ago on my Nikon D700, and it’s one of my favourite shots of Dublin’s Ha’penny bridge. Unfortunately, when I went to get a very large print made of it, the resolution just didn’t quite hold up enough, so I’ve been trying to take it again on a larger resolution camera.

I’ve been trying to re-create the shot, but I have never been in the right place at the right time with the right lights until recently. I was shooting with a borrowed D800, and the light was just right, but unfortunately, I had forgotten to check the settings and the previous user had it set to Jpeg. The shot was properly exposed, and the highlights weren’t clipped, so that was a good start, but I knew I would have to do some editing to it to get it in the right ballpark. This is where Luminar came in.

I decided to record the process as a video tutorial, and I was genuinely surprised by the results. I was impressed both at the ability of Luminar to extract so much from a image, and also, just how far you could push a Jpeg from a D800 without it breaking up. Watch the video below. It’s a little long as I talk you through the whole process, but I’m still kind of impressed at the result.

Could you have pulled this off in other software? Of course. I probably could have achieved the same result in Photoshop, but Luminar has such an interesting way of working that it’s easy to experiment and I find that I approach a task differently when working in it. This was done using it as an extension for Photos too, but obviously you could have used the standalone version.

If you’re interested in Luminar, there’s a trial version available on the Skylum website, and if you go to buy it, I have an affiliate code that you can use to get $10 off. Just use the code: TFP10 at the checkout.

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