The most recent recent release of Lightroom added a new slider called “Texture”. This function works like a version of clarity, only on a smaller radius and on more “medium” details. A lot of people have liked this new functionality, but for those with older versions of Lightroom, or who have ditched it all together, you can actually do the same thing in Luminar.

In Luminar, the equivalent of “texture” can be found by adding the Details Enhancer filter. This works with both Luminar 3 and Luminar Flex. The results are very similar but there may be some differences depending on the image. Here’s a quick step by step.

Step 1: If working with Lightroom, send your image to Luminar or Luminar FLEX by right clicking on it and choosing Edit In > Luminar Flex

Step 2: When the image loads, click in the “Add Filter…” button

Step 3: Search for “Details Enhancer” and choose to add the filter to your adjustment stack. (If you already have this as part of your workspace, you don’t need to add it again)

Step 4: Set the “Masking Amount” to 0. The reason for this is that it creates some artefacts. If you are finding that the effect is adding a lot of noise you can drag it back up later.

Step 5: Drag the “Medium” slider up to add the “Texture” effect. As Lightroom’s texture is adding contrast to “Medium” details, this is basically doing the same thing. A value of 50 on the medium slider would be roughly equivalent to a value of 100% on the texture slider in Lightroom.

Step 6: If you find the result is a little noisy, you can increase the protection amount, and bring back up the masking amount. The protection slider will protect areas of flat colour from noise increases.

Step 7: When you’re finished, if you’re using Luminar FLEX, click Apply to send your image back to Lightroom. If you’re using Luminar 3 as a stand alone editor, then it will automatically save the changes to the database.

That’s pretty much all there is to it. This feature has been in Luminar for a while, so it isn’t anything new. The trick is not to overdo it and to make sure to turn the masking down as it can lead to some gritty artefacts that you won’t see in the Lightroom version.

By the way, if you don’t already have Luminar or Luminar Flex, you can get $10 off by using my affiliate code: TFP10

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