Recently I have seen a lot on Fstoppers about Luminar 4. This inspired me to test it out to see what it could do to some of my own images. I tried to use a variety of genres, to fully test the capabilities of Luminar. Over the next few weeks, I'll be putting out some of my results to get community feedback. I also recognize that I am only beginning in photography, so I probably missed some detail or overcompensated in some way. I would much appreciate comments on my work so that I could improve.
This is definitely one of my favorite pictures I tried on Luminar, not because it was a good picture; rather, it was very much not a good photo. This was taken at a local track and field invitational I attended, and I was there shooting with my trusty 70-300mm telephoto lens. I love using that reach it provides to get pictures of the runners while not getting trampled. One of its limitations is in taking pictures of groups near me, which I was to find out. As I was walking between events, three of my friends, whom we will call John, Andrew and Samuel, wanted me to take their picture together. It was a spontaneous shot with little to no effort. To my frustration, I couldn't get them to let me redo the shot, as they found nothing wrong with it. To the photographer's eye, there was a lot wrong. I had been exposed for the track, so the sky was blown out. I cut out the arms of John and Samuel. I blew the highlights on Andrew's face, and there were distracting people in the background.
When I was trying out Luminar, I wanted to find a highly flawed image, and see what I could make of it. I must say that I was impressed. The most obvious change was the sky, which although not perfect--the shadows on the faces are wrong--is a massive improvement. I was able to create a more realistic shade of green in the grass, as well as make their sweatshirts look closer to reality. The hair tones were much better after Luminar. I also used some of the AI Skin & Portrait Enhancer to remove some of that teenage nightmare--acne. I used a lot of the other portrait tools as well, but not to any extreme effect. The picture is still nowhere near perfect, but it was an impressive showing for Luminar 4.
I'd much appreciate community feedback here. If you have had experience with Luminar, I'd especially love to hear how you think it has done. I look forward to hearing what you have to say.
Thank you in advance,
Matthew Lacy
