Hey guys it’s Gaba VR, and this time I show you some really cool techniques to improve 360 photos
by using the AI tools of Luminar Neo.
Some of them will help you to pimp your spherical photos,
and of course, I’ll show you some tricks for reframed photos, like Little planet style images, too.
Basically, Luminar Neo is an easy-to-use photo editing software for photography lovers
with many innovative AI-driven tools.
So, you don’t need to be a retouching expert to get spectacular results,
while it has all the required tools to handle any sort of photo editing job.
And if you need a specific solution in your workflow, you can expand Neo with Extensions.
In this video I’ll also show you my favorite ones, the Extensions I use with 360 photos.
If you want to try this app with your own shots, check out my promo link in the description.
Luminar Neo is available on monthly or annual subscriptions and in lifetime versions, too,
with a 30-day money-back guarantee. So there’s no risk in trying it out.
But first, let me show you my workflow with 360 photos, and check out those cool features which Luminar Noe provides.
Let’s start with a common problem with 360 photos, taken with consumer cameras.
While I love the 360 action cams for creative videography or even to shoot immersive 360 contents,
their photo quality is not always as good as if we shoot with a DSLR.
The biggest downsides are the image size, the resolution, a little bit softer look and the noise caused by smaller sensors.
So as a first step, I’ll show you how Luminar Neo can help us to solve these basic problems with some AI-driven tools.
I’ll work with the Ghost Town photo, I created in my latest tutorial on a very busy street in town.
In that tutorial I showed you how to shoot and edit this photo with Insta360 cameras, Insta360 App and Luminar Neo.
And as you can see, AI made a great job in removing everybody, getting this photo without any passersby.
But, if you remember, the raw material was a time-lapse video,
and as a result, it’s even a little bit lower resolution than a normal 360 photo.
It’s only 5,7K.
It’s nicely exposed and looks great, but if I would compare it to a DSLR photo, you might spot the differences.
So let’s bring this 360 photo to the next level.
Let’s open it and see what if we apply AI Upscale as a first step.
After installing the Extensions, you’ll find some effects right on the Catalog tab,
while the most of them will be on the Edit tab.
AI Upscale will be right there on the Catalog tab.
I just simply drop my photo in the Upscale window on the right column.
This time I will upscale this photo to double size.
Larger values work perfectly if we zoom in a photo, and we need to make it a normal size image.
But in such cases, having a full-size raw material, a double size can be enough.
After the processing is done, we can continue editing this bigger photo.
I select it and switch to the Edit tab.
After upscaling the photo, there are some further tools here we can use to pimp this up,
by reducing noise and sharpening a little bit more.
I don’t want to sharpen noise on the image, so I start with denoising.
Noiseless AI is the perfect tool to get rid of the sensor noise, which is very typical if we shoot with small sensor cameras.
Even if I shoot with ISO 100 in good light conditions, we will see some noise in the shadows,
and digital noise even on the highlights.
We can adjust noise reduction in different levels,
but this smart tool will give us a recommendation depending on our certain photo.
As you can see, in this case Middle strength is the recommended one.
So, I just click on it and wait until noise reduction is done.
Then I can turn it on and off to check out the effect on the image, by clicking on the Eye icon next to the name of the effect.
Or I can disable all the changes by clicking on the Eye in the middle.
And of course, I can play around with these sliders to finetune the settings, if needed.
But as you can see, we already have quite a nice result in this case.
And besides reducing noise, AI also does some sharpening, too, by default.
But we’re not done with it, yet.
As I mentioned in the beginning, besides the smaller resolution and more digital noise,
sometimes this 360 image doesn’t look as sharp as DSLR photos, or ‘traditional’ non 360 photos.
And although we’ve already done a little sharpening, there’s a dedicated AI tool for that in Luminar Neo.
Supersharp AI is originally made for such photos which have some blur caused by fast subjects or shaky hands,
or to correct unsharp eyes on portraits.
But of course, it also works very well on 360 photos, like this.
We can play around with the amount of sharpening, changing between Low, Middle or High.
This time I go on with the Middle range and check out the result.
I think it does a great job, with an extra touch of sharpness all around the 360 sphere.
It’s very important that once you’re satisfied with the result and click somewhere else in the project,
you’ll find your setting on the Edits tab, next to the Tools.
For instance, if I clicked on Supersharp again, I would add another Sharpening layer instead of editing the existing one.
So I just Switch to Edits, and modify my effects, if needed.
I can turn them on and off one by one, or turn them off together, by using the Eye in the middle of the screen.
And in each and every case, I can finetune the affected areas by masking, if needed.
For instance, let’s take a look at this tiny planet photo.
The subject was moving, and we can see some motion blur on it.
We can easily fix it with Supersharp AI, selecting Motion Bur mode.
But as you can see, besides fixing motion blur, it sharpened the tiles too, which look a little bit too sharp for my taste,
so I’ll simply remove sharpening on this area.
I switch to Masking, select the Eraser tool and erase the area I’d like to keep unsharpened.
That’s how I can erase the sharpening effect there quickly and easily.
But now, let’s go back to our original ‘Ghost Town’ photo, and let's see the results of this full process.
First, I applied Upscale AI to get a higher resolution photo on a smart way,
then I reduced noise with Noiseless AI, and finally I sharpened the photo.
And here you can see the full before/after comparison.
These simple steps help in getting a higher resolution 360 photo, even if we pick frames from a 360 video.
And what’s really important in such a case, that this result will work perfectly in 360,
and we can also create very high-resolution reframed photos or tiny planets, too.
Looking at this image in 360, you won’t see any artefacts around the edges of the flat spherical photo.
Some editing software may generate such lines looking like a stitch line on a 360 photo,
but after this 3-step process, you won’t face any problems like this.
Even more, you can use most of the effects available with no trouble.
So you can feel free to color grade your photo, and then simply turn it into a little planet or inverted planet, too.
And now, let’s see what we can do with such a tiny planet photo.
Of course, we can go through the same process if we haven’t done it beforehand.
Upscale AI, Noiseless AI and Supersharp AI will work perfectly
if we import a tiny planet photo generated even with a smartphone app.
And the Eraser tool I shoved you in the previous video leads to a fast and easy solution in removing tripod legs, too.
But we can also apply Magic light on night shots.
It helps us refine the light sources, playing around with the shape of the light and the amount of glow.
Depending on the shutter speed light sources don’t always look pleasing by default,
but it’s a really nice tool to modify them in post.
And we can easily remove background and separate our subjects in tiny planets like this.
Just let me show you Background Removal AI, which is hidden below Layer Properties.
There we can go to masking, and select this AI function on the bottom of the list.
In this case it would be too easy, so I just open another photo with a very special background placement,
with background in the middle and all around the subject.
This could be a little bit tricky, but actually AI made it well. Here you can see the selection, highlighted with red.
I just click on Remove, and here is a transparent version of my Holey Planet photo.
And if I want to refine the selection,
I can easily make further corrections with the Refinement Brush on the bottom of this panel.
I switch it to Object and paint it all over. But the hardest part is already made by AI.
And now I can save this photo as a transparent png or I can add a brand new sky instead of the original one.
But maybe I'll do it in another way, as we have a more powerful sky replacement tool in Luminar Neo,
which also works very well with little planet photos, too.
And we get an instant result, without having to play around with multiple layers.
Let’s check out another photo with quite a boring, blown out sky.
The AI Sky replacement tool creates a smart mask,
while we can select many different skies, and apply them without having to add another layer.
I just simply select a sky from the library, and that’s all. It looks amazing.
And I can make it even better with Sky Orientation settings.
Little planet photos don’t have a traditional horizon line, so we need to move it way down, to get rid of the horizon.
Then we can move the selected type of sky Vertically and Horizontally.
And in this case, I don’t have Water surfaces on the image, so I remove all the reflections, to get rid of any artefacts.
And if we feel it necessary, we can easily finetune the effect with a little masking.
I go to the Masking menu, switch to Erase, and erase over the subject a little bit.
In this case, I like the automatic result, so there’s no need of such a finetuning.
But going down to Sky Adjustments, I can add some grain to make it look more natural,
especially when the basic photo also has some grain,
and I can match color temperature and brightness for a perfect result.
And after all, that’s how we can turn a blown out sky into something exciting or spectacular,
even if we have sky all around the subject.
And to show you how fast we can create almost anything, just let me go to Landscape settings,
adding a little Golden hour effect, and to Sunrays to add a fake sunset to the background.
It’s such an easy process, only playing around with some sliders.
And here is before and after.
So that’s how we can edit our 360 photos
and go creative with our reframed or little planet images quickly and easily with Luminar Neo.
Don’t forget, if you’d like to try it with your own photos, feel free to use the promotion link in description.
And if you liked these tips and tricks, please thumbs up!
And for further 360 contents and tutorials, subscribe to my channel, and see you next time!