a couple of weeks back Skylum launched luminar 4 at the time I did a review
of the new features and found that the editing tools and interface had changed
significantly since then i've noticed quite a few people struggling to use
luminar for especially those who used to use luminar 3 if this is you in today's
video i'm going to help you get a better understanding of how to work with the
new interface and if you're completely new user to luminar you can think of
this video as a QuickStart tutorial let's get underway by looking at the
library module there are two modules you can work with in luminar there's the
library module where you can organize and manage your files and there's the
Edit module which we'll look at shortly to edit our image in the library module
you can see a grid of images these thumbnails show the images in the folder
that you have selected folders only appear here after you've imported them
the library also to create albums
an album is a collection of images that you want to group together and you can
select these images from multiple folders when you want to add an image to
an album you can drag and drop it from the grid
the library also has some simple features to help you better manage your
images for example you can add a star rating to indicate your best images
you can also mark images as favorites using this icon and you can set color
labels which have any meaning that you want to attach to them
it's the then possible to filter your photos to show only those with a certain
star rating
or which are marked as favorites or that have a color label
after selecting an image in the library you can switch to the edit module to
apply your adjustments this is where most of the interface
changes occurred to help explain the changes I'm going to edit this image
luminar supports the idea of looks and these have ready-made presets you can
apply to an image you can display the installed looks by clicking the icon at
the top of the interface the different looks are then organized into categories
once you've found and applied a look to an image you can adjust the strength or
amount of that look now if you've previously used luminar I'm going to ask
you to forget everything you know about it until we get to the end of this
editing luminar supports a layer based editing system by default every image
you open has a base layer which you can adjust
when I selected one of the looks it's applied these adjustments to the image
now in the old version of luminar if you wanted to adjust an image you needed to
add individual filters from a list of about 50 in luminar 4 you don't need to
bother adding the individual filters instead all the filters are available on
the base layer and every adjustment layer you add to the image you'll find
these grouped under the icons on the right for example we've got the
essentials notice some of these have the titles highlighted those are the changes
that were applied when I applied this look each look has its own different
changes notice that was completely different
when you've clicked one of these icons you notice all the filters you have
available to you in the essentials group I can see all the adjustment filters
that help me correct and refine an image and these are the ones you should start
with once you've done that you can switch to the creative adjustments for a
different set of filters here we can see things like the sky replacement filter
as well as filters to add glowing effects these are all examples of
special effects which is why they appear in the creative category we also have a
portrait category and this is to help you adjust photos of people then there's
the pro filters which contains slightly more advanced adjustments now having
applied an initial look to this image the next thing I'm going to do is fix a
couple of problems and I'll do this by clicking the canvas icon
first I'm going to correct the lens distortion in the image and I'll do this
using the geometry controls as I apply the adjustment watch what happens to the
vignette in the corners of the frame
I'm also going to take the option to remove chromatic aberration finally I'll
use the deviating slider to lighten the edges of the frame where there's a
problem with light fall-off I can also see some dust spots on my image and I'm
going to fix these using the clone and stamp mode
first I'm going to select the area to use for my repair
I'll then configure my brush settings
Now I can paint over the areas I want to fix
when I'm finished I can click the done button to apply my changes
because the clone and stunt layer that I've used creates a new copy of the
image if I go back and make any changes to my original adjustments you won't see
them
if I want to make further adjustments I need to add my changes to the clone and
stunt layer or add another layer above this for this example
I'll continue to work with the clone and stamp layer I'll start by adding some
adjustments in the essentials group to refine the light and color of my image
note says that there's also an Advanced Settings section and this
appears in many of the filters this section contains additional adjustments
and quite a few of these have come from the filters that we're in lumen are
three but aren't in lumen are four this is how they've managed to rationalize
the filters to a more manageable list
let's now add some structure to emphasize the shape of these rocks in
the foreground
now because this filter effects entire image we need to use a mask to
limit where the effects applied
all the filters have individual masks that you can use to selectively adjust
areas of the image you can also turn the filter off and on again
temporarily
I'm now going to use a couple of the professional adjustments starting with
dodging burn
and I'll use this to lighten the rocks in the image slightly in certain areas
next I'll apply one of my favorite filters which is the advanced contrast
filter
once I'm happy with the adjustments I can
export the photo to an image file
the original raw file together with any adjustments I've made stays in my
luminaire for library I hope this videos given you some idea
about how to use Lumina especially if you were struggling after the recent
upgrade if you found it helpful please share it with others I'm Robin Whalley
you've been watching lenscraft I'll see you soon for another video