The available masking effects can be done with a brush, gradient, radial filter, and even luminosity masks. However, it’s literally one click of the button with Luminar 4 and you have control over that mask. Masking can be an extremely complex and tedious task in other software. The most shocking tool that I found in Luminar 4 was the ability to use masks with each effect. More advanced photographers can stack multiple layers in Luminar 4 to create majestic landscapes, crisp wildlife photos, and amazing travel images. Luminar 4 has advanced editing tools as well. The basic tools shouldn’t deter advanced editors, either. This will make the learning curve much easier for new users and first time editors alike. There are editing tools for the most basic adjustments like exposure, shadows, highlights, and saturations. It doesn’t matter what skill level you are with post-processing. What used to take several hours of blending and masking can now quickly be done with one tool. This can be a big help for those situations when you are shooting multiple exposures for a sky and foreground. This allows photographers to replace skies in their images seamlessly. One tool that is being released with Luminar 4 is their AI Sky Replacement tool. The best part is that the results are realistic, not over-processed. For example, the AI Accent tool may seem like a basic slider, however, when you actually apply it to your photo, you’ll see that it improves light, color, contrast, and clarity at the same time. Using the AI Accent tool, AI Structure, and the Landscape Enhancer tool allows you to quickly adjust your photos with multiple edits at once. The AI editing tools in Luminar 4 are now my favorite tools to use. That is, until I actually started playing with them in my post-processing workflow. When I first heard of Luminar 4’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) features, I thought they would be the same old story. Take, for example, the over-processed HDR fad of years past. It seems like a new feature will emerge, people will use it way too much, and then it will disappear forever. I will admit that I’m skeptical about new tools in outdoor photography post-processing. This made it easy for me to quickly know which images I thought were worthy of going through the editing process. I discovered the best way to know which images I liked most was to give the interesting photos star ratings and then favorite the best out of that selection. Not only that, but I was also able to subdivide my favorite images into a rating system and favorites. That may seem traumatic, but the organizational features in Luminar 4 let me easily see all of my photos based on the year and month they were shot. When I started using Luminar 4 and navigated to my photos folder, I was faced with organizing nearly 6,000 images. One of the features in Luminar 4 that I really enjoyed, was how simple it was for me to organize my photographs. If you’re anything like me, you grow tired of scrolling through countless images wondering how you will remember to come back to the best shot to edit it. When I get back from a photography trip, I’m always shocked at how many photos I actually took.
Skylum luminar 4 software#
For the past several weeks, I’ve been exploring the latest photography post-processing software from Skylum Software, Luminar 4, to see if it can handle everything an outdoor photographer needs. There are several kinds of software photographers can use to post-process their photos. The second half of outdoor photography happens behind the computer when you’re comfortably sitting in an office chair drinking a warm cup of coffee. That’s the half where we sleep outside, wake up early, and sit in freezing temperatures waiting on the perfect moment to press the shutter. We spend countless hours researching, scouting, and photographing incredible locations. The first half is the action behind the photograph. There are two halves to outdoor photography.