Look Sharp. Be Sharp. And Don't Miss The Insane Luminar Neo Black Friday Promo!

I shot this bridge a couple months back. I had thoughts of doing some fancy editing on it. It's old, but still in use, and in its setting, it had a lot of character. We were in a hurry, so I didn't get a chance to take more than this one image.  It looked OK on the camera LCD, so we moved on to our intended destination deeper into the Gila National Forest.

When I got around to working on it a week or so later, I was so disappointed to see that the image was very soft.. the result of a tiny bit of camera shake from being in a rush.  I set it aside, and set to working on the pictures that I actually took the time to shoot. 

Jump ahead a little more than two months, and the Luminar Neo Extension this photo needs is released: SupersharpAI! As the name implies, it uses AI to analyze all the data in the JPEG or Raw file, and figures out where things went wrong, and fixes it! You get options of "Low", "Medium" or "High" sharpness correction. This one was definitely a candidate for  "High".  

Once I got the resulting sharpened image, I knew I had to reward myself with a total bending of reality.  I've shot dozens of images of clouds for just this purpose. In fact, not long before I shot this bridge, at the height of our monsoon season, I shot just the image to use here. And it's easy with Luminar Neo's AI Sky Replacement tool.  (While I prefer to use my own skies for this purpose, Luminar has a marketplace full of sky packs, and image presets. It's quite the rabbit hole when you get to searching through it.) So what did I do with this crusty old bridge? Well, wait no further....

Hot Springs Rd Bridge. ©Daniel Gauss/Shot On Site

Can you feel the deluge approaching? Should I have added lightning? Easy to do. I'm ecstatic I was able to save this image.

Have you got motion blurred photos in your libraries? Out of focus images. SupersharpAI is for you, (and don't tell me every image you've ever sharp is in perfect focus!).  

How about all the other Luminar Neo extensions that have recently been released? Background Removal AI (which I showed you in the previous post),  Upscale AI, and Focus Stacking (which I haven't introduced you to, but I'm going to!). 

And now, with Black Friday (remember? I promised Black Friday up there 👆👆) on the horizon, you- yes you! Can get Luminar Neo, and all the extensions, plus other bonus goodies at the lowest prices I've seen yet! If I was on the fence about springing for a new editor, this would get me off the fence faster than Humpty Dumpty! And get this: my discount code: DanGauss, will save you an additional $10 off the already low promotional pricing on any package.  And here's my advice: Just skip straight to the "Pro Plan".  You'll get the most for the least. If you're not the subscribing kind, the second best deal is the Lifetime License. Pay once, and it's yours forever.  But just hit this link or click on the ad in the right sidebar👉 and see for yourself. If you've got questions, I'm here!

Black Friday + Cyber Monday promo pricing  runs from 11/18 to 11/29/2022

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Feel Free to Augment Your Reality

Dogs,2003,  and a Bridge, 2021 ©Daniel Gauss/Shot On Site

 

The folks at Skylum Software, just released a buttload of new extensions for their Luminar Neo editor. Some practical (I'll get to those in a future post), and some fun and creative. Background Removal AI falls solidly in the latter category. Take the above image for example.  If you've got your readers on and can read the small print you'll see the dogs' picture was taken 19 years ago at a dog camp in Asheville. The bridge was shot last Thanksgiving at the Nature Conservancy's Iron Bridge Conservation Area northwest of Silver City, New Mexico.

This screenshot from the Luminar Neo desktop shows the steps (though not in process order) I took to get from there to here... upper right is the original Nikon D1H raw file from 2003. Bottom right is the background removed, with a single click and a bit of fringe work around the ears, Bottom left converted to a png file with a transparent background, where it is then ready to be inserted into another background. Notice that I needed to flip the dogs so the light direction was consistent. Also a single click. Spent about 10 minutes total. Obviously more can be done, but I wanted to get the news out.

I used a couple of the other new extensions when putting this image together, including NoiselessAI, to remove digital noise in the dog image caused by the small 19 year old Nikon sensor, and UpscaleAI, to increase resolution for the same reason.

If your interest is piqued, hit the links at the top of the post, or the vertical ad on the right sidebar. If you're buying, don't forget to use the discount code: DanGauss to potentially save $10.

Fine print:

Posts may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of these, I may receive a small commission at no increased cost to you. Thanks.

Luminar Neo Evolution Continues... Better Than Ever

 Here's the official tease. I'll have more on the new extensions very, very soon. Or hit the ad on the right.

Customizing My Old Images. Because I Can

Cody, Nebraska 2008. ©Daniel Gauss/Shot On Site

Back in 2008, we embarked on one of our longest trips in the Hare-Brained Express, leaving Ann Arbor, where Margaret's brother installed a new radiator in the Bounder, for the west coast and back again. That trip was chronicled extensively on this blog back then, and you can relive the adventure by clicking on "2008" > "August" in the blog history in the right sidebar. But, if you don't want to go through that, here's the graphic overview...  

About a third of the way home, on the northern portion of the loop, we had to hit a small town in the southwest corner of South Dakota to renew our driver licenses, as we were (air quotes) "South Dakota Residents" for purposes of mail delivery, vehicle registrations, voting, etc. When that task was completed we dropped down into Nebraska and stopped for the night in a quaint little town called Cody. The city park there had RV hookups for $5 a night. It also had this view of a beautiful prairie railside grain elevator and water supply. I took lots of pictures. The picture leading off this post has been edited with, you guessed it, Luminar Neo. The original looked like this:

Yeah, a nice tree, but the main subject is the elevator, and the parts of the tree I left frame it perfectly, especially after switching to landscape from portrait. I also dialed up the warmth for a more "golden hour" look.

But, what if we weren't there in August of 2008. What if I wanted you to believe it was, instead, late October of 2008? Using the Landscape and Color tools, and some masking it's easy to bring on an Autumnal look to this image, (can't you just feel the frost in the air?):

Cody, Nebraska 2008 "Fall Edit"  ©Daniel Gauss/Shot On Site

Lastly, maybe we weren't there at all. Maybe we just saw the image in a photography gallery somewhere. An image by the alternate universe Dan Gauss? Multiverse of Madness, indeed! Well, if it's artsy, it's gotta be black and white, no? More Luminar Neo tools, of course.

Cody Nebraska 2008 (Black and White Edit)  ©Daniel Gauss/Shot On Site

Give you some ideas? Why not try it soon.  The Halloween Special Offer expires soon! And remember my Coupon Code: DANGAUSS to save $10 (not sure if it works with promo prices, but it wouldn't hurt to try!)

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It's Great.. To Be.. A Michigan Wolverine! It's Great.. To Be.. A Michigan Wolverine! Etc. Etc.

 Also, it's good to be an "Arrogant Ass from Ann Arbor" once again.

See ya next year, "Little Brother".

Oh yeah. My alma mater tightened its hold on the top spot in the NCAA Division II poll...  A good weekend all around. Drinks on me!

Just kidding.

About the drinks.

The Value of An Evolving Editing Program (to me, anyway)

When  Luminar Neo first launched last February, it was a very good editing program, but not a great

editing program. It had a lot of useful tools, but it was also missing tools... tools that had been in previous iterations of Luminar: LuminarAI, Luminar4.  

                                                                                                                                                                Gradually, over the next few months, with free updates, improvements and additional tools were added. But the best was yet to come!

Fulfilling the promise to build a fully functional edit platform, to rival the best of the competition, the Luminar team began to drop the first of the "extensions", those being HDR Merge, and NoiselessAI, both of which you've seen on these pages. November will bring 3 more: UpscaleAI (which I teased in a previous post), AI Background Removal, and Focus Stacking.

(The fact that Skylum/Luminar can keep the doors open, and the updates and improvements coming all year long while working in the war zone of Kyiv, Ukraine is nothing short of miraculous!)

But I digress. How do I, Dan Gauss, find the evolving Luminar Neo so gosh darn valuable? Well, you already know I edit nearly every current image with Neo. But I've got literally thousands of old digital images, going back to my days as a sighthound event photographer beginning in 2003. And even thousands more on negatives going back to the very beginnings of Shot On Site Photography in 1994, and beyond!

With every new extension tool, it becomes possible to make nearly every old image in my compendium to look far better than they ever could have looked with the editing tools back in the day. A case in point:

Race Day Morning.2008 NOTRA Nationals, Boswell OK
©Daniel Gauss/Shot On Site

This is an image I found yesterday morning while assembling an order for images from this event*. I don't remember taking it, and if I ever saw it back in 2008, I don't remember it. Anyway, I pulled it off the disk and ran it through Luminar NEO. The original wasn't bad, mind you, but it was helped with a few tweaks. I'm looking forward to getting UpscaleAI next month. I'll take this 2MB original JPEG and see what it looks like at 32MB (or bigger?)

So, if you're like me, and have hundreds or thousands of old, small, digital images in need of improvements in color, or exposure, or resolution, you'll want to give Luminar Neo a try. And there's no better time than now to try it (risk free, of course). Special pricing and a bonus gift! Click the ghost in the right hand sidebar, or this link

*Yes, old Shot On Site friends, your old images (from 2003 on) still exist! They're still on my Photoreflect website!, and I still get orders to this day! Not all, mind you, but images from every major lure coursing event, race meet, breed specialty, open field hunt, ASFA II are there.  The regular weekend lure coursing and race meets have been removed, but never fear, I still have them on disk. Just email me: dan@shotonsite.us

And remember: if you do order images from "the olde dayes", they will now be edited in the latest and greatest Luminar software!

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It Was the Mother of All Crepuscular Ray Sunsets

Original Fujifilm X-E3 Raw File: f8, 1/800 second, ISO 400. Fujifilm XF 16-80mm f4.0 R OIS WR zoom at 18mm.

Last Saturday, I took a break from the recliner in front of whatever college football game I happened to be watching at the time to grab a snack, or refill my water bottle, whatever. Returning to the living room, I glanced out of the open front door and saw this magnificent photo opportunity.

Now, crepuscular rays are not an uncommon site here in The Land of Enchentment, but this was notably exceptional in that the rays were directed out in all directions, owing to the broken cloud formations, and the elevation of the setting sun.

I grabbed the X-E3 and stationed myself on the front porch for the next half hour or so, snapping picture after picture after picture.

I was hoping to get into the editing later that evening, but life - as it does- got in the way, and I didn't get to it until Monday. The screen grab above is the Fuji RAF raw file I started with when I opened up Luminar Neo and sat, staring at the screen, wondering how I wanted to proceed.

I'd watched a YouTube video a couple days before, by a Luminar ambassador, Jim Nix, edit a very similar image, using some of the seldom used tools in Luminar Neo. That's the direction I decided to go.

While Luminar Neo has a very cool "Sunrays" tool, it was obvious it wouldn't be necessary with this image. But I wanted to really accentuate them, along with the golden hour colors. Recently, I would have run this through the HDR Merge tool, just to see what it would look like, but I decided to forego that step. The tools I did use included the almost obligatory DevelopRAW, NoiselessAI, Structure, Color, Super Contrast, among the usual suspects. The seldom used tools included Toning, and Color Harmony.

The beauty of any of the Luminar platforms is that they are completely non destructive. You can experiment with any number of the tools, jack the sliders up to 100, play with colors, vignettes, details, etc. and in the end if you're not happy you can revert to your original raw file or jpeg and it's completely unchanged, and ready for you to start over. I've been there.

Anyway, without further ado, you're probaby interested in seeing how it ended up after using 12 different tools (some more than once, which is another cool feature of Luminar Neo). Here's the shot: 

"From the Porch", ©Daniel Gauss/Shot On Site

Remember, if you're interested in any of the Luminar products, use the links above, and if you decide to buy, save $10 with my coupon code: DANGAUSS

Till next time.

Posts may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of these, I may receive a small commission at no increased cost to you. Thanks.