Luminar Neo Tutorial | Deep Dive into the Professional editing tools!

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In this Luminar Neo tutorial, you’ll discover some advanced photo editing tips that will elevate your images to a new level. So, if you are ready, let’s do it.

Pro Editing Tools

So the professional editing tools gonna in Luminar Neo are going to provide some advanced editing techniques and tools to enhance and retouch your images.

Super Contrast Photo Editing Tool

Let’s check out Super Contrast first.

“Super Contrast” will target different tones in your image to increase the “Contrast” in those tones.

So we have highlights, mid-tones, and shadows underneath each one of those sliders.

We have a balance slider, allowing you to pinpoint how much of those tones are targeted.

As I increase the highlights, I watch the sky and notice the added “contrast.” Then, I can pinpoint how many of those tones are being targeted with the balance tool. The same applies to mid-tones and shadows.

Color Harmony Photo Editing Tool

The Color Harmony tool will provide some options to precisely control the colors in your image.

Let’s start with brilliance, which will create a more rich type of color.

As you slide it to the right and left, those colors will become muted.

The warm slider will control the color temperatures in the image, and you can use this to stylize your photo.

The positive values will warm up the image, while negative values tone it down.

Now, color contrast will allow you to target a color range and then apply the contrast to that color range.

What happens is any of those colors that are being targeted are going to be lighter. Then any colors on the opposite of the color wheel will become darker, which creates the contrast.

It all starts with the amount slider, and as you increase it, it’s going to increase the amount of contrast, and then the hue slider will allow you to target a range of colors.

All right, next, we have split color warmth.

And this tool can enhance the cool and warm tones in your image selectively.

It will allow you to increase color contrast and vibrancy or create creative toning effects.

You can use them separately to adjust the warm and cool colors in your image.

For example, in this image, we have warm colors in the highlights and whites in the shadows, and the blacks, tend to be “cooler” since they’re not getting the color of light from the light source, in this case, the sun.

We can target those warm colors by dragging this slider to the left to neutralize those warm tones, such as the yellows and reds in the highlights.

And then to the right, it’s going to enhance them. Now, for those cooler colors in those blacks and shadows, you’ll drag this to the left to cool down the blues and the sciences in that part of the tonal range.

And then, to the right, you’re going to neutralize and warm them up.

All right, the color balance tool will help you color-correct your images.

Let’s say you have a color cast that is predominant in the shadows.

If you click on this menu here, we have Shadows, Mid-tones, and Highlights, and Shadows are selected by default.

But those colors are predominant in the highlights of the mid-tones. So, in that case, you can target those tones instead and then adjust these sliders to remove that color cast.

Dodge and Burn Photo Editing Tool

The Dodge and Burn is an old editing technique that we used back in the day when we did our own printing in a dark room.

Dodge and burn selectively target a part of the image to be darker or brighter.

Dodge refers to making part of the image darker burn refers to making parts of that image brighter. And our digital world, we’re going to apply this effect with a brush.

We will apply the dodging and burning to exactly where we want it in the image.

And we have the brush, as I mentioned, and we can control the size from the slider, or you can use your right bracket key to make it larger and the left bracket key to make it smaller. You can adjust the softness of the edge of the brush with softness.

And I tend to like to have this around 50 to 100, depending on the area I’m targeting. And then strength is like an opacity slider.

The lower the setting, the less it will reveal or apply that effect to the image.

Okay, so let’s say I want to brighten up the Genesee River in this image.

I’m gonna go ahead and drop my brush size down just a little bit.

And then I’m just going to paint in this area to target my river.

And because I have the lighten tab selected right here, we are burning in that area or making it brighter. So I will use the darkened tab to make it darker and use the Dodge tool instead.

If I need to fine-tune the area I brushed, I can erase it with the erase tab.

If you find that the overall intensity of the edit is too much, you can use the amount slider to tone it down.

Clone Photo Editing Tool

The clone tool will provide another way to retouch your images.

Unlike the other tools, we’ve discussed in previous tutorials about retouching.

This one is not AI-based. Instead, what it’s going to do is it’s going to clone or copy pixels to the area that needs to be retouched.

You’ll need to tell Luminar Neo the target area where those pixels should be cloned from to cover up that blemish or whatever it is you are retouching.

You want to make sure that you’re targeting an area similar to the area being covered up. So we have our size, softness, and strength tools.

And then, when you hover over an area in your image, you’ll get this teeny tiny circle.

This is the tool you will use to target an area to be cloned from.

Let’s say I want to retouch this blemish right here. I should select this area as a target since these pixels are similar in color, texture, and contrast to the blemish.

I will click here once, and then I get my larger brush, and then I can adjust the brush accordingly.

And I don’t like to make it too big or too large. So I’d like to make it a little larger than the blemish.

And then, once I click on it, it should remove it automagically, so I can continue painting over different areas.

However, because the colors and the textures are different here versus here, I will get something that looks darker than the area I retouched.

We’re going to undo that with commander control plus the letter Z.

And we need to now reset the target area.

And we can do that by holding down the alt or option key to get that targeting tool.

And then, you can click on the new area to begin retouching the blemishes in that area.

So make sure you reset the target area every time you enter a new location with new colors, textures, and contrast.

Parker
Parker
A 30-year photography pro with a desire to help you achieve your creative vision! Facebook | Youtube

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