u/SteveR92

I like to make my tones and textures softer at times, and I do this by firstly reducing Structure which I find always makes a huge difference. For colours, I jump into the Colour tool and reduce saturation but boost luminance a touch, I find this helps balance certain tones that would otherwise dominate the frame, particularly greens in summer landscape shots.

Went for an almost filmic look for this one, achieved prominently through hue shifting greens and applying Matte and Mystical for softer textures. Because I wanted to keep the softer textures I didn’t apply film grain.

I love shooting in harsh light in the cities for times like these. Once you get in between the buildings you can pull of some beautiful high contrast. For this shot I used Light Depth positioned over my subject alongside SuperContrast to get the levels just right, avoiding any blow outs. Personally, I like to push the levels to the limit to make the contrast as strong as possible. I also used glow to bring some life into the highlights.

Trying to make photos more vibrant to showcase strong summer themes can be a little risky as you can border on looking over saturated. So I always keep an eye on greens and reds in particular. I don’t boost saturation in those channel tones and in this image I desaturated the green tones but boosted the luminance. That makes the trees look vibrant without being overly saturated.

For this shot, I wanted to keep it very moody, so I desaturated just enough to mute the tones without making it black and white. Then it was on to the details of the towers. For this I used the Structure tool and the boosting the Small Details slightly. When it comes to shots like this I prefer a more dramatic contrast, so I deepened the shadows significantly in the towers to juxtapose the bright clouds and fog for a more striking shot.

I used the atmosphere tool to add even more fog beyond the building plus used Structure and Details because I love the texture in the shot, especially in the ropes in the foreground. Then it was about making that blue pop without it being too distracting

For this shot it’s all about the details. I used Structure alongside the Details tool. The Details tool is fantastic because I only need to push the smaller details and medium one subtly. Doing so really makes a big difference. I also used masking tools on the lanterns in the foreground so that they didn’t dominate the screen. I reduced the vibrance and brightness to ensure the eye travels through the image.

When working with night images like this the RAW is shot purposefully slightly underexposed so that the highlights retain details. When brightening the image, I use Supercontrast to work on the highlights independently. You can use masking, but I think this is one the strongest uses for Supercontrast. This ensure we can brighten the image but retain details in our light sources.

For night photography, 99% of the time I cool down shadows and midtones inside of the colour harmony tool and warm up highlights.
I then head over to the Colour tool where I will make sure colours harmonise by hue shifting through each colour channel, and balance tones with saturation and luminance.

These are always tricky shots to take because you want to get a balanced exposure on the scene beyond your frame, but that may risk a very dark foreground.

But because I’m shooting in RAW I can shoot for the highlights, meaning they look great and I know I can lift the shadows without issues in Luminar.

I don’t just lift shadows in Exposure, I also use Structure and Supercontrast. I also did a great deal of dodging and burning in this image. Keeping the ceiling dark but the archway just a touch brighter, helping to build some layers and depth.

From there I used the Landscape and Water Enhancing tools to bring some colour into the scene beyond. A fun shot to work with!

Shots like this in night photography show why shooting RAW is crucial. With bright light sources, especially those above the restaurant we want to make sure they don’t get blown out.
So by following the mantra of “always shoot for the highlights” we keep detail in those areas. Consequently the rest of the image can look dark, but RAW allows us to bring a great deal of detail out of those areas still.

And for bringing out shadows I don’t just use the shadow tool in Exposure. I also use Structure, Atmosphere (I applied Fog to background of this image helping to lift it), or Light Depth. You can also Dodge specific areas as well.