I captured this image in Arches National Park last spring. I used a 38-second exposure via a 10-stop solid ND filter. I processed the image in Lightroom Classic CC and converted it to monochrome using Skylum (formerly Macphun) Luminar, and finished it off after returning to Lightroom.
Old Ford captured in infrared and processed in Lightroom and Luminar.
Replacing Silver Efex Pro 2 with Luminar
I’ve recently been adopting Skylum Software’s Luminar as a Photoshop plug-in to replace my aging Nik Collection. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Nik, but it’s outdated and I’m not sure where it’s going to end up (yes, I realize it’s been purchased by DXO). With a little practice, I’ve gotten to the point where Luminar is effectively replacing Silver Efex Pro 2 for monochrome conversion work.
With Luminar I’m able to replicate most of my go-to Nik filters, all in a single plug-in application. Luminar also supports Smart Filters, so you can create non-destructive edits if you use Smart Object layers in Photoshop. Instead of having to run multiple plug-ins (usually Silver Efex and Color Efex), I can do everything in a single interface
This image is a digital infrared capture (590nm) that I processed to emulate deep black (830nm) infrared using Luminar.
Just for fun I combined one of my brown pelican images from my San Diego birding safari with one of my new Digital Painterly textures. Sometimes you just need to experiment!
I was looking up at the trusses in Denver’s Union Station and I liked the geometry of this shot. I added multiple layers of a Digital Painterly royalty-free texture to make it into an abstract work.
I’m enjoying working with my latest set of royalty-free texture images. They work great with flowers and other images where the background is either out of focus or even blown-out.
I captured this image of sneezeweed flowers in Colorado last year on my Wildflower Safari (spaces available for 2018), and I used Adobe Photoshop to overlay the texture image. If you don’t have Photoshop, you can use Luminar to do the texture blending, too!
