Luminar does things very differently! Both new users and those used to Luminar 3 and earlier versions might wonder where such basic adjustments as levels and curves are hiding… Well they are there, but you need to know where to look. The Luminar 4 interface has four basic workspaces, accessed by buttons on the right […]
Featured posts
Welcome to the Life after Photoshop archive of 'Featured' posts. These are favourite articles or tutorials that appear in the carousel at the top of the home page.
Histograms aren’t sacred: shadows and highlights CAN be clipped
Histograms just show you what’s happening in your images, they’re not there to tell you what to do. But there’s an old adage from the days of film photography that you should still be able to see some detail in the darkest and brightest parts of your pictures, and that’s carried through into digital photography. […]
Montacute House in moody monochrome with split toning
What is the mood you’re trying to capture? For his image of an Elizabethan country house, I wanted and sombre and forbidding look, and this required black and white, some dodging and burning and subtle toning.
Levels vs curves vs luma curves: ways to adjust contrast in photos
Levels and curves can both be used to adjust the contrast in photos, but how are they different, which should you use and is one better than the other?
Composition in photography: recognising and handling shapes
Composition in photography can become very dry and technical when it’s reduced to a science. Here’s a way to see and work with shapes that’s simpler and more visual.
How to double-up on adjustments in Luminar and get twice the effect
Luminar filters can be used in any combination, but did you know you can use the same filter twice? This is especially useful with the Accent AI 2.0 filter.
Instagram image size still matters: non-square photos may not fit
How do you stop your photos being cropped awkwardly on Instagram? It’s not about pixel sizes, it’s about aspect ratios, and here’s what you need to know.
3 RAW converters, 3 different white balance settings!
You’d expect different RAW converters to agree about white balance, wouldn’t you? Then you’re going to be surprised by this test.
Composition in photography: how to ‘read’ pictures
Welcome to an occasional series on composition in photography. Life after Photoshop is usually about image editing tools and techniques, but many of the decisions we make about editing, cropping and local adjustments are based around effective composition, so it is a closely related discipline. Of course, this doesn’t replace the photographer’s ‘eye’ when taking […]
How to create a polarising filter digitally, and why it’s not the same as the real thing
Polarising filters are often used to darken blue skies. You can do this digitally instead – though polarisers do more besides that you cannot do digitally.