The Photographer's Guide to Luminar 4. Jeff Carlson
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Название: The Photographer's Guide to Luminar 4
Автор: Jeff Carlson
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Программы
isbn: 9781681984063
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FIGURE 1-15: The illustrious and illuminating Info panel. Yep, that’s all there is.
In future versions of Luminar, according to Skylum, the Info panel will host more information, such as IPTC metadata and keywords.
Change the Background Color
This doesn’t quite count as an essential feature you’ll turn to again and again, but it sure is helpful to get it nailed down early. As you’re editing, the space behind the photo is often visible on the sides, especially when you’re in the Fit to Screen view. Normally that area is black, but you can change it to something more comfortable for your eyes; a black background can be especially stark when working on bright images, for instance.
Choose View > Background and choose between Black, Dark Gray, Gray, Light Gray, and White. You can also right-click (or Control-click, on a Mac) the background area and choose one of those options from the pop-up menu that appears (Figure 1-16).
FIGURE 1-16: Choose a more comfortable background color.
2 The Paths to Luminar
Luminar is hungry for your photos. To start editing, you need to feed it. Everyone has their own preference for how that happens. Perhaps you have one or two shots that need improvement, or maybe you’re using another photo-management app and want to apply some Luminar polish or use features that aren’t present in your other tool. Maybe Luminar is the center of your photo universe and you want to store all your photos in one convenient library.
While some programs railroad you into one way of working, Luminar understands you might use several methods, depending on circumstance. With the following paths to get photos into the software, you can focus on your images and not get sidetracked by the mechanics of how to get to them:
•Open and edit a single image, for when you don’t need the overhead of library management.
•Edit a photo from another application. Luminar includes plug-ins for several popular apps that load the entire Luminar editing studio and keep the edited version in the original application.
•Add photos to the Luminar Library. This option involves specifying source folders on your hard drives or network volumes, as well as importing new photos from a camera or memory card.
Edit a Single Image
At times you may want to edit a photo without going through the steps of adding it as a permanent part of your library—maybe you’re editing a friend’s shot, or you need to adjust something that you have no interest in saving long term.
To edit a single image from within Luminar, do the following:
1 1. Click the Open Button Menu and choose Edit Single Image, or choose File > Edit Single Image, or press Command/Ctrl-O (Figure 2-1).
FIGURE 2-1: Open an image file without adding a folder to the library.
1 2. Navigate to the image file you want, and click Open. The photo appears in the Filmstrip side panel with the Edit panel active.
Time to split a few hairs. Although I’m making it sound like the single-image approach is separate from the library, the photo actually does show up there. When you switch to the Library panel, you’ll see a new Single Image Edits entry under Shortcuts, and when editing one of the images, all of the single images appear in the Filmstrip (Figure 2-2). Luminar handles the image just like any other in the library, including letting you apply ratings and flags.
FIGURE 2-2: Single image edits have their own shortcut (top) and appear in the Filmstrip (bottom).
There are two key differences, though:
•Luminar leaves the image file where it was originally located. The image file won’t appear in any of the source folders.
•The original file isn’t affected when you make edits. Luminar holds onto that editing information since it takes up very little storage to record it in the catalog. At any point you can choose Image > Show in Finder/Explorer to reveal the file on disk.
The benefit to this organization scheme is that if you want to return to editing a photo, you can easily find it in the All Photos, Recently Added, Recently Edited, and Single Image Edits shortcuts.
When you’re finished editing the photo, use the Export or Share features to save a new version of the image.
That also means, however, there’s no capability to export the original with its associated edits; many apps store that information in a separate sidecar text file. See Chapter 11 for more on sharing and exporting photos.
Remove a Single Image Edit from Luminar
To remove the image from your library, select it in the Filmstrip side panel and choose Image > Remove from Single Image Edits (or press the Delete button on a Mac). The image is removed from Luminar, but the file remains on disk where it always was.
However, the edits you made are also removed. If you open the original file again, it arrives in its original, unedited state.
Add a Single Image Edit to Your Library
If, on the other hand, you want to make the image a permanent member of your library, that’s easy, too.
Open the Library panel, and drag the image’s thumbnail from the Filmstrip to one of your folders (Figure 2-3). Keep in mind that doing so moves СКАЧАТЬ