Why I Switched to CloudSpot from Pixieset Updated for 2023

Pixieset vs CloudSpot Showdown: The Best Client Photo Gallery for Photographers in 2023.

After 6 years I finally cut ties with Pixieset to move to CloudSpot to deliver my client photo galleries, and I couldn’t be happier. If you’re a photographer reading this blog it’s safe to assume you are thinking about doing the same thing. So here are 10 reasons I switched to CloudSpot from Pixieset.

What CloudSpot understands is that your photography is a service and not a product, and when it comes to providing a great service you have to deliver an experience the client will enjoy every step of the way. Even after the shoot. And I think we can all agree that delivering your photos via Google Drive or Dropbox is less than an exciting interface to receive photos.

So let me break down the 10 Reasons I Switched to CloudSpot from Pixieset.


1: Lower Price!

It is important to know that with an online gallery, you are charged by how much storage you use and CloudSpot offers more storage in their free plan than Pixieset.

If you shoot 5 weddings and 10 engagements in a year you’d need about total 5gb of storage.

It is written in my contract that I hold photos for one year. That means you would need 10gb of storage minimum. Last years photos (5GB) Plus this years photos (5 more GB)

With CloudSpot's plan, it would cost you NOTHING! With Pixieset that same amount of hosting storage would cost you $8 a month. Save money and book more shoots, that's the key to grow your business!

Whats amazing is that CloudSpot has partnered with JPGmini to significantly reduces the file size of your photographs without affecting their perceptual quality. That means you need less storage to shoot more!

Then when it's time to upgrade, CloudSpot has several hosting plans that vary in the amount of storage they offer, including an unlimited plan perfect for pros who have a lot of images they need hosting!

For those just getting started, CloudSpot’s Free Forever plan is the perfect plan for you!

Click Here To Sign Up For a Free CloudSpot Account 

CloudSpot offers great storage options that grow with your new business

2: Deliver more than just Photos

I’m a Wedding Photographer, not a videographer but that doesn’t stop me from taking my photos and turning them into a custom slideshow with Animoto to really wow my clients! (remember, photography is a service and this is a great form of marketing too!) Creating these slideshows in Animotos platform takes just 10 minutes and have been my biggest source of referrals. Unlike other photo gallery systems, CloudSpot allows you to not only showcase the video when proofing your images but allow your clients to download it too and share to social! This is the type of premium feature that you typically wouldn't get unless using one of the paid plans but remarkably, delivering video is also available in the free plan as well!

CloudSpot allows you to upload 7 popular file types including Gifs so you can share what you what with your clients, how you want!

www.RHatfieldPhotography.com

3: Create Free Vendor Photo Galleries

Florists, planners, bakers, venues all need photos too! When you share your photos with them they will be more likely to refer you to their clients in the future. With CloudSpot you can create a separate folder of images in your clients gallery that they will not see. That way you don’t have to use additional storage to upload the same photos to a separate gallery!

CloudSpot allows you to create unlimited galleries and from each collection. So upload your clients photos then create a private gallery just for the florist, one for the caterer, one for the venue, etc! Pixieset makes you create a separate gallery cutting into your available storage.

Florists, Planner, Venues, Bakery, DJ, all of these vendors love when you share photos with them showing off their talents. Cloudspot makes it easy!

Florists, Planner, Venues, Bakery, DJ, all of these vendors love when you share photos with them showing off their talents. Cloudspot makes it easy!

5: Client Gallery Smart Phone App Downloads

Your clients want photos to enjoy. CloudSpot allows you to send your clients a link to their gallery that downloads an app right to their smartphone. That way they can access it anytime showing off your beautiful work to their friends and family.

Cloudspot lets you create an app from your client photo gallery in just one click!

Cloudspot lets you create an app from your client photo gallery in just one click!

CloudSpot makes the whole process a breeze! Upload your photos, send your client a link to their app! They are prompted with “grandma proof” instructions to install the app on their phone. On the backend, you can allow users to download their photos to their phones! And if that wasn’t cool enough you can enable watermarks on downloads! So your client can still have an incredible viewing experience but you can keep your photos protected!

The more places you can share your photos to be found the better!

The more places you can share your photos to be found the better!

8: Advanced Print Sales Tools

Just about every online photo gallery system has the ability to sell prints and set your own pricing. That’s basic stuff. Where CloudSpot shines is 3 fold.

#1 Embed your CloudSpot store on your website.

With the ability to embed your CloudSpot gallery on your site, that now means you can sell your photos directly from your site. No need to send them to a special link to a different domain and take additional steps. This is ideal for Landscape photographers, Fine Art photographers, and any other photographer who sells photos in small quantities and one-offs. Seriously integrating a sales system into your website is not intuitive or cheap! With CloudSpot it’s pretty and painless!

#2 Offer print sales within the gallery apps!

In my wedding photography business, the people who buy the most prints are parents who buy prints during the week between 9-5pm. My guess is because less and less do most people need a dedicated computer at home because their tablets do just fine. So they have to wait until they get to the computer at work to buy prints of their children’s wedding. I imagine that print sales within the mobile app will boost sales for not only parents but also grandparents who are even less likely to own a computer!

#3 Advanced industry first tools to help sell your photos.

From mockups to see what print sizes look like on different walls types to using your clients iPhone camera and Augmented Reality to show your client what different print sizes would look like in their own home so they can make the right choice for them! No one is doing that and when clients use it, they typically buy larger prints than they would have because they can see the impact they make!

9: Greater Control and Insight into your Galleries

It’s written in my contract that I will hold on to images for the couple for 1 year after the delivery date to keep my storage fees low. Having the ability for CloudSpot to automatically email those who have registered for a certain gallery to let them know it’s about to expire and include a coupon code to any last-minute prints and a reminder to download their photos before they are removed, simply means I no longer have to remember to do it and selling is done easy!

On top of that CloudSpot has advanced gallery analytics. This info lets you see at a glance how many times the gallery has been viewed, how many email address have been captured, how many images have been marked as favorites, who marked those photos as favorites and more! This insight can help you to create more profitable images and build a stronger business.

10: Offer Hybrid Sales Catalogs

I love CloudSpot's built-in and automated print integration. When someone purchases a print from me, CloudSpot takes care of all the heavy lifting and I don't have to do anything, just collect my money. But there are some products like canvases I like to use an outside company for. In the past, you either had to choose to have all of your products auto or self fulfilled. Now you can have a hybrid option where select products, desk prints, metal prints, ect are auto fulfilled and others like canvases can be self fulfilled.

11: Zapier Integration

This is huge for photography business owners and CloudSpot is the only gallery service that has this integration. Zapier is an online automation tool that connects your apps and services. You can connect two or more apps to automate repetitive tasks without coding or relying on developers to build the integration.

For wedding and event photographers you can connect CloudSpot with ConvertKit or Mailchimp and automatically add new gallery visitors to your monthly newsletter! With over more than 3000+ integrations you can connect to CloudSpot with Zapier the possibilities to automate your business are almost endless! Here is an explainer video on how Zapier works with CloudSpot.

Since signing up for CloudSpot, one thing has become abundantly clear, they stand for something....

YOU!

It is clear in everything CloudSpot does and implements that they are giving you, the photographer every advantage you can when it comes to really leaving a lasting impression on your clients. With the amount of features CloudSpot offers from Hosting, Selling, and Marketing CloudSpot understands to its core that you can turn the last impression into a LASTING impression.

And when you sign up for your free account you can get free gallery migration so you can cancel your Pixieset account as well as a free 1:1 demo with a CloudSpot team member who will show you around and help you set up your gallery and store just the way you like it!

TL;DR I believe that CloudSpot client photo gallery system is the best way to showcase, deliver, and sell your photos online. They have many features that the outdated Pixieset does not and they are always adding more features based on community input. If you want a Client Photo Gallery that makes your life easier, wows your clients, and can make you money, CloudSpot is the right choice for you. You can sign up for a free forever plan, no credit card required. Deliver a beautiful gallery to your client today!

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Build Wedding Albums for FREE in CloudSpot! Step by Step Tutorial for 2021

CloudSpot is my favorite online client gallery service. It’s built by photographers for photographers and their dedication to helping photographers succeed could not be more apparent then with their latest feature update, Album Builder integration.

Previously I was spending $240 a year on album design software so when CloudSpot announced their album builder will be included for all CloudSpot users, paid or free, I had to see it to believe it.

Im happy to say that after building just 1 album I was so happy with the results that I canceled my previous album builder subscription.

Benefits of CloudSpots album builder

  • Clients can build their own albums allowing you to earn money with no additional work

  • Super easy to use! If you know how to drag and drop, you can build a beautiful album!

  • Lots of customizable options. From 4 different album sizes, more than a dozen album covers, and different paper thicknesses, CloudSpot has made it incredibly easy to make a one of a kind unique album.

That said there are a few things on my wishlist to make it an absolute killer!

CloudSpot Album Builder Wishlist:

  • Be able to create an album as a photographer and send a client the link to purchase or make modifications themselves

  • Be able to order multiple duplicate albums for parent albums

  • The ability to add an album to a client gallery similar to how CloudSpot displays videos.

So while there are some features I would love to see brought to the platform, its already powerful enough to replace my old album building software I was spending hundreds of dollars on ever year.

Sign up for CloudSpot today and start building albums for free!

https://try.cloudspot.io/bpp/

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Best Photography Books Beginners

There is no shortage of ways to learn photography. From Photography tutorials on Youtube, Photography Podcasts, and Photography courses and workshops it is easy to forget about the golden standard and the way many beginners learned photography for a century before the internet, BOOKS!

It may seem weird learning photography from books which are traditionally full of text but the truth is books cost a lot of money to produce and therefore the content in them is much higher quality than the majority of free resources. I can tell you first hand these are the best photography books for beginners and if you are serious about learning photography these books will guide you wherever you want your camera to take you.

This article contains affiliate links to the books listed and if you purchase one of the photography books below I may receive a small commission but this has in no way influenced my real world experience using each and every book listed below.

1: Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson

Veteran photographer Bryan Peterson explains the fundamentals of light, aperture, and shutter speed and how they interact with and influence one another. With an emphasis on finding the right exposure even in tricky situations, Understanding Exposure shows you how to get (or lose) sharpness and contrast in images, freeze action, and take the best meter readings, while also exploring filters, flash, and light.


2: Authentic Portraits by Chris Orwig

Taking a portrait is not an easy task. In fact its an art form of its own and Chris Orwig has mastered this art and shares his wealth of knowledge with you. The techniques are refreshingly simple and quickly build confidence. From finding subjects to preparing your own self and how to encourage your subject, this book filled with more than 400 pages of portrait photography tips and education has it all. If you want to take soulful photos full of meaning and not just snapshots, this is the book for you.


3: The Photographers Eye by Michael Freeman

Design is the single most important factor in creating a successful photograph. The ability to see the potential for a strong picture and then organize the graphic elements into an effective, compelling composition has always been one of the key skills in making photographs.

In this book, Photographer Michael Freeman teaches how digital photography has brought a new, exciting aspect to design with instant feedback from a digital camera allows immediate appraisal and improvement. This has had a profound effect on the way digital photographers take pictures.


4: Advancing your Photography by Marc Silber

Marc Silber has not only been a guest on the Beginner Photography Podcast but has interviewed some of the world's best photographers and learned their secrets for stunning composition. Now he passes their wisdom along to you in an easy to understand handbook. Too many photographers get to a certain level and find it hard to advance. We're bombarded with so many videos, books and people telling you what to do it can be overwhelming. Marc wrote Advancing Your Photography so you could have one easy to read handbook to carry with you. All his tips are based on decades of photography and the deep wisdom of the fantastic photographers he's interviewed.


5: Good Pictures by Kim Beil

When I attended film school, our education was broken up into two main themes. Technical and theoretical.
The technical was obvious and anyone could learn it quite easily.
The theoretical is what fascinated me.
After graduating I transitioned into photography. All the technicals remained the same as cinematography but I always felt I was missing the theoretical lessons of photography and what happened in the past to get us to where we are today.

Good Pictures by Kim Beil provides a fascinating look at how we got to where we are today in photography and why we use the tools we do.

Before reading the book I had never given the question of why do we have vignettes and where did they come from, a single thought. I feel much more connected to photography after reading Good Pictures. Highly recommended.


6: Picture Perfect Practice by Roberto Valenzuela

If you’ve been frustrated and overwhelmed by the challenges of real-world locations and executing a great image–or if you simply want to become a better shooter but don’t know where to start– Roberto Valenzuela’s Picture Perfect Practice gives you the tools and information you need to finally become the kind of photographer you’ve always wanted to be: the kind who can confidently walk into any location, under any lighting condition, with any subject, and know that you can create astonishing photographs that have a timeless impact.


7: The Photographers Guide to Posing by Lindsay Adler

When photographing people, you can have a great composition, perfect light, and the right camera settings, but if your subject doesn’t look right―if the pose is off―the shot will not be a keeper. Posing is truly a crucial skill that photographers need to have in order to create great photographs. If you’re looking to improve your ability to pose your subjects―whether they’re men, women, couples, or groups―best-selling author and photographer Lindsay Adler’s The Photographer’s Guide to Posing: Techniques to Flatter Everyone is the perfect resource for you.


8: Fast Track Photographer by Dane Sanders

Competition in the photography industry has never been fiercer. But in this empowering guide, acclaimed photographer Dane Sanders reveals that the key to success is to stop worrying about what everyone else is doing and start focusing on your most powerful resource: you.


9: How I Make Photographs by Joel Meyerowitz

With nearly 60 years of photography experience, Joel Meyerowitz knows his way around the camera and shares some of his best tips to creating compelling and beautiful images in this book, How I Make Photographs. Joel Meyerowitz has been called one of the most respected street photographers of all time and in this book he breaks down 4 key concepts that will help you to better capture your world.

  1. How to use a camera to reclaim the streets as your own

  2. Why you need to watch the world always with a sense of possibility

  3. How to set your subjects at ease

  4. The importance of being playful and of finding a lens that suits your personality.


BONUS: Magnum Contact Sheets by Kristen Lubben

This groundbreaking book presents a remarkable selection of contact sheets, revealing how the most celebrated Magnum photographers capture and edit the very best shots. Addressing key questions of photographic practice, the book illuminates the creative methods, strategies, and editing processes behind some of the world’s most iconic images. The book is a bonus because it is less actionable than others on this list and focuses more on the stories from the photographers who took the photos. This is a must read.


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Photo Decoration Ideas For Your Home

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Humans capture more photos today, in a 24 hour period that were captured during the first 150 years collectively after the invention of photography. To say we take a lot of photos is an understatement! But when it comes time to doing something with them, rather than decorate our home with photos we tend to just leave them on our phones or computers.

A photograph is a memory, a photograph is a reminder, a photograph is art. They are meant to be displayed! Today I want to show you how to use one of my favorite ideas for displaying photos on blank walls around your home, canvas prints to make a statement wall with your photos. I use and love the quality of canvas prints from CanvasDiscount.com

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The process of decorating your home with photos can seem like a big task. The majority of us are not design professionals (I'm sure not) and you may ask yourself “How do I make a blank wall interesting?”. Luckily the answer is easier than you think and I’m going to show you how to do it!

My wife and I wanted to spruce up our home specifically, we wanted to know how to make a blank wall interesting. There are so many options but decided at first on buying a herringbone paint stencil kit off amazon. The job took us a weekend and turned out great. Pro-tip the less paint on the roller the cleaner your lines turn out.

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But after a month or so is when we still felt the wall was a bit empty and even though it was painted, still felt blank. So we decided that this is where we would hang our long overdue family photos.

When decorating my home with photos I found that the hardest part was just finding design inspiration. I knew we wanted canvas prints because of the warmth and dimension they bring to a room but simply didn't know how to design the wall of photos!

I did a lot of Pinterest searches to see what others were doing that looked good for our space and here are my 5 favorite and tasteful ideas for displaying photos on walls. Don't overcomplicate this. Choose a style that you think looks best and just go for it. There's a good chance you will want to actually redesign the canvas prints on your wall, and that’s fine!

These 5 styles are very tasteful and will give you the most versatility.

How to make a blank wall interesting

Step 1: Measure the Wall

To know what you can put on the wall you need to know how big the wall is. In our case, we had 68 inches of horizontal wall space to use for our canvas prints. We knew we wanted to make a statement wall with our family photos so I went to CanvasDiscount.com to see what options were available to make canvas prints.

Step 2: Choose your Design

We chose a single 24x36 family photo for the center complimentary 12x12 canvas prints of each family member to complement the family photo centerpiece. Your first reaction will be that you don’t want your canvas prints to be too big, but if you want a statement wall get your canvas prints one size larger than you think you need. The impact a large photo makes is indescribable.

Step 3: Order your Canvas Prints

CanvasDiscount.com makes the canvas ordering process easy and intuitive. The quality of their canvas prints are incredible and for the price, I can’t imagine a more cost-effective way to decorate the walls of your home with beautiful photos. On top of that, you can save 15% off your order when you use the code “BeginnerPhoto15” at checkout.

Step 4: Hang your Canvas Prints

There are several ways to hang canvas prints. The traditional way to hang a canvas print is to use a mounting bracket on the back of the canvas and then hang it on a nail in your wall. But if you want to hang a canvas print without nails, because you rent or want the option to change your design later and not have nail holes in your walls, don’t worry you still have options. 

My first question was Do Command Strips work on canvas and the answer is YES! (but there’s a twist) I would not recommend mounting a command strip on to the actual canvas surface of the frame. I’m assuming because of the ink, the canvas itself does not seem to adhere very well to the command strip. 

Luckily 3M makes specialty damage-free canvas hangers that I found at the store and are available on Amazon. I used the (confusingly named) large canvas hanger for the 12x12 canvas prints and 2 of the (more accurately named) jumbo canvas hanger for the 24x36 canvas print. 

These worked out perfect my wife and I changed the arrangement of the canvas prints and the command strip canvas hangers could be removed without any damage to the wall.

Remember just because you worked hard on making the perfect design of photos does not mean you have to keep them that way. We thought we would just decorate one wall with photos but because the 12x12 canvas prints were able to hold their own on the wall, we moved the 24x36 family photo to the entryway and were able to decorate 2 walls in our house with photos.

On top of that, the kids love seeing themselves when they come down the stairs in the morning. It has bonded the family in a way I didn’t expect. If you’re wondering what is the best website for canvas prints, you won't be disappointed by CanvasDiscount.com

For additional savings take 15% off your purchase at CanvasDiscount.com when you use the code “BeginnerPhoto15” at checkout

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4 Days in Texas with the Fuji x100V : an Honest Review

Fujifilm x100v Review

The Fujifilm x100v is the latest offering from Fujifilm in the popular x100 series of cameras. I spend 4 days in San Antonio to test the new camera out. Here is the official review.

Buy the Silver x100v on Amazon - https://amzn.to/39QUjxd

Buy the Black x100v on Amazon - https://amzn.to/2TQKl9x

Buy the x100f on Amazon - https://amzn.to/2QdMBFw



Example Photos taken with the Fuji x100V. All photos were shot in JPG using the Classic Negative film simulation.

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Below are links to Find the Fuji x100V for the lowest prices

Buy the Silver x100v on Amazon - https://amzn.to/39QUjxd

Buy the Black x100v on Amazon - https://amzn.to/2TQKl9x

Buy the x100f on Amazon - https://amzn.to/2QdMBFw



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Disclaimer: The transcript was transcribed electronically by Temi.com and may contain errors that do not reflect accurately what the speaker said. Because of this, please do not quote this automated transcript.

Raymond (00:00): The X 100 V looks pretty close to perfect on paper, but in practice does it live up to the hype? I just spent four days in Texas shooting with the brand new Fuji X100V and in this video I'm going to show you what I loved and what I did not. So let's get into it. First off, I'm going to let you know that I think that the Fuji X100V is, it's just an absolutely amazing camera, but it's not for everybody. Now, I've always been the kind of person to carry a camera with me wherever I go. Now, up until now, that camera for me has always been the Fuji X70 I think that it is honestly the perfect blend of portability and image quality, but for my use of using it to take photos of the kids, it's aging. Autofocus is really starting to show its age and as a professional wedding photographer, I can tell you without a doubt that this just doesn't cut it at a wedding.

Raymond (00:56): So when the X100V was announced, I thought to myself finally, here is a camera that I can use for my personal photography when photographing my kids, but also a camera that can be used professionally because you know the IQ is similar, if not equal to that of what is found in the X T three and on top of that, I shoot 90% of my weddings on the 23 mm lens. So it seems perfect. So I got the X100V I bought it a plane and then spent four days shooting with it in San Antonio. So let's talk auto focus. That's something that is always important when talking about a new camera. The expert too with the 23 1.4 Is no slouch, but the X100V I mean just blows it away. The real surprise for me was when shooting the X100V in low to next to no light conditions.

Raymond (01:49): It seemed to find the whatever I was trying to focus on, no matter, no matter how little light there was, which was fantastic. And not only that, but it did it ultra fast. I'm pretty confident to say that I think that the Fuji X10 V is going to do just fine at a wedding reception. Another thing that I know people are really excited about is the brand new classic negative film simulation and let me tell you it is, it's a lot of fun. The greens when shooting classic negative really make an image feel like film, but here's the thing, I'm not sure. The classic negative as is as well rounded as classic Chrome classic Chrome just seems to work in a whole lot more situations than classic negative does. Classic negative really works great. I mean beautifully in a situation where you're photographing very few colors where whatever your main subject is is either red, green or blue.

Raymond (02:45): When it's one of the primary colors, it can just really make whatever that subject is truly stand out, but when you're shooting something where there isn't a predominant subject and whatever that predominant subject is, isn't red, green or blue? An image can be very busy with the amount of additional colors that can be added into a scene. And for that reason, I think that's why classic Chrome to me seems more versatile and I'm probably gonna continue to keep shooting most of my images on that. So that brings us to the tilty screen before I think the the Nikon D seven 50 came out, I always kind of brushed off as kind of a extra, you don't need that to take a good photo. And even though I thought that I would never use the flip screen, it wasn't until I had it that I realized it allowed me to shoot in an entirely different way because now suddenly I could just simply hold the camera down and get a lower perspective and still have an interest in composition without having to physically have to lay on the ground.

Raymond (03:45): But when it came to the X100V when I shoot a wedding, I love my XPro2 because I love the optical view finder. So with the X100 series cameras, I knew that I already loved the the range finder and the optical view finder here, but when I photograph the kids, I really love the tilt the screen of the X70 here as this allows me to hold the camera down on the kids level. I cannot tell you how excited I was to finally give the X 100 series cameras another chance to see if that it could fit within my world of wanting a camera for both personal and professional use. Now this may be a little bit nitpicky, but when coming from the X70 or the XT3, the tilt screen right here, you can pull it up from the bottom. You can pull it up from the side, you could pull down on it from the top because the screen protrudes just a little bit and this makes it great to be able to just turn on the camera and then with my other finger down at the bottom, just flip up the screen and start shooting.

Raymond (04:56): No, I assumed that it was going to be exactly the same for the X 100 V here, but if you notice the screen is flush with the rest of the body except for this little area right here, not being able to pull up the screen from the bottom, but having to come here from the side just feels like there's a little bit too much torque on the edge of this screen. Then I would like, and now honestly I've only had the camera for well now like five or six days, so this may just take some getting used to, I don't know, just something to be aware of. Next bit. I really thought that I was going to miss the D pad on the X100V when shooting weddings with the Xpro 2 here I customize my D pad for white balance auto focus settings, film simulation, face detection, but to be honest, I really don't miss the deep hat as much as I thought that I would, and even on the XPro2 and even on the X 70 here, there's a Q for quick menu, but now that the D pad has gone on the X100V it forced me to go into the menu and kind of set it up the way that I would a D pad.

Raymond (06:03): And to be honest, I like it, but I'm not exactly sure why. Fuji decided to put the Q button where it is on the X100V for all compared to the rest of the buttons. It's very small and it doesn't stick out. It doesn't protrude like the rest of the buttons, so you can't find it as quickly without looking. I feel like the point of the quick menu is so that you can get to a setting that you need very quickly, almost intuitively. So the last thing that you want to do is have to hunt for where that button is. So that's a minor gripe number two. Oh, also going through the quick menu button. I don't know if this is going to be updated in firmware soon, but I really wish with all the previous X100 cameras, there was a a view mode option right here next to the viewfinder so that if you were shooting, if you wanted to just use the optical viewfinder, that was an option for you.

Raymond (06:51): If you just wanted to use the rear LCD, that was an option for you. If you wanted to use the eye sensor to determine whether or not you were looking through the viewfinder or looking at the LCD, that's an option for you. But they food, you removed that button, meaning to be able to get to that setting, you have to go into the menus and I believe that that's three or four clicks away. So that would make sense to work within the Q menu where you could just turn on the camera, press the cue button, make your adjustment to whatever view mode it is that you wanted and then be able to move on. But as far as I can tell that's not an option. And the other thing is neither is quick record for video on the X 70 here, this button, it comes as quick record.

Raymond (07:34): I did the exact same thing with max pro too so that when I'm at weddings, if I'm taking photos I can just take a quick few seconds of video to be able to just deliver something more to my clients. The last X 100 series camera that I had was the X100T and that was an option to be able to customize this front button right here to be quick record. And that's something that I really wish I had access to. So I'm not sure why it has to have its own dedicated movie shooting mode, unlike the X pro 2. Hopefully that gets addressed in a firmware update in the future, but for now if that's something that's really important to you, just be aware of it. So it may sound like I am kind of nitpicking on this camera. I'm not trying to, it's still really feels almost like an extension of of your photographic mind's eye. Raymond (08:16): When you see a photo, when you see a scene, you can see what that photo is. And with the X 100 series cameras, it's just been the best tool for me being able to adjust all my settings before I even turn on the camera so that when I turn it on I snap and then I'm done. I think that it really sits within a really strange price point area because on one hand, as a professional photographer, it's not necessarily an inexpensive camera and the camera does check a lot of the boxes that I want. So while the image quality is fantastic and I personally find it just a delight to use, I think that it would be hard for a hobbyist to justify the price of the camera or, or at least justify purchasing it new. Think about the options between the X100F and the X100V and you're okay with not having a tilt the screen, I would say save the, you know, $800 and get yourself an X100F now the camera's not gonna make you a better photographer.

Raymond (09:14): It's really interesting because I've been preaching this for a long time. I've seen this firsthand in my own work. I went from a cannon XT to a 40D to a 5D Mark 2 then the three before downgrading from full frame to a Fuji XT1. And once I did, I realized that this really didn't change my work at all. It changes how I go about my work, but it doesn't actually change the photos themselves. So when I'm pre-ordered the X100V I was just imagining all the photos that I would be able to take. And then once I got it, I realized I'm still the exact same photographer as I've always been. But what's changed is the tool. So for me the X100V is the right tool, but for hobbyist, somebody who maybe isn't making their living off of photography, again, it really might be hard to justify the price.

Raymond (10:03): But if you really want, I mean just the absolute best camera that you can buy that you can take with you just about everywhere that you go, that just feels fun to shoot with. I don't think that there's a better camera than the X 100 V is the Fuji X100V the right choice for you. Leave a comment below. Tell me what it is that gets you really excited about this camera. Tell me what you think that Fuji did. Right. So overall the Fujifilm X100V it is just so much fun to hold in your hands and see what comes out of it and really get something out of the camera that you can be happy with that you're in control of rather than just getting a blank slate and then trying to create something within lightroom. And I think that the Fuji X100V is finally ready for both personal photography as well as professional photography.

Raymond (10:56): So I put a link in the description below for you to pick up the X100V on Amazon. If this video helped you decide whether or not the X100V is right for you. I really hope that you enjoyed this review. Let me know what you think about the camera. Just give me your thoughts. I mean this is really, photography is, it's, it's, it's very much a community, you know, and being able to talk about these things. It isn't always just about specifications. Sometimes it's about what camera's right for you. There's a tool for personal and professional use. I really think that the X100V has has finally has finally reached that point. So again, let me know what it is that you think in the comments. And that's it. Guys, I will talk to you next time.

Skylum Luminar 4 Review: AI Powered Photo Editor Will Change Editing Forever

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

Luminar 4 is the newest RAW photo editor announced from Skylum Software and it promises a host of new features in Luminar version 4 including using artificial intelligence to help speed up your editing workflow.


Luminar 4 has a host of new and interesting tools available that uses revolutionary artificial intelligence technology to speed up editing times. In this review video (using the beta release of Luminar 4) I test out some of the latest features announced below.


1: AI Sky Replacement

Sky replacement was previously a time intensive task. No longer. In 1 click this tool can transform the mood of your image

2: AI Portrait Enhancer

Achieve revolutionary control of your portait images with no timely masking.

3: AI Skin Enhancer

AI automatically detects the human face to allow a single slider to transform your portrait from boring to amazing.

4: AI Structure

Content aware technology makes the important part of your images pop.

5: AI Enhance

Control many complex adjustments with a single slider to achieve the realistic results every photographer looks for.

6: Sunrays

Create realistic sunrays in your images that with amazing precision can interact with objects like trees and buildings.

7: Smart Contrast

Sophisticated yet easy to use tool that preserves both color and detail information for your image.


I have spend a few days with the newest release of Luminar and can tell you the features and use of artificial intelligence is incredible but in a logical way. Luminar will give you as much or as little control as you want. Luminar 4 wants you to grow with it and I can definitely recommend it for multiple reasons.

No monthly subscription

Skylum Luminar 4 is a one time purchase as a very low price. Once you download Luminar 4 on your mac or pc, it is yours to keep.

Revolutionary Feature

Artificial Intelligence is a feature that has never been used before in such a smart and logical way. Couple that with total control of the image is innovative and a joy to use especially when you want to edit landscapes and do portrait retouching quickly.

Total Security

Skylum Luminar software keeps your images on your computer and are not uploaded to a cloud server to be analyzed.

SAVE $10 When You Use the Coupon Code “BPP” at Checkout!

Like this article? Read more like it!

Full Episode Transcription:

Disclaimer: The transcript was transcribed electronically by Temi.com and may contain errors that do not reflect accurately what the speaker said. Because of this, please do not quote this automated transcript.

Raymond: 00:00 Hey Raymond here from the beginner photography podcast. And today we're going to be using AI to speed up our editing workflow. So let's get into it.

Raymond: 00:13 Hey Raymond here from the beginning of photography podcast and I have something very special for you all today. A few weeks ago, the company Skylab Software to makers of the popular photo editing software Luminar reached out to me to ask if I would try out their brand new offering, which is Luminar 4, which is the followup to their popular Luminar 3. Now, as the host of the beginner of photography podcast, I can tell you that one of the biggest complaints that I hear from new photographers is that they don't want to pay a monthly subscription for a service to be able to edit their photos. And Luminar solves that by being a one time purchase and then you have access to it forever. But what's really interesting is that now they've gone above and beyond by introducing artificial intelligence to help you speed up your editing workflow. So today we're going to get into some of the new features within Luminar and how to use them.

Raymond: 01:12 And yeah, it's, I got to tell you, it just, it just incredible stuff. So let's go ahead and get on into this. So this is Luminar 4 right here. This is the library of, of Luminar 4 so within here, and you can, you know, you can import your photos right here. You can see all of your folders here off to the side. And I've had some time to play with a lot of these photos. So Luminar 4 has really stepped up their game in a few key areas, right? And they all revolve around AI and how they can make your photos better, or maybe not better, but just achieve the result that you're looking for faster while still having a lot of control. So those main areas are, and this is super exciting, AI sky replacement is number one. Number two is its work with AI when, when editing portraits.

Raymond: 02:04 And then also just using AI to enhance the overall look of a photo. Just automatically, right? So what Luminar has done is that they have taken hundreds of thousands of images. They put them into a computer, they've told Luminar what looks good and what does not look good. Like what is the acceptable range of not enough and way too much. And then within that, these are acceptable parameters. And then it lets you get there fast. So let's go ahead and look at some of these things. So this photo right here is of a barn from a wedding that I shot last year. And the day was beautiful. It was a hot day, super hot, but the sky is, you can see was very boring. And unfortunately, as I said, with a boring sky, it really doesn't have the photo stand out. So let's go into the edit module of Luminar 4.

Raymond: 02:58 So as you see, they've broken up you know what you can do into four different sections. So we have the essentials, which is everything like lighting and color and details. I've been there is also creative, which we're going to get into in just a second. Then they also have an entire section just for a portrait. And then pro, which gives you all of the flexibility in control that a lot of professionals want when it comes to editing. So let's let's just go down to a creative first because I really want to talk about AI sky replacement. I really think that AI replacement is going to help make a lot of boring photos, a lot more interesting here in the future. So as I said, the majority of this photo is an empty sky. And my plan when I was taking this photo was to mask out the the, the trees here to just isolate the sky and then replace it with something a little more interesting.

Raymond: 03:54 And I ended up not doing that because as you can see over here, I mean, just the amount of tree detail and space in between the trees. Like you'd have to mask all of that out. And to tell you the truth, I'm not super proficient in Photoshop and this would take me like two hours to get done. And you may be thinking like, that's ridiculous, but for a lot of people this would take a long time to fix. So I was super excited to try this photo in particular with AI sky replacement. So let's go ahead and check this out. So under there's, there's the, the first tab right here is AI sky replacement. So it's very easy. The first thing that you do is you select your sky. So let's just pick something. I know that this is, you know, like midafternoon the light is kind of boring, but let's see what a dramatic sunset would look like.

Raymond: 04:44 So I'm just gonna pick dramatic sunset number four and immediately. This looks pretty good. It definitely looks more dramatic, but it almost looks as if a you know, a tornado or something is coming, but right away you can already see that we'll do a before and after, right here you can see the detail that it how good of a job it does while masking out the areas of the sky behind the tree and not affect the tree. Right? So we are just going to pick another sky though. Maybe I'll pick a dramatic sky number one and look at that. There you go. Immediately one click, right? I pick the right sky and now I found a a, a sky that I liked that gives the photo a lot of a lot more visual interest in that is what we're going for.

Raymond: 05:31 And photography is visual interest. What is going to grab your attention in a photograph? And here, watch, I'm going to show you this. This is the really cool thing about Luminar 4, and it's AI sky replacement is that it doesn't just replace the sky, right? Anybody can replace the sky in Photoshop. But what Luminar 4 does is it takes it one step beyond by using its AI technology and it adjusts the color for the rest of the photo depending on the sky. So as you can see right here, once we put a sunset in the, a photo of a sunset has a lot of warm colors to it. There's a lot more contrast in the photo. So what did it do to the trees? It warmed it up. It added a little bit of contrast right there and what did it do to the barn itself?

Raymond: 06:19 Once again as if the sky was really sunset and nice and warm sunset, it warmed up the colors of the barn and added a little bit more contrast. That is something that you could not do in Photoshop in just a few clicks. And that is why this is so exciting because instantly you can transfer form a photo with one click. Now I'm going to be honest with you, while I love the look of this, it doesn't look a hundred percent accurate. You know, if I was being the perfectionist that I am, you know, if I look over here, maybe the colors aren't the same, it's just a little bit the sky red here is a little bit too much. Well, luckily Luminar 4 gives you the option to to tweak the background even more to get the photo exactly how you like. Now I'll go back to the right photo here.

Raymond: 07:14 Now it gives you a lot of options with horizon blending the positions or you can change where the sunset is. And then as I was saying how it relates the entire scene to fit the sky, you can change the amount that it re lights the scenes. So see if I make it all the way, look at the difference in the barn right here in the trees. It is it's night and day. It is night and day right there. So I don't really like it that much. I'm gonna bring it back down to about 20. Just something nice and subtle. But one thing is that those clouds are so far away and yet they're still like perfectly in focus. Something about it just kind of messes with my brain. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to change the defocus of the sky.

Raymond: 07:57 Just a one, just a one, just very, very minor. Now you can go all the way to a hundred if you wanted to. If you had something like a closeup portrait and you really wanted this guy to be you know, out of focus in the background. And even this doesn't look as terrible as I thought that it would. Luminar 4 did a great job of really putting a limit to what looks real and what looks fake. So I'm gonna bring that back down to one though. Just enough for you to tell that it's out of focus so that it doesn't take, it doesn't take attention away from the barn here, but enough to where you can still see that it is a beautiful, beautiful sky. So that is a AI sky replacement on this photo right here. But now I want to show you something.

Raymond: 08:41 Awesome because here is another photo same day, same location. And I really wanted to look at the sky here now cause there was, this was one of the very few clouds there that day and there really wasn't a lot going on, but I knew that I wanted some color. I wanted a photo with color. And I wanted the, the barn feel, right? So we used the silo right here. Now as you can see in this photo, we have string lights and the string lights. There is a lot of very small details. And if you look right there in the photo, you can see that it for one is out of focus, which for Photoshop is very hard to mask if you're doing it by yourself. And like with the selection tool because the difference between where that ball is and where it's not is very, very very, very small.

Raymond: 09:32 That difference right there. So I was excited to see what AI sky replacement can do here. So let's pick a, just a dramatic sky. We'll just pick dramatic sky too and we'll see what happens. Okay. Whoa. Dramatic sky too. That is definitely very dramatic. And I don't really like how it looks though. Maybe just dramatic sky one. Okay. Yeah, this is fine. So as you can see, it's still retains almost all of the information in the bulb itself right now. I don't know if you can see that because I'm just using screen capture software right here, but I can still see the outline of the bulb. And if there is something that you don't like about the photo, again, you can adjust it here in it's settings. You can change how it relates. The scene, you can change the, the sky global, which is how it affects the rest of the scene, right?

Raymond: 10:25 So if you turn it all the way down, it goes back to the original sky and then it just how much of the sky it actually takes up, right? And then you can also close gaps, which doesn't really help too much here, but it would help a lot like in tree situations. And then once again, you can defocus the sky if you want to bring that up to one, just enough to make it look natural to your eyes. And that is it. That is why this is such a great program because this was done in like technically one click. And then I just went in and started messing with all these sliders right here. But I did not need to. Now remember how we talked about how when you upload a photo of the sky, it will relight the entire scene, right?

Raymond: 11:10 So we've seen what happens when you upload a photo of the sunset. We've seen what happens when you upload a photo of a dramatic sky. There's, it's a little cooler. It's a little less contrasty. But what happens if you load your own custom sky image here, I'm going to go to the desktop and upload a photo of the Milky way, right of a nighttime sky. If you look at this photo right here, this was taken in the daylight. It's was going for a high key thing. Didn't work out as well as I was hoping for. But again, the sky very bland and boring in this photo right here. So all I'm gonna do is just upload a photo of this Milky way and see what happens. So let's go ahead and wait for that to update and boom, Whoa. First of all, even though this may not look absolutely perfect, you can see that the trees back here were out of focus.

Raymond: 12:05 While the stars are perfectly in focus and that doesn't make a lot of sense. The job that it does really lighting this scene is phenomenal. Let's do these side by side. Right here you can see in this side there's more purple in her dress. It is a little cooler and a little it just adds something that honestly I can't even describe. I don't know if I'd be able to edit it. I don't know if it's a little extra. You know, if it brings down the highlights or what it does, but the result looks pretty convincing, pretty convincing. If you were to, you know, take this photo at night, now you can, you know, do an even better job by tweaking this even more. You can defocus the sky a little bit even by just one and that's technically zero right there. Let's see.

Raymond: 12:54 So bring that up to just one, right? So you lose a lot of stars that way. I actually don't want to do that, right? I want to leave it at zero. But what I want to do is maybe work on closing the gaps here. We'll see if that helps bring that all the way up and see what that does. That definitely helps a lot here in the trees. But you can edit the mask with this button right here. You can go in and you can change the mask to get even more precision done. And that is what makes this program once again, so exciting to you. She's the possibilities that you can do. Now. You wouldn't do this for every single wedding photo of course. But for certain portraits, for stylized photos, you can really stretch your creative muscles with Luminar 4, and again, I can't wait to dive even deeper into this and this is just a pre, this is, you know, not even a production release of the program yet.

Raymond: 13:52 I cannot wait to see what happens in the future. So that's kind of my wrap up of AI sky replacement, a lot of awesome features. I want to know, where would you use this most? Just leave a comment below and let me know. Okay. So next that we want to talk about. One of the next big things that Luminar 4 is introducing by you know, using AI in the program is it's focused on portraits. So I have a senior photo right here that I took of my wife's nephew. I'm sorry, my wife's cousin Jake and we are going to go ahead and play with this a little bit. So let's go ahead and zoom in on his face right here. Now remember how off to the side, we have a few options. We have essential creatives and portrait. So I'm going to go straight to portrait because that's exactly what I'm going to be working on here.

Raymond: 14:42 So within portrait we have a few options AI sky enhancer. So let's just go to AI sky enhancer. So now you'll see that it's a, a, a slider from zero all the way up to a hundred. So let's see what a a hundred does. Just in case you can't see, I'm going to zoom in to 200% just so that you can see the difference in the skin. So it's really like looks porcelain looks glossy. It doesn't look too appealing. But once again, I think that Luminar does a fantastic job of stopping you from abusing its power. It really looks, you know, better than what you could do with a few simple tweaks within a Photoshop. But now let's go ahead and click the single button AI skin defects removal. So what it does here is it's going to use AI to look at the skin and then figure out what the defects are and then remove those.

Raymond: 15:37 So once again, before, after. So it removed all of his blemishes and in fact it also removed some molds and just like natural skin you know, natural things that Jake has on his skin. And that case, I don't really like it that much. But again, you have the control. You can edit the mask right here. You can bring down the slider, you can remove the AI skin defects. So we'll just bring this down to zero again. So this was the before. And then I'll slowly bring it up until I just get to a point to where I think that it looks natural and still smooths it out just enough to where I like it. I think this is it. And again, it's not too much. It is not too much. So that looks good. Now we're going to go down to a portrait enhancer.

Raymond: 16:24 Now if you know anything about portraits, there's a lot of things that you can do to the human face to make it look more appealing. But when it comes to seniors, seniors are very you know conscious about their skin and how they look. So you can be really fine tuned here to make them look their best. So the first thing I want to look at is the face light, right? Your eye naturally goes to whatever the brightest object in the frame is. So you're gonna want to add light to his face. So let's go ahead and just add a little bit of light here with a slider. And let's just go all the way up. Again, the fact that his face isn't totally blown out and the slider is all the way to 100 just speaks to the volumes of how Luminar 4 doesn't let you abuse a photo, which is great, but I'm gonna bring this back down and then slowly work my way up.

Raymond: 17:10 We just want a little bit of a pop, right? I'm gonna stay right there at about 38 39. Now we have more options here. We have eye whitening and was eyes weren't all the way open, but you can, you know, go overboard with it. I'm actually not gonna touch that much at all. And then there's I enhancer. What I enhancer is going to do is it's going to raise some of the shadows around his eye and bringing a little bit more color in contrast. And you can go up pretty high with this thing. And I think that that looks pretty good right there. We can it will focus just on the dark circles of his eyes. And again, this is just a slider. We don't have to do any sort of masking. We don't have to use any sort of brush to a one quick slider and it's done.

Raymond: 17:48 Now Jake has a pretty athletic face so we don't need to slim his face, but we have the option here too, right? So we'll bring it in and then it just looks weird on Jake. But one cool thing is that you can also enlarge the eyes. So let's bring that all the way up. Definitely larger. But it's not crazy, right? But I am going to, I'm going to leave that at about 60% because I think that that looks pretty good and a lot more compelling than what it was. We can play with the eyebrows here, which is gonna make them a bit darker, add some more contrast. That looks good. Now Jake here has very red lips so we can adjust the saturation. We don't want to add any more saturation, cause again, they're already pretty red. We don't want to add any more redness because they're already pretty red.

Raymond: 18:30 But we can dark in the lips just a little bit. There you go. To make them look, you know, take less of the focus away from the lips and bring them more to the eyes. And then you also have the option to whiten teeth, which Jake's teeth aren't being shown here. But you have that option. So this photo right here, it doesn't really look that amazing, right? It doesn't stand out that much. And that is okay. That is good because you don't want your editing to distract you from the photo itself. So let's come back here and then let's just go ahead and turn this off, right? We turned that off. Suddenly you see a difference, don't you? We turn that back on and now you realize that your eye goes right to Jake's face. And that's, that's the whole point of what it is that we're trying to do here.

Raymond: 19:15 So let's go ahead and look at a, a, a true, you know, a closeup portrait and what you can do with a closeup portrait. And now this was at a wedding that I shot just a few months ago. It was very rainy day. So we got in front of a big, large window, nice soft light. As you can see, it wraps around and this was the photo that I got. Now oftentimes when brides when they're not used to being in front of a camera, they just put on a smile that they are used to, right? And sometimes when you smile really big, it makes your cheeks larger. And when it makes your cheeks larger, it makes your face look wider. So this is where that slim face option comes in and can be really helpful. So first off, let's just go to AI skin enhancer and we're gonna bring this up and we're going to see what this does because she already doesn't have many blemishes on our face to begin with.

Raymond: 20:13 So we brought this up about, you know, 40, we're going to bring this up to half and see what this does right already though, you can still see the pores and her face and that is the sign of like good versus bad. You know, face skin smoothing because regular, just skin smoothing is going to remove those pores. So we're going to turn that off and we're going to turn it back on. Yeah, it is super subtle, but it really, really makes a difference here. Okay. So we're going to be done there. Then we're going to go to back to portrait enhancer. I'm going to bring just a little bit more light on her face to hope that it brightens up the shadows over there, which by the way, I can still go into my essentials, go into light, and then adjust my shadows any way that I want to or even go into pro and do the exact same thing with more fine tuned details and adjustment.

Raymond: 21:03 But I'm just going to work in the portrait area right now. So we have red iron removal. Not a problem. I whitening, you know, you can bring that up just a little bit. I enhancer once again, it's gonna remove some of the shadows under the eyes and, and bring up the contrast in the colors of her eyes. And then same with the dark circles, a remover. We're going to bring that up and that's just going to bring light in from under the eyes. And now slim face. Let's see what this does. That's going to bring her face in, in a really tone down those cheekbones that you get from making that nice wide smile. And already I can tell this looks a lot more natural to who she was as a bride. And then you can also enlarge the eyes. So we don't wanna do this too much because when you know, you, you smile big and you kind of squint and then you enlarge those eyes.

Raymond: 21:53 It can look fake real quick. But I think that that looks good because of the light. It takes away some of the pop from her eyebrows. So we're going to bring that up a little bit. Now her lips here could use, this is a situation where they could use a little bit of saturation, a little bit of redness. We can bring that all the way up if we wanted to. And that judge, that just looks too much. So I'm going to bring that back down. It's just very, very light. But we don't want to darken the lips, but we can add some teeth whitening here and then get in nice and close here. We can even, we can go all the way. See what that looks like.

Raymond: 22:29 Yeah, that's not, that's not crazy. That's not crazy. That's still looks pretty natural, but I'm going to bring that down. Okay. Now we're going to come out of here and then we're just going to look at a before and after. And as you can see, look at the before and after. Which one would you rather have in an album and the end, it doesn't look unnatural. It doesn't look like who is that woman who, that's not me. This all looks very, very natural. And this was done in seconds, right? In less than two minutes. I have a portrait that her parents are going to want to you know, print out and put a large like above their, you know, their fireplace here took no masking or anything to do. Alright, so we've seen how AI sky replacement works. We've seen how the portrait enhancer works.

Raymond: 23:14 Now let's go ahead and look at just how AI can enhance a photo on its own. Now as I said, one of the big things about AI is that there are some security questions, right? Do we know how safe AI is? And in this scenario, I got the chance to talk with the chief technical officer of a Skylum Software who creates Luminar 4 and ask him about the safety specifically of our photos. What I was told is that for AI, what Skylum did is that they gave Luminar 4 hundreds of thousands of photos to look at and then it gave it parameters as to what was good and what was not good. And then it took that algorithm and then put it within the software of Luminar 4. So at no time does it ever take your photos, upload them to some server to analyze, and then make decisions based on that. Your photos stay on your computer.

Raymond: 24:10 And that is super important to know. If you're dealing with sensitive photos or you just don't want to deal with, you know, any sort of information lost. So with that being said, let's look at how AI has you know, how it can enhance our photos and just speed up our work flow. So as you can see, this photo right here, we can look at the history. I'm up here, it is already underexposed and I shot it under exposed. Because I still want to detail in the sky up here, wrong photo because I still want to detail in the sky up here and I want detail in a V dress without blowing it out. So I purposely underexposed this photo. Now maybe I underexpose it a little more than what I needed to, but let's see what AI enhance says.

Raymond: 24:57 So from here we got two sliders, AI accent in AI sky enhancer. So there's really not much sky in this photo. So we're just gonna deal with AI accent first. So we're just going to go ahead and slowly start to bring this up. And I can already tell that what it's doing is, for one, it's brightening up the exposure, which we can see up here in the histogram. It's bringing up the exposure as well as trying to keep the contrast down. But it's having a hard time. I mean there's a lot of colors here, so it brings up a lot of contrast. And I also believe that it has warmed up the photo just a tiny, tiny, tiny bit. Now looking at this photo, I like the look of the flowers. I like the look of the background, but I believe that the skin is just a tiny bit too orange for my taste.

Raymond: 25:40 So one thing that I can do for granular control is I can go into color, I can go into advanced settings and then I could pick orange, right? And now cause that's about the color of her skin. That's where it's going. And just to show you, we can turn the luminance all the way down so that you can see that it is affecting the skin. But one thing so I don't want to affect the luminance. I just want to effect the saturation. Just bring that down a tiny bit so that her skin doesn't look so out there. And I think that that is enough right there. So there we've used AI enhance to effectively take control of the image. And still I found something that I didn't like. So what I did was I just changed the color on my own.

Raymond: 26:25 Now going even further, there's also this AI structure option and what ad structure says that it does is that it you know, enhances the structure of the of the photo. So I guess that that, that wasn't really helpful, but things like small, it will bring out the, it'll add some contrast, it'll just make it pop without effecting the human. So the AI that Luminar 4 uses has looked at this photo, used computational photography technology, and has deemed this a person right here. So when I change the slider it, she will not be affected at all. So let's just turn it all the way up so you can see what it does. So let's see. We'll wait for that. And there you go. So it has affected the dress because there is details and structure within the dress, but as far as the skin goes, we'll just go ahead and look at this.

Raymond: 27:21 I guess that is the the, the, the before and after. So that's not going to help too much. So I'll take that off. Let's just go ahead and turn this off and turn this back on. It's not affecting her, it's not affecting the skin or anything like that. So we're going to turn that back off. We're going to turn it on and now it looks definitely looks more HDR, so that's too much. But again, you just add a little bit of a pop and then you can add some boosts. Let's see what that does. It just six. Yeah, it's more of a color thing as well. So we'll bring that down and look at that. To me, I think that that looks like a great photo. And again, done with let's see, one slider two, three and then four, five clicks. This photo went from, you know, before to after fantastic results.

Raymond: 28:13 Okay. So let's go ahead and look at some of the creative options that a Luminar 4 has introduced, aside from just AI sky replacements. So we obviously have AI sky replacement. One of the cool things is a new option called mystical and mystical. Let's go ahead and look at this. So within mystical, what, what is what, how would you describe mystical? Like if you were to edit a photo in a mystical sense, how would you edit it? It's hard to put into words, right? It would be kind of soft, it would be kind of dark, but it wouldn't be underexposed. So how would you describe it? It's very hard, but now you can add that just a little bit of mystery to your photos with just one slider. So I'm going to take this slider and bring it all the way up. And as you can see some softness, it has warmed up the overexposed like sun area right here, while still bringing in a little bit of contrast and brightness to the shadows.

Raymond: 29:05 And now you can also adjust the shadow so you can warm up the shadows if you want to, which does introduce a little bit of a, you know, color change. But I don't want to, I want to believe that all the way down here. And then I'm going to go back into essentials. I'm going to go to AI, enhance and I'm going to see what AI enhanced can do. So I like it. Again, it's a, it's brightening up the photo just a tiny bit. There's a little too much saturation for me, technically vibrant, so I'm gonna bring it down. The vibrance, specifically in the greens, we're going to bring down the luminance of the green and the saturation of the green just to make it a little bit more natural or at about bear. And now also in creative, we have the option to add sunrays.

Raymond: 29:50 Sunrays why would you think like what are you going to do with sunrays? There's plenty of reasons why you would use sunrays and when you have a photo, like this is a good composition. You like the color, but it's just missing something and you can't really do AI sky replacement cause there's just so many trees and there are so out of focus that this is a situation to where it wouldn't work. Again, it's not a miracle worker. And in this situation it would just look terrible anyway. You're not going to get any sort of detail out of the sky. Let's try sunrays right? So let's go ahead and place a sun. So we're going to say that the sun is right about here and we're going to up the amount. Okay? We're just going to go all the way to a hundred. Well, way too much clearly, but not so much that you're thinking to yourself.

Raymond: 30:33 That's too much, right? I mean, I guess technically too much, but not, you know the, the photo was ruined. So we're just going to bring, you know what? I'm going to keep it up because I like, I like how strong it is. Okay. I'm going to bring that right there and I'm going to, now we have options for a overall look. Sunray length and penetration, right? We can see that we have a trees back there and right now it almost looks as if the sun is in front of those trees. So let's see what happens when we play with the penetration. Yes. So you can send it still behind the trees. So right about there, it still looks natural and yet it looks like the light is coming through the branches rather than in front of the branches. So with just a few clicks, I mean we've gotten really fantastic results right here.

Raymond: 31:20 And again, you can adjust even the which is really granular, you can change the sun's warmth as well as the sun rays warm. So you can bring down the sun warmth, but really boost that Sunray warmth right there. And as you can see, I mean that really looks stylized right there. This is the kind of photo that you would print out and hang in your house. This is not the kind of photo to where you just make all of the photos look like this. This is a, this is a piece of art, you know what I mean? So when we talk about the difference between, is this a creative or is this cheating? I don't think that it's cheating. You know a hundred years ago people thought that if you cropped your photo, you are cheating because that's not how the scene in front of you looked.

Raymond: 32:06 And there's merit to that, right? If you're a documentary photographer, you really don't have much that you can do to your photos and still remain and still keep that integrity to point. It comes to creating a piece of art through your photography. I see no reason why you can't add some flare. Why you can't make it look more mystical. Why you can't replace the sky? Because these are simply tools. You don't have to use these tools. I have a hammer out in my garage, but I'm not going to use it if I'm going to, you know, change the tire, my car, just because I have the tool doesn't mean that I have to use it. But in a situation where I need to hang a picture frame, I'm going to use that hammer and in a situation where I want to create a piece of art, something unique, something creative for my clients or for myself, I'm going to be using every single tool that I can to achieve the results that I want.

Raymond: 33:01 And I don't think that that is cheating it. Now, if you're saying that this is how it came out of camera, that's cheating, that's wrong, but that's up to you to create, right? We see photos all day, every day that are manipulated in Photoshop, and it's not, it's just simply art. It's somebody's vision that they wanted and that they create. So I don't think that this is cheating. I think that using AI in photography is going to be a great way to speed up the editing process. It is going to be a great way to just save us so much time just to do the the tasks that we don't want to do. Right? The masking around the face, the things that aren't creative, this frees you up to be more creative. And for that, I am really excited to see where Luminar 4 can take my photos.

Raymond: 33:52 What, Luminar 4 can do for your photos as well. So if you are interested in Luminar 4 what I want you to do is click in the description below where there is a coupon for $10 off your purchase if you check it out. Now that is with all transparency and affiliate links. So if you do decide to purchase Luminar 4 if you think that this is the right decision for you and for your style of editing and photography, then I will receive a commission. If you do decide to purchase the product. But that is it. I want to know your thoughts. Are you going to be picking up Luminar 4, and if so, for what? Where is it gonna save you the most amount of time? Is it just the AI enhanced to you know, bring up the quality of your photos quick? Is it that the AI sky replacement or is it for working with portraits? Where do you see working with Luminar 4 is going to be the best for your photography? Leave your answer in the, in the comments below. It's onto the description in the comments below and I'm really excited to hear what you guys think. So that is it again, Raymond here from the beginning photography podcast, and I will talk to you soon.