Your lives are about to get easier because, in this video, I’m going to give you 5 simple tips when it comes to quick and easy AI-based retouching via Luminar 4. Thank you to Skylum Software for sponsoring this video and allowing us to bring tutorials like this straight to you! Make sure you subscribe to our channel to see more no-nonsense photography tutorials coming this year!
Before heading to Luminar 4, let’s color grade our image using Lightroom. This image was shot in front of a window causing a green tint cast over our subject. It is because of situations like this that we created the Green Tint Preset as part of our Visual Flow pack. These are our lighting condition-based presets designed to make your post-production process efficient and easy, you can learn more about them here! This allows us to get to a more appropriate color and then we can make subtle adjustments from there. Once we have our final edit in Lightroom, right-click and select ‘Edit in Luminar 4’. Here are our 5 fast and easy tips to portrait retouching in Luminar 4:
1. Use Portrait Enhancer for Elevated Detail
For all of these tips, always remember, less is more. The first setting we are going to adjust is Face Light, this is going to apply light directly to the face without adding any exposure to the entire image. This is a great tool for selectively dodging or burning the light on your subject’s face. I am going to set this at +20 to nicely lift the highlights on her face.
2. Adjust Skin Using AI Skin Enhancer
The reason why I wanted to do that face light step first is so that I could get skin at the right brightness before we jump into editing the texture. As soon as I start dragging to the right you’ll see that Luminar 4 will use AI to remove any skin-based imperfections for me, smoothing the skin while leaving facial features untouched. If there are certain beauty marks or freckles that you intended to leave in your image you can always create a mask and brush them back in.
3. Enhance Details in the Eyes
Before you start this step, shrink down the size of the image to see it in a thumbnail form or smaller frame. This will help you determine if the edit is too intense or noticeable. After that, I just adjusted the brightness underneath the eyes using the Dark Circles slider.
4. Fine Tune & Make Any Other Adjustments
Luminar 4 offers a variety of specified adjustments that allow you to target facial structure and reconstruction if necessary. One of my favorites is High-Key, which can be a nice way to create a universal dodge/burn the image.
5. Create a Custom Retouching Preset
Now, you can open any image and apply the exact same preset, a wonderful tool for batch retouching a group of images.
That’s it! With tools like Visual Flow’s Lighting Condition Based Development and Luminar 4’s AI-based retouch, the technical process of photography is becoming easier each day. You can start a free trial and buy Luminar 4 here! You can also use the coupon code SLRLOUNGE to get extra $10 off your purchase. This is why I encourage all of you to become results-oriented, rather than process-oriented in the way you do things.
Your job as a photographer is the vision, not the technical details of how you got there. Be happy that tools like these exist, because now we get to focus even more on our vision!
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