Lumenzia – New Training

Posted on June 3, 2018 by Andrew Astbury

Lumenzia – New Training Course Available

Regular subscribers to my blog and YouTube channel should know by know that I highly recommend Greg Benz’s Lumenzia plugin for Photoshop.

I know many readers of my blog have downloaded the Lumenzia plugin from my links dotted around the site, and previous posts such as HERE and HERE

Lumenzia is just about the best tool you can buy to help you master exposure blending using luminosity masks, but its uses do not stop there – I use it on quite a lot of my images for making ‘controlled tweaks’ in Photoshop.

But it is most readily associated with landscape photography exposure blending.

An awful lot of people have asked me if I’d do a set of comprehensive training videos on how to use Lumenzia, but that would be a little difficult to do without on-going additions as the plugin is frequently updated with new facilities.

But I’m pleased to say the Greg Benz (the plugin author) has just launched a comprehensive training course for Lumenzia, and I have bought the course myself!

Yes, that’s right – I’ve bought someone else’s training!

Lumenzia

After watching the videos that Greg has put together I can honestly say that the course is excellent – as you would expect.

The course is hosted on Teachable – so you don’t have to download any huge chunky videos either.

For those of you who already have the Lumenzia Photoshop plugin you can get the full course by clicking on the following link:

Exposure Blending Master Course

And for those of you you have NOT already got the plugin itself, you can buy it bundled with the training course on the link below:

Lumenzia + Exposure Blending Master Course

If you only want the plugin, you can still get that on its own by clicking below:

Lumenzia Plugin on its own click here.

Greg covers everything you need to know in order to leverage the power of Lumenzia. And anything that gets people to use Photoshop gets an extra ‘thumbs up’ from me!

Greg is the one trainer I know of who does what I do with my training videos – supply RAW files to support each of the lessons.

You will get raw files from various cameras including some D850 files, so you will have the added bonus of seeing how these cameras perform in the hands of an expert photographer.

So, I strongly urge you to use the links above and purchase this great training course from Greg Benz, and get to grips with Lumenzia.

You might be wondering why the heck I’m promoting training from someone else.

Well, the reasons are two-fold; I’ve already said that logistically it would be a nightmare because of the fundamental updates.

But more importantly, I’d never be able to teach you how Lumenzia works any better than Greg himself – he IS the plugin author, so it stands to reason!

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Lee SW150 Mk2 Filter Holder – Review

Posted on August 2, 2015 by Andrew Astbury

The Lee SW150 Mk2 Filter Holder

PURE SEX – and I’ve bloody well paid for this! My new SW150 MkII filter system for the Nikon 14-24. Just look at those flashy red anodised parts – bound to make me a better photographer!

I’ve just finished part 1 of my video review of the Lee SW150 Filter holder system for super-wide lenses and uploaded it to my YouTube channel:

First off – please forgive the shirt folks!

The SW150 Mk 2 filter holder is designed to fit a list of different lenses:

Nikon AF-S Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED
Nikon 14mm f2.8 D AF ED
Canon EF 14mm f2.8 L II USM
Samyang 14mm f/2.8 ED AS IF UMC
Sigma 12-24mm f4.5-5.6 DG HSM II
Tokina AT-X 16-28mm f/2.8 PRO FX

and according to the Lee website, additional lenses will be catered for; as the need arises I presume.

I never subscribed to the original incarnation of the SW150, for two reasons:

It ‘leaked light’ at the rear surface of the filter (though that was fairly easy to correct with a home-made baffle mod).

But that was of no consequence to me because Lee always gave the impression that:

They would not produce the Big & Little Stopper filters in 150mm square format.

So I’ve always stuck with either the 100mm Lee system or used a B&W 77mm screw-in filter on the Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 or a wide angle prime; and I’ve shot many a well-selling image.

nik14-24_24-70

But, the Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 lens has more than one advantage over its sister lens:

It’s sharper – by a country mile.
It resolves more ‘line pairs per millimetre’ than the 24-70mm.
Its focal length range is more ‘in keeping’ with landscape photography.

And, like all the other lenses in that list above, that vast front element collects SO MANY MORE photons during the exposure.

So, now that I’ve got the opportunity to use the advantages of the 14-24 f2.8 from behind high quality 10x and 6x ND filters – well, let’s say the purchase of the Lee SW150 Mk2 system is a bit of a ‘no-brainer’ really.

The main improvement to the holder itself is the inclusion of a new baffle or ‘lightshield’ as Lee call it – this can be purchased separately as an upgrade to the original Lee SW150 Mk 1.

But you’ll have to do without the sexy red anodised bits that come with the new Mk 2 version if you go that route – these have just got to make me a better photographer!

Part 2 of the video review is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0AkHV8RsDw&t=3s

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Lightroom Dehaze – part 2

Posted on June 27, 2015 by Andrew Astbury

More Thoughts on The Lightroom Dehaze Control

With the dehaze adjustment in Lightroom (right) the sky and distant hills look good, but the foreground looks poor.

In my previous post I did say I’d be uploading another video reflecting my thoughts on the Lightroom/ACR dehaze adjustment.

And I’ve just done that – AND I’ve made a concious effort to keep the ramblings down too..!

In the video I look at the effects of the dehaze adjustment on 4 very different images, and alternative ways of obtaining similar or better results without it.

You may see some ‘banding’ on the third image I work on – this is down to YouTube video compression.

In conclusion I have to say that I find the dehaze ‘tool’ something of an anti-climax if I’m honest. In fairly small positive amounts it can work exceptionally well in terms of a quick work flow on relatively short dynamic range images. But I’m not a really big fan in general, and It’s possible to create pretty much the same adjustments using the existing Lightroom tools.

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HDR in Lightroom CC (2015)

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Andrew Astbury

Lightroom CC (2015) – exciting stuff!

New direct HDR MERGE for bracketed exposure sequences inside the Develop Module of Lightroom CC 2015 – nice one Adobe! I can see Eric Chan’s finger-prints all over this one…!

Andy Astbury,Lightroom,HDR,merge,photomerge, merge to HDR,high dynamic range,photography,Wildlife in Pixels

Twilight at Porth Y Post, Anglesey.

After a less than exciting 90 minutes on the phone with Adobe this vary morning – that’s about 10 minutes of actual conversation and an eternity of crappy ‘Muzak’ – I’ve managed to switch from my expensive old single app PsCC subscription to the Photography Plan – yay!

They wouldn’t let me upgrade my old stand-alone Lr4/Lr5 to Lr6 ‘on the cheap’ so now they’ve given me two apps for half the price I was paying for 1 – mental people, but I’ll not be arguing!

I was really eager to try out the new internal ‘Merge’ script/command for HDR sequences – and boy am I impressed.

I picked a twilight seascape scene I shot last year:

Click to view LARGER IMAGE.

I’ve taken a 6 shot exposure bracketed sequence of RAW files above, into the Develop Module of Lightroom CC and done 3 simple adjustments to all 6 under Auto Synch:

Change camera profile from Adobe Standard to Camera Neutral.
‘Tick’ Remove Chromatic Aberration in the Lens Corrections panel.
Change the colour temperature from ‘as shot’ to a whopping 13,400K – this neutralises the huge ‘twilight’ blue cast.

You have to remember that NOT ALL adjustments you can make in the Develop Module will carry over in this process, but these 3 will.

Click to view LARGER IMAGE.

Ever since Lr4 came out we have had the ability to take a bracketed sequence in Lightroom and send them to Photoshop to produce what’s called a ’32 bit floating point TIFF’ file – HDR without any of the stupid ‘grunge effects’ so commonly associated with the more normal styles of HDR workflow.

The resulting TIFF file would then be brought back into Lightroom where some very fancy processing limits were given to us – namely the exposure latitude above all else.

‘Normal’ range images, be they RAW or TIFF etc, have a potential 10 stops of exposure adjustment, +5 to -5 stops, both in the Basics Panel, and with Linear and Radial graduated filters.

But 32 bit float TIFFs had a massive 20 stops of adjustment, +10 to -10 stops – making for some very fancy and highly flexible processing.

Now the, what’s a ‘better’ file type than pixel-based TIFF? A RAW file……

Click to view LARGER IMAGE.

So, after selecting the six RAW images, right-clicking and selecting ‘Photomerge>HDR’…

Click to view LARGER IMAGE.

…and selecting ‘NONE’ from the ‘de-ghost’ options, I was amazed to find the resulting ‘merged file’ was a DNG – not a TIFF – yet it still carries the 20 stop exposure adjustment latitude.

Click to view LARGER IMAGE.

This is the best news for ages, and grunge-free, ‘real-looking’ HDR workflow time has just been axed by at least 50%. I can’t really say any more about it really, except that, IMHO of course, this is the best thing to happen for Adobe RAW workflow since the advent of PV2012 itself – BRILLIANT!

Note: Because all the shots in this sequence featured ‘blurred water’, applying any de-ghosting would be detrimental to the image, causing some some weird artefacts where water met static rocks etc.

But if you have image sequences that have moving objects in them you can select from 3 de-ghost pre-sets to try and combat the artefacts caused by them, and you can check the de-ghost overlay tick-box to pre-visualise the de-ghosting areas in the final image.

Click to view LARGER IMAGE.

Switch up to Lightroom CC 2015 – it’s worth it for this facility alone.

Click to view LARGER IMAGE.

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