Category Archives: Astrophotography

Portrait retouching can get overwhelming sometimes with the steps you need to take to make your shots look absolutely perfect. Maybe these steps aren’t that hard, but they can definitely be very time-consuming, so finding any way to speed this process up to make better and more efficient use of your time is a high priority for every photographer. Using Luminar Neo to tackle these steps can make retouching a breeze using just a few tools and leveraging some of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) built into the application.

Full disclosure: This article was brought to you by Skylum, the software company behind Luminar NEO.

Luminar Neo is a surprisingly diverse and versatile application that can help photographers do incredibly advanced work from everything including star trails and astrophotography to composite work, breathtaking landscapes, and incredible portraits. Taking advantage of the advanced retouching tools within Luminar Neo can help editors speed up their work, as well as take a lot of the tedium out of the process. Users can leverage a powerful “slider” based editing system for a large portion of the work that would normally require detailed and pin-point pen/mouse work to complete.

The Essentials

The first thing to do is bring your images into the catalog of Luminar Neo either by importing or simply adding an existing folder on your computer into the system. Once the folder and images have been added to the catalog, select an image from the batch you want to edit and either start with a preset (if you choose), or just jump directly into the EDIT tab and start manually adjusting the image to meet your needs starting with the “essentials” section.

It might actually be best to start with using the Structure and Enhance AI tools to start as these tools will help users automatically make adjustments to the highlights, shadows, contrast, tone, saturation, and exposure of the image for you. The powerful AI tools within Luminar will analyze the image and make some of the basic and most fundamental decisions in your image edits for you here, making it easily the smartest way to start editing your image. For these edits, we kept things a little more natural, using the Accent AI set to about 22 (out of 100) with an even smaller bump in the Structure AI slider (about 8).

After starting with the AI tools, the next step is to open the Develop section where users will find most of the tools they are familiar with from other editors like adjustments to highlights, shadows, contrast, exposure, white balance, lens optics corrections, and even sharpening and noise reduction. These will apply globally to the image and are a great place to start to get the photograph looking the way you want after using the AI tools. For me, I just boosted the shadows a little to get a little more light on the dark areas of my image, and added a little more contrast with a quick tweak to the white balance to even things out. Finally, from the COLOR tool, since this is a headshot, I lowered the saturation about -2 and bumped the vibrance by about +4 while removing the Color Cast by about two points. While subtle, this helped me dial back the red/orange tones in the skin slightly without having to go in and manually make adjustments to each Hue/Saturation slider.

(Obviously this doesn’t apply to my current photograph, but with outdoor portraits or maybe if my lens/sensor was dirty and had some dust spots on it, this would also be a good time to use the ERASE tool to automatically remove the dust spots and power lines from the image.)

Improving Skin Tone And More With AI

Now we get into the more portrait-specific tools like the Face AI and Skin AI tools to help correct skin tones, remove shine, adjust the lighting specific to the face, and even reshape the face and body if that is needed or requested by the clients. In this particular instance, since we’re working with a bearded male model who has pretty good skin to begin with, we don’t need to go too heavy on the Skin and Face AI tools.

To help save time from dodge & burning and frequency separation/color adjustments, I simply bumped the Skin adjustments by about 10 on the slider to even the tones out while keeping the skin texture very natural (aka rugged) but bumped the Shine Removal up to 35 since I didn’t want the highlights on his face for this particular look.

Since this is an actor headshot, the next adjustments were with the Face AI tool where we bumped the Face Light up slightly, made the eyes pop while removing the “red eye/vessels” slightly, and significantly reduced the dark circles (a task normally tacked through manually dodge and burn in Photoshop, but was a simple 3-second adjustment with Neo).

This effectively wraps up the “basic” edits for the headshots taking us from raw to a very refined image, which the edits can be saved as a preset and applied to the rest of your session which I’ll explain in more detail a little further below.

Applying Edits to the Entire Session

After you have made the adjustments you want to the brightness, skin tones, colors, and more, you can even save these adjustments as your own custom preset by clicking Actions and clicking SAVE AS PRESET which is located at the bottom of the Edit screen below the image you will be working on. Just be sure to name it properly as you cannot make changes to it once it has been saved. The good news is there is no limit to the number of user presets that can be manually created for the app, meaning you can create custom edits for pretty much every conceivable setting.

From here, if you have multiple headshots you need to edit, you can save some time by taking this preset and applying it to the rest of the images from your session, making it easier when culling to choose which images you want to continue working on, and obviously save a lot of time and steps by already having the “Basics” of your editing session done and applied to all of the photos.

You can apply this preset, or the adjustments as a whole, by viewing the session from the Catalog view in Luminar Neo, copying the adjustments from the image you are working on, selecting the rest of the session, and selecting Sync or Paste adjustments (from the right click dropdown menu) to the rest of the images.

Depending on the number of images and complexity of the edits you have made, this process could take a few minutes depending on the speed of your computer, once it completes you will notice that all of the thumbnails have updated to reflect the changes made to the batch.

Cleaning Up and Finalizing The Shot

Now that we’ve applied the base edits to the session as a whole, it’s time to work on the fine details of the individual images you want to edit and finalize. The first thing we need to do in this headshot is clean up the cluttered background. We do this by simply selecting the ERASER tool from the essentials section. This kind of acts like a real-life magic-eraser (aka content aware) where we’ll mask over the objects in the image we want removed. In this case, it’s the edge of the v-flat and lights in the corners of the shot we want taken out.

Just click “Erase” after the selections have been made, this can include fixing “blemishes” and even fabric and hairs on clothing if needed to have the system remove those problems and distractions from your image.

In just seconds, the erase tool will remove unwanted elements from your image, including skin blemishes leaving you with a near-perfect shot with just minor details left to adjust. In the portrait and headshot scenario, users will often have some stray hairs they need to have cleaned up. To do this, you can either spend some time doing additional micro-erase tool work, or you can use the “Mask AI” tool found in the Structure tool and select “human” to show the resulting mask it created.

Sometimes the mask isn’t 100% perfect, but it’s rather easy to clean up simply by backing out of the MaskAI and selecting the BRUSH tool and “SHOW” to ensure we can see the mask. Then just simply add or remove sections of the mask to make sure it’s covering exactly the area you want for your next steps of the edit. Using the mask tool here can allow us to eliminate any stray fly hairs we don’t want in the image by removing them from our “human mask” and then clicking INVERT on the mask actions and pulling the structure details down. Since we have a solid and clean background, this is a very easy way to deal with stray/fly hairs in the image, leaving you with a clean, crisp headshot at the end.

All that’s left to do is to export the final edit in the format of your choice and that’s it, you’ve edited a portrait from start to finish using Luminar Neo and its advanced AI tools.

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Full disclosure: This article was brought to you by Skylum, the software company behind Luminar NEO.

The Geminid meteor shower has already started appearing in the night sky. It occurs between November 19 to December 24, 2022, but will peak on the nights of December 13 and 14, 2022, where you could see up to 150 an hour. 

With the right astrophotography tools (opens in new tab) it’s possible to photograph shooting stars on any night of the year. But meteor showers like the Geminid bring lots of opportunities for stunning night sky photography (opens in new tab). Keep your camera ready if you want to catch a glimpse of this stunning shooting star display, and read our tips below to get the best meteor shots.

The concept of time has always fascinated photographers. “Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still,” said Dorothea Lange. The American photojournalist was best known for her Depression-era work during the 1920s in the United States, capturing the gaunt and haunted images of families on the verge of starvation.

In some ways, it’s easy to see the impact of time on ravaged faces. But it’s much harder to see the impact of time on landscapes, landmarks and buildings.

Today, photographers have turned to all sorts of methods to expand the moment and to encapsulate more than just the one second in which the shutter clicks.

Time-slice photography is used as a tool to capture the motion, pace and atmosphere of the subject. We often think of photography as capturing a single moment, but a time-slip image shatters this illusion by showing a person, place or thing over minutes, months or even years in one picture.

In the early days of photography, cameras struggled with capturing a sharp image, given the limitations of shutter speeds and types of lenses. Nevertheless, early photographers were fascinated by movement and the ability of a photograph to capture a ‘true’ likeness of a person or landscape.

Perhaps the earliest instance of time-slice photography was in the attempts made by Eadweard Muybridge and his study of movement. His most famous image was taken in 1878, of a horse in motion, which captured on film for the first time that a horse actually ran with all four feet off the ground at one part of a gallop, which was a revelation at the time. Muybridge’s work opened up new possibilities and expanded what we could see.

Photographer Matt Keneally took up time-slice photography to enhance his creative process. He started his career as a designer but now dedicates all of his efforts to time-slip photography.

The sense of time and of ‘now’ is questioned by Keneally in his images of the urban environment, as well as the movement and motion surrounding buildings and landscapes. His definition of time-slice photography is “when you take a series of photos over a few hours and then, in post-production, slice them together to show the passing of time in one single image.

“It’s a time-lapse without the video, showing the passing of time in a single image. I like having a still image; I feel people can stay with it longer.”

His photography equipment includes a Sony A7R Mark II, which is mirrorless. “You get a bigger frame to work with, more detail, bigger sensor, bigger pixels,” Keneally explains.

As the name suggests, mirrorless cameras capture images without using a mirror in the camera body. This is the main difference with DSLR cameras, which reflect images into viewfinders via mirrors. Mirrorless cameras use electronic viewfinders (EVF) to display images digitally.

The photographer is happiest standing out in all kinds of inclement weather, often for hours to shoot his time-slices. Kenneally often has to return again and again to the location if he doesn’t feel he has captured the image he wants.

“I can spend up 3-4 hours at a time trying to capture the changing of time, especially from day to night, or the twilight hour, with its dramatic light shift.

“A lot of people think it’s a bit weird, but I used to be an astrophotographer before. I used to sit all night out in the cold, so this is a bit of an upgrade.”

At first, photography was just a hobby, and he was content to play around with his first camera in 2009. However, the obsession grew until it completely took over his life and became his full-time career for 13 years.

“I was looking for something a bit different. I was bored of taking standard landscape photography. I remembered this technique called time-slice that I tried a long time ago. I was rubbish at it, but I thought I would give it another go. Now, I don’t know how to do anything else.”

His favourite part of time-slice photography is putting the image together and then finally seeing the finished image in post-production. Several different versions of a single image can be created by choosing a different photo, which results in varying results.

Talking about his time-slice image of the London Eye, Keneally found it one of the most challenging due to bad weather and the wheel’s constant motion. “It was a nightmare to shoot and took seven attempts to get right. The weather conditions can change and completely ruin the shot or not achieve the effect you’re after.”

However, it was well worth the effort as his images were published in Digital Camera World. Not surprisingly, Keneally has also chosen the Prime Meridian at Greenwich to shoot. Since the late 19th century, this location has served as a reference line for GMT (Greenwich Mean Time).

The photographer felt it was the right place to show the passing of time. The time-slice image was made over two hours and 30 minutes.

Keneally now has a number of limited prints for sale on his website. A new book is in the pipeline for next year, which will have a collection of new images, not just his London landmarks.

He is moving forward and exploring new themes. “The last shot I did was of the Houses of Parliament. I think I’m done with that. Next year I want to move on to shots other than standard landmarks. I want to move away from the digital and more into books and prints. Anything that distracts people from their phones for a while will be worth it.”

Tired of just stargazing? The best astrophotography cameras will enable you to enjoy and explore the heavens above in ways that your telescope simply can’t compete with.

Rather than just staring at the stars, you can capture the cosmos for artistic expression or scientific record keeping. However, you can’t get satisfactory images with just any old kit – the best cameras for astrophotography are finely tuned imaging devices with very specific properties. 

Update for Dec. 8: The rare Mars eclipse by the full moon thrilled skywatchers around the world. See photos and video of the Mars occultation. Also, don’t miss your second chance to see Mars on Dec. 8 during these Mars opposition webcasts!

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This week offers an excellent opportunity to view Mars in the night sky as it puts on quite a show for observers on Earth.

Unistellar and Amazon are offering one of the best festive deals we’ve seen as their eVscope 2 telescope is $900 off (opens in new tab) while their eQuinox telescope is $600 off (opens in new tab) until Boxing Day 26 December 2022.

From December 8 through to December 26 these smart telescopes are on offer. So if you’re looking for a high-end, high-spec, powerful telescope now is the time as you can either get $900 off their eVscope 2 (opens in new tab) model or save $600 on Unistellar’s eQuinox telescope (opens in new tab).

Battling freezing temperatures and the seemingly constant dark of winter can make it challenging to find inspiration.

But wilderness photographer and Canon Ambassador Valtteri Hirvonen – who spends more than 16 hours of the day in darkness in Finland – has seized this as an opportunity to experiment with shooting new subjects in his personal work.

He reveals how he turned his lens to the night sky and bent the rules of astrophotography to create beautiful, yet unique photos.

Is it tough being a photographer when you spend so much of your winter in darkness?

In Finland, we spend nearly half the year in darkness, so during the winter months I wanted to find a way to continue pursuing photography in my personal time.

It’s not just my profession, it’s also my hobby.

Like so many other photographers, I had to find ways of working creatively with what is within reach and that’s what ultimately inspired me to shoot the night sky.

Luckily, Finland is a great place for it.

There are so many forests and amazing places where you have great visibility of the stars, so it all came together very naturally.

What equipment tips do you have for beginner astrophotographers?

Some astrophotographers will have a lot of gear to help capture really sharp photos and use apps to track the stars or how the world is spinning.

However, I’ve shot a lot of astrophotography in my personal work handheld.

With today’s technology, you can find a way to make it work most of the time.

For astrophotography, you just need a camera with full manual control and a lens with a wide aperture.

Of course, the results between handheld and long-exposure shots taken with a tripod will look very different, but there is great creative potential in trying more artistic approaches, for example with a bit of movement in the shot, you can almost paint with your camera.

How else can people experiment when shooting the night sky?

I love experimenting in my personal work and trying to create something that we don’t really see as much on our social feeds.

For instance, shooting the Northern Lights in black and white or painting with an artificial light source.

I’ve played around with having a light on my drone and using long exposure to create these unusual light trails in the foreground of my images.

Normally people recommend staying away from any distracting light sources, but even if you live in a city or somewhere with a lot of light pollution, you can use it in your shot to create an interesting effect.

In one of my photos of Joshua Tree, you can see the light pollution, but it creates this beautiful gradient from orange to black, which I love.

Even clouds can make the scenery much more interesting – just try to embrace the elements in the frame.

What do you like about shooting during the winter months?

Shooting the night sky makes you forget about time.

On my work shoots there are usually a lot of people and this sense of hustle, but with astrophotography I am out in nature on my own or with one other friend.

I love being in nature, especially during the night. It’s so silent and creates really peaceful moments.

I also love that it forces you to be totally present in the moment.

Living in Finland, I’ve seen the Northern Lights a number of times, but it’s always a surprising and fun experience.

It all happens very fast, so you get a huge adrenaline rush, running to get the shot because it can be over within seconds.

You also don’t know how the images will turn out because you can get different colours each time and that makes it all even better.

When we shoot in darkness, we’re shooting blind so the best thing is creating images that you can’t normally see with the naked eye.

Only a camera can capture the long exposure, amongst other features and that’s what makes these moments magical – the end result is always a surprise.

Where’s the best place to do astrophotography?

You can capture astrophotos anywhere. Of course, there are pros and cons to any location.

For example, if you live further south, you have the benefit of having a more consistent night fall which gives you the freedom to shoot all year round, while those of us in the arctic regions are lucky enough to have the Northern Lights.

There are unique astronomical moments everywhere – it’s just knowing how to look for them and then capture them.

What are some easy objects to start out with when astro imaging?

As a starting point, the stars or Milky Way are easy and interesting subjects to shoot.

You need to be mindful though that it is difficult to photograph them when there is a full Moon, or when the Moon is really bright, so consider the current moon phase before you head out.

Has the advancement of tech has changed the way you shoot?

The cameras launching today are so good that it allows us photographers to capture professional looking shots way more easily.

I don’t just mean the higher end cameras, but even entry level models are sensitive enough to capture the detail of the night sky.

I’ve spoken a bit about handheld shooting – something that wouldn’t have really been as successful in the past – but with the image stabilisation in cameras now, you can get really sharp images.

It’s also making it far more accessible. With mirrorless cameras you have a much lighter and more compact kit bag, which makes the experience much more fun and not so sweaty.

How has your own technique developed through the years?

The basic principles are the same, but the whole experience has changed.The innovation of cameras lets me be more experimental in my work.

Of course, you can now see results much faster.

When I first started, I had to make my experiments and would find out weeks later what went wrong after the film had been developed.

But now I can see it instantly on my screen on the back of my camera – even down to tiny details that add up to help you make the final image.

Apart from technical skills, what else do you need to succeed in shooting the night sky?

I say this for every genre of photography, but it really helps if you master the basic techniques as it frees you to not have to think about it when it really matters.

Give yourself the freedom to experiment, even the things people say you can’t or shouldn’t do such as shaking the camera.

Trust your instincts and push your creativity to achieve new styles.

It also helps to know your surroundings.

I usually go somewhere before it gets dark to wander around before the shoot and figure out where the trees or foreground are.

This helps me to find different elements to create a beautiful shot when its dark.

See more of Valtteri Hirvonen’s work via his Instagram and Facebook pages.

The annual Geminids meteor shower reaches its peak on Wednesday (Dec. 14). 

The peak of the Geminid meteor shower offers skywatchers the opportunity to view what is regarded as the most consistent and reliable meteor shower of the year while at its best  — as long as they are willing to brave the frigid weather of mid-December.