Over the years I have bought quite a few plug-ins for Photoshop, which I use fairly often- but not without a lot of tweaking in Lightroom and Photoshop as well. In our photo class, it is not uncommon to use well over twenty layers to craft the final image. I jumped right in when I joined- and have become used to this style of editing.

But. . . I have been having some arm and shoulder issues since August, and have been told by the chiropractor and doctor to cut back on the computer (I haven’t mentioned to them how much time I spend texting. . .). Since my two retirement hobbies (genealogy as well as photography) involve LOTS of computer time (like all day long. . .), I have tried to change my habits. I discovered propping my laptop or tablet against my legs and RECLINING is a fairly pain-free way to do go through family trees and compare DNA matches and that texting via voice works well- but nothing was working for photo editing.

Then I started playing with Luminar, which I had but had not really used much until recently. For the last month, I have been editing at my computer using Lightroom, then going into Photoshop if I need to clone something out- and then going into Luminar for the rest. I love their presets, which I can modify with sliders- and then I’m done! I’ve upgraded to their 2018 version, which is even better!

The photo below was taken at Castle Dome. I just loved this little tableau- the aprons hung by the counter. It reminds me of Lonnie’s grandmother’s farmhouse. I spent longer than I’ve been doing in Photoshop- I had to clone some blown out areas in the curtains (only 5-10 minutes). But then I took it into Luminar and used one of their presets as a basis for this edit. What took the most time was deciding which preset to use.

And because I can’t leave well enough alone, here’s a toned black and white (just done in Lightroom with a one click preset I created years ago) for another look.