REVIEW: Skylum Luminar 4– FINALLY Complex Sky Replacement Without Cumbersome Masks!

I’ve been following Skylum Software since its MacPhun days and along the way they have made many products that I’d put into the camp of “good, but still not there yet”. Luminar is definitely one of those products that has a lot of great photo editing features, but it’s always lacked my beloved U-Point controls in the Nik Collection (now by DxO). This is important because often times you want to make local edits to specific features of your photo, but not globally across the entire photo. While Photoshop and Luminar offer masks to help with this, they are cumbersome to create especially along the edges of the mask against complex subjects like tree branches with leaves or hair.

Luminar 4 addresses this with what it is calling Artificial Intelligence masking and it nothing demonstrates this better than its new sky replacement feature. While this isn’t far from the only new feature in Luminar 4, it’s the one that is worth talking about first as this really is breakthrough technology that makes me excited for Luminar now and in the future.

Here’s an example of a photo of a beautiful valley in Switzerland that I took this last October. This unedited version isn’t bad, but it’s a little hazy and lacks the impact of what it felt like when I saw it in real life:

Original

To address this, I used the AI Enhance feature with an auto generated luminosity mask with the AI Accent light filter to enhance the details and overall color of the image. I then used the Color and Details Enhancer filters to make the image feel a bit more crisp. Lastly, I used the Landscape Enhancer to Dehaze and boost the foliage a bit. This set me up for what I think is one of the biggest improvements – the AI Sky Replacement – where I used the Blue Sky 4 preset for a subtle but believable improvement:

Edited with Luminar 4 and Blue Sky 4

In less than a minute I got improvements that were good enough for me to call this one done. However, I like to tinker so I kept experimenting with skies. My wife was watching me do this and she encouraged me to use the Blue Sky 6 preset for leading lines that pull your eyes into the mountains:

Edited with Luminar 4 and Blue Sky 6

Changes like these are subjective so I polled my Facebook friends and most found Blue Sky 6 to be the best choice, while some aligned with me found Blue Sky 4 to be more believable.

In retrospect, I think both are believable if you don’t know of the original image. What’s more, it’s feasible for this scene to have clouds of this nature, so I don’t consider this to be a change that misrepresents the area – it just misrepresents my luck with the clouds this day.

What’s more, my sensor was as dirty as hell due to changing lenses in the wind so I lucked out and got about a hundred dust spots in the sky removed when I replaced the sky – without any effort on my part. I’ve seen Luminar 4 fans getting the same benefit by using sky replacement on power lines and other distractions in the sky. This s a huge time saver, and I find it quite believable – especially with the wealth of adjustments you can make to this filter:

So yes, I can easily say that this feature is a hit and delivers a huge value in your digital workflow making this a no-brainer investment or upgrade if you do outdoor photography.

Yeah, but what about…

Using your own sky photos? Yes, you can.

Complex backgrounds with only one click? Yep, no problem as shown here:

Blue Sky 4 with Complex Tree Branches
Click here for unedited original

Now this horribly bad looking photo isn’t believable as we’ve put a bright blue sky into an overcast day, so there’s still work to do. However, I wanted to illustrate the power of the AI masking (which is more easily appreciated with darker sky colors) so I had to include it.

What about people?

Here’s a photo I took in 2015 for my RX100 IV review that I never bothered to edit because it would have been too much work to mask around Kai’s hair. With the AI Face Enhancer, AI Sky Replacement and a few other minor adjustments I got a much improved image with about a minute of editing:

2015 RX100 IV Photo with Portrait Enhancements & Sky Replacements

Take note that I’m using the Blue Sky 4 preset in three images in this article, but the sky is different for all of them – this because this isn’t a simple image substitution but an AI application of the sky that keeps the horizon in mind. In this case it did miss a spot in the bottom left corner, so it’s not quite perfect – but it’s still pretty damn good. As I show in my video below, problems like this sometimes are easily solved by adjusting the horizon in this filter. However, this one can’t be corrected this way.

In this case, I like how the leading lines of the clouds all draw you into Kais’ face. However, you have to be careful about default processing choices because it’s easy to get dark skies like this. To address this problem be sure to experiment with the Sky Exposure setting as well as making sure that AI Sky Enhancer is 0 in the AI Enhance Essential filter.

Above with Sky Exposure set to 100 and Red saturation = -8

I also use the AI Face Enhancer remove skin flaws, enhanced lips & whitened teeth (both exaggerated for effect), pulled his jaw line in and more without me doing any face masks or object mapping. It just works with no hassle and that’s huge!

Video Tutorial

To demonstrate a lot of concepts in Luminar 4, I chose this image that I thought would be the ultimate test:

Video Tutorial Image BEFORE Edits

It features a lot of blown out background, thin strands of hair, and a face that is turned away from the camera.

Notice even when I zoom in, the auto masking around the hair is nothing short of spectacular:

Auto detection of the sky and face make this difficult edit easy

If you have 10 minutes to spare, you can see how I edited this image using Luminar 4:

Conclusion

While I do think the Windows version is unacceptably slow at times on my desktop computer, it’s still usable. I’m also still a fan of Lightroom, so I don’t want Luminar to be my digital asset manager so I find having to open photos using Edit Single Image and close them by right click remove to be unnecessarily cumbersome.

With these gripes aside, this is an impressive piece of software that does appear to be doing some advanced image analysis with AI above and beyond anything I’ve used to date. This alone makes it worth a look to help speed up your digital workflow. As such, I can highly recommend this product and I look forward to great improvements to come in the future.

Where to Buy?

CLICK HERE to learn more or buy today.

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If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy these:

• Aurora HDR 2017 Advanced Lessons Tutorial
• Aurora HDR 2018 for Windows & Mac (Discount)
• Luminar 1.0 Tutorial and Review (Windows Open Beta)

Enjoy these and more on the Reviews tab as well as Ron's Recommendations.

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this.

KelbyOne Discount Information

After much delay, the discount is FINALLY BACK!!!!! CLICK HERE to learn more.

REVIEW: National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) Cash Discount (Updated Jan-7-14)

 

CLICK HERE to learn about KelbyOne.com and my discount information

 

The following information no longer applies. Please see the above link.

 

People ask me all the time if my NAPP membership is really worth it, and I always give a resounding YES. The reason why is because the magazine alone offers lots of great tips worth of the price. However, online you get great tutorials and training that are quick and to the point. What’s more you get help from experts in the community and so much more!

Here’s a quick overview of what you get:

Home Page

The Home Page (shown at the top of this article) is where you land after logging in and it usually features What’s New, a word from the director and general news. It also features a portfolio each week, so if you are lucky your portfolio could be featured for all NAPP members to see!

Tutorials

Here’s the top of the list of 48 tutorials offered at the time this was written
More are always being added too!

The Tutorials are what finally pushed me into joining. I had seen a friend working on a photo and he couldn’t remember how to do something, so he did a quick search of NAPP’s 1075 tutorials and found exactly what he was looking for (and it was even a video that show exactly how some hard to describe in words things worked). This was so cool, and I’ve found myself staying up WAY too late at nights sometimes enjoying the very cool tutorials here which will likely teach you how to do all your favorite Photoshop concepts.

Magazine

To me the part of my NAPP membership that has helped me the most is my subscription to Photoshop User magazine. This magazine is VERY good because it features step by step tutorials on some of the latest Photoshop techniques from industry greats like Scott Kelby, Vincent Versace, Matt Kloskowski and much more. If you want to stay on the bleeding edge of what’s cool in the Photoshop world, and learn how to do it months (or even a year in some cases) before the technique shows up in a Scott Kelby book, then this is the magazine for you. There’s been so many times where I’ve learned a really cool technique from the magazine and immediately found myself using it as part of my regular digital workflow.

The Magazine section the NAPP site gives you digital access to samples files for the magazine as well as access to back issues.

Portfolios

Want to see some fantastic photography from the readers of NAPP? Check out the cool Portfolios section and prepared to be humbled! Remember, these people have probably been reading Photoshop User longer than you and have gone through a lot of the tutorials, so their portfolios rock. The level of talent amazes me on this site, and people are very good about providing feedback in a constructive way on your photos.

Help Center

Have a question about the latest gear? Want to know what Scott Kelby used for something (as I did once)? No problem – these people are great, and in fact I once had Laurie Excell answering my questions instantly at 2:00 AM in the morning! It was awesome!

Online Classes & LIVE Training

Here’s a snapshot of just some of the 40+ in-depth online courses that are broken up into multiple lessons totaling 1 to 2 hours each!

NAPP offers both KelbyTraining style training on Photoshop related subjects (photography stuff ends up on KelbyTraining). There’s lots of great content to help you get the hang of Lightroom, Photoshop and other Creative Cloud products.

Another place where you’ll save money as a NAPP member is on the LIVE training. When Scott Kelby or one of his team come to your city (even international classes offered) and you get a nice discount on admission. I’ve attended a bunch of these and always loved them. In fact, I even hosted a VIP Training event for only $79 for an ALL day class where my readers got to meet Scott Kelby! That’s less than $10 an hour to get training! It even included a great summary booklet to go with it, and I there’s always screaming deals KelbyTraining products (like books, DVD’s, etc…). These LIVE classes are always a excellent and a fantastic value.

Conclusion

I highly recommend you joining NAPP. I’ve never once regretted my membership. Between the discounts and the money you can save in the tutorials (versus other services) you’ll find that your membership investment is a wise one. If fact, it’s time for me to renew now so I better stop writing and go renew now.

Special Offer

Click here to go to the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) web site, and then click the JOIN NAPP button. You should then see this page where you can enter my code NAPPRON15 (or it may automatically populate):

After you enter my code and click Check Code (or if it auto populates) you should see this under the boxes above:

In your cart you’ll see the actual discount applied:

See my article entitled Exclusive NAPP Cash Discount to learn how you can save money on a NAPP membership! Visit the discount coupon code page for the latest details if you discover any problems with the codes, or for other offers.

***** CLICK HERE to ALSO learn more about KelbyTraining and how to get it for the lowest price on the Internet *****

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• Kelby Training Review & Discount

Disclosure

While I have been a member of NAPP for several years. As part of my review of KelbyTraining.com I was given a free membership to NAPP & KelbyTraining. I also may get a commission if you join NAPP here using my code.

Getting Great 4x6 Prints Without Any Hassle–Part II of II

This is the continuation of my previous article entitled, Getting Great 4x6 Prints Without Any Hassle–Part I of II. If you haven’t read that already, I encourage you to do so before proceeding any further.

Lightroom Tip

In Lightroom you always start with the Page Setup button on the bottom right side of the print module that looks like this:

Canon PRO-1

Setting the Printer Driver – Windows

When you click it you will set the paper size to 4x6 and click the Properties button to set additional settings:

Printer Driver – Quick Setup Page

After you are done with the steps listed here you might want to Save a new “Commonly Used Setting” so you don’t have to check all of this every time you print.

On this page you start with Photo Printing as a default until you have your own custom commonly used setting created. From there you have to set Borderless Printing, the Media Type to Photo  Paper Plus Gloss II, the Printer Paper Size to 4”x6” and Print Quality to High as shown here:

I just use Portrait orientation for Lightroom because it sorts things out so that everything just works. If printing from Photoshop you must choose the correct orientation of your image OR rotate your image to the Portrait orientation to ensure your image is positioned properly on the final output print.

Printer Driver – Main Page

The media type should still be correct based on your first page settings, so the only big change here is that you MUST choose a Manual Color/Intensity and click the Set button:

After clicking Set you’ll see the Manual Color Adjustment dialog where you’ll switch to the Matching page and choose None to turn color management OFF on your printer driver. If you fail to do this then you’ll get double color managed prints that will look horrible.

Printer Driver – Page Setup

For this page you shouldn’t need to do anything based on the settings already specified, but you should always double check.

Setting the Printer Driver – OS X

Coming soon…

Lightroom Settings for Mac & Windows

After closing this dialog and returning to Lightroom you are ready to work in the print module. You start by either creating a new template or modifying an existing one. I usually start with the “(1) 4x6 template”.

All you need to do here is reset all of your margins to 0. If you can’t do this then it means you didn’t set borderless printing in your printer driver, so repeat the steps above and try again.

Once you have 0 margins you can make the cell size 6.00in by 4.00in as highlighted below:

Use 300 ppi & “Canon PRO-1 <GL><PP> 3 Photo Plus Paper Glossy” profile
with zero margins and a 4x6 cell size

Your final steps are to simply change the print resolution to 300ppi and choose your printer profile. Your profile should be Canon PRO-1 <GL><PP> 3 Photo Plus Paper Glossy for gloss, and for Semi-Gloss paper you’d choose Canon PRO-1 <SG> 3 Photo Paper Plus Semi-Gloss.

Photoshop CS6 Settings for Windows and Mac

Photoshop works much like Lightroom in that most of the work is done in the printer dialog, but there are a few things you need to make sure you do right in Photoshop.

I generally resize my images in advance using onOne Perfect Resize 7.5 or greater, then I sharpen my images as a last step before printing. If you’ve done this step properly you’ll be able to have a “Scaled Print Size” that has a scale of 100%. If you don’t do this then you’ll need to use Scale to Fit Media which does a good job, but will stretch your image so some image quality is lost.

With those disclaimers, here’s what you need to do with a properly resized image:

1. Choose your printer and then make sure your printer settings are correct EVERY TIME
1. Make sure Photoshop’s Layout setting matches Canon’s Orientation setting
2. Be sure to set your Color Handling to Photoshop Manages Colors
3. Make sure you check Black Point Compensation and Center Position.

Epson Stylus Photo R3000

Setting the Printer Driver – Windows

When you click it you will set the paper size to 4x6 and click the Properties button to set additional settings:

Printer Driver – Main Page

This is your most important step in getting a correct print because you need to make sure you are using:

1. Photo Black Ink
2. Premium Photo Paper Glossy Media Type
3. Max Quality Print Quality
4. Your Mode setting should be Off (No Color Adjustment) to avoid double color management
5. Your paper settings are 4 x 6 in Sheet Borderless with default expansion settings

Here’s what it should all look like:

Setting the Printer Driver – Page Layout

Here’s how I set my Page Layout page by default, but sometimes I’ll check Reduce/Enlarge:

In Photoshop you must ALWAYS set the orientation correctly in this dialog.

Printer Driver – Current Settings

Your current settings window should have a summary that looks roughly like this:

Setting the Printer Driver – OS X

Coming soon…

Lightroom Settings for Mac & Windows

After closing this dialog and returning to Lightroom you are ready to work in the print module. You start by either creating a new template or modifying an existing one. I usually start with the “(1) 4x6 template”.

All you need to do here is reset all of your margins to 0. If you can’t do this then it means you didn’t set borderless printing in your printer driver, so repeat the steps above and try again.

Once you have 0 margins you can make the cell size 6.00in by 4.00in as highlighted below:

Use 360 ppi & “SPR300 Premium Glossy” profile with zero margins and a 4x6 cell size

Your final steps are to simply change the print resolution to 360ppi and choose your printer profile. Your profile should be SPR300 Premium Glossy for gloss, and for Semi-Gloss paper you’d choose SPR 3000 Premium Semigloss.

Photoshop CS6 Settings for Windows and Mac

Photoshop works much like Lightroom in that most of the work is done in the printer dialog, but there are a few things you need to make sure you do right in Photoshop.

I generally resize my images in advance using onOne Perfect Resize 7.5 or greater, then I sharpen my images as a last step before printing. If you’ve done this step properly you’ll be able to have a “Scaled Print Size” that has a scale of 100%. If you don’t do this then you’ll need to use Scale to Fit Media which does a good job, but will stretch your image so some image quality is lost.

With those disclaimers, here’s what you need to do with a properly resized image:

1. Choose your printer and then make sure your printer settings are correct EVERY TIME
1. Make sure Photoshop’s Layout setting matches Epson’s Orientation setting
2. Be sure to set your Color Handling to Photoshop Manages Colors
3. Make sure you check Black Point Compensation and Center Position.

Conclusion

Hopefully you will find this helpful in solving the frustration of making small prints for loved ones of your favorite photos. If so, please do me a favor and share a link to this article with your friends on your favorite social media sites and web forums. I’d also appreciate if you could consider making a donation or making purchases using links found in my articles and discount coupon codes.

NOTE: I ran out of time tonight so I wasn’t able to include the Mac screen shots, but I’ll try to do that soon. Thanks for your patience!

Where to order

Here’s links to where you can get 4x6 paper for Canon and Epson in Glossy and Semi-Gloss formats:

• Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy II (4 x 6") 100 Sheets
• Canon SG-201 Photo Paper Plus Semi-Gloss - 4x6" - 50 Sheets
• Epson Ultra Premium Glossy Photo Paper - 4x6" - 100 Sheets
• Epson Premium Semi-Gloss Photo Paper for Inkjet 4x6" - 40 Sheets

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If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy these:

• Getting Great 4x6 Prints Without Any Hassle–Part I of II
• Printing Series
• onOne Perfect Resize 7.5 – for the best resizing results
• Red River Paper vs Epson Papers – Less expensive papers for Canon and Epson printers with good ICC profiles
• AutoPrint – ImagePrint’s best kept secret? – if you need your staff/family to easily get 4x6 prints with just drag and drop, this is the way to go!
• Which Printer Should I Buy? Epson or Canon?
• Choosing The Right Display Calibration Device – so what you see on the screen matches what you see on the print

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this. I was also provided with samples of 4x6 paper at my request by Canon and Epson under no obligation.

PhotoThoughts: Contemplation

Contemplation – Copyright Ron Martinsen – All Rights Reserved (500px link)
Model – QaioQaio Jade

This shot was taken back in 2011 with a Canon 5D Mark II at 1/100 sec at f/2.8, ISO 1600 at 70mm (70-200mm f/2.8L IS II) on a Manhattan rooftop. The model is also an incredible wedding photographer based out of New Mexico who happened to be in town at the conference we were both attending. She was kind enough to nearly freeze to death (this was late October) on the breezy rooftop while we rattled off a number of shots.

What I love about this shot is the expression of the model’s face along with the light that grabs your attention to her face and incredible stomach. This model has no major skin flaws and there’s no digital diet going on here, so editing was pretty simple. Here’s the before (from in-camera RAW) and after:

Here’s my layers that show what I did here:

Here’s each layer explained:

1. Noiseware Default – Noise reduction using Noiseware using the Default setting.
2. Hairs – Content aware healing of stray hairs
3. Portraiture – Skin Softening using the Medium Preset to help tone down the goose bumps
4. Brilliance / Warmth – Color Efex 4 effect to warm the skin tones and background lights
5. HPF Eyes and Teeth – An overlay layer with High Pass Filter set to 3 to make the eyes and teeth shine a bit more
6. Fix Background – Remove lines and spots from the railing
7. Darken Background – I used Viveza to darken the background and then selected the railing areas using the blue channel to create a a simple mask that only got the areas I wanted. I applied the mask to the image to avoid making my file overly large since I didn’t need that extra Viveza data. I also noticed that I missed a little underwear imprint on the belly so I removed that on that layer.
8. Only apply Tonal Contrast to the skin above the waist and the city lights. I could have applied the layer, but I was done so I just stopped there.
9. Not shown here, but I did output sharpening using Sharpener Pro on the image uploaded to the web.

Conclusion

This editing could have been done in Photoshop Elements, but I used CS6 just because that is what I’m used to. This is a pretty basic edit that took about an hour with most of the time spent on the Hairs layer.

The lighting was one Westcott Apollo triggered using a Pocket Wizard Mini TT1, Flex TT5 and AC7 with a 580 EX II flash. I’d like to thank Clifford Pickett for getting me access to the roof and providing the lighting gear, as well as assisting. Kaethe Mari was also an awesome assistant on this shoot who also doubled as a model (see Travel Photography: Photographing People At Night In New York City (Manhattan)).

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• Imagenomic Portraiture 2.x (Latest Version Tutorial)
• What plug-ins should I buy? (for Photoshop & Lightroom)

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this.

Guest Blog: Using Content Aware Fill to Make Your Assistants Disappear

My name is QiaoQiao (chow-chow), and I am a fashion, teen and wedding photographer. I was featured in Ron's article entitled Travel Photography: Photographing People At Night In New York City. Ron is busy testing the Nikon D800, so he asked me if I could guest blog to you today to talk about my favorite Photoshop feature – Content Aware Fill!

Adding excitement to your photos with motion

I love photos with motions like moving hair and dresses like these photos that I did: 

So when I shoot weddings, I like to try to capture motion like this. What I usually do is have someone flap or throw the hair or dress real quick and have them run as fast as they can. That someone is usually my business partner Kaethe Richter, a recent guest blogger here. We second shoot for each other (very important for weddings), but we also assist each other to help each other get motion shots like those shown above.

Kaethe & QiaoQiao

Dealing with the classic problem of motion shots

Silly assistants don’t always escape fast enough

Motion shots are great, but you typically need an assistant to pull the shot off. The problem with this is that most of the time that assistant cannot run get out of the way quick enough, so you end up with body parts from your assistant in the shot. For example, in the shot above I was the slow assistant caught in Kaethe’s photo – oops, ha, ha!

Photoshop's Content Aware really saved my life!

Before I got Photoshop CS5,  I used to have clone stamp everything out and it took forever!. Now it only takes a couple seconds! Of course sometimes it doesn’t work, but the new content aware patch tool in Photoshop CS6 (preview videos) goes a long way in solving nearly every problem you can think of.

Here’s a quick example of a photo that really demonstrates just how easy and fast this feature can be. First, you open a photo in Photoshop and select the person or subject that you wish to get rid of as shown here:

Next, you just go to the Edit menu and choose Fill:

From the contents section, change the “Use” item to “Content Aware” then click OK as shown here:

Wait a minute and then magic happens – voila, the distracting assistant is gone:

Of course it is not always perfect like this, but the content aware patch tool in CS6 helps to solve some of the problems you’d have in CS5 by allowing you to choose where to sample the content aware fill from. If you don’t have CS6, then you can just use clone stamp to fix it. Of course, this always works best when you have a simple background with a predictable pattern, but you’d be amazed at how often it just gets things right! 

Here’s the resulting image where you can’t even tell there was ever an assistant – it even handled the area by the foot and the dress so that it looks natural! 

You can learn more about me on my website at www.qqjade-photography.com and your can follow me on my blog at www.qqjade-blog.com. You can also see more pics from this couple's wedding at http://www.qqjade-blog.com/2012/05/marlena-wedding-loveforever.html.

Disclosure

QiaoQiao wrote this article upon request of Ron Martinsen as a public service. There are links in this article which could result in a commission if you make a purchase.

REVIEW: Welcome to Oz 2 by Vincent Versace

Recently I finally got around to reading Vincent Versace’s Welcome to Oz 2.0. It’s a pretty deep book that is very thought provoking. In fact, when I read the first edition I gave it a pretty harsh review because at that time I wasn’t really ready for material this advanced.

When I read the book this time I “got it”. I really appreciate getting an opportunity to look inside the mind of a photographer whose work I admire, and learn more about why he does some things that are different from my normal workflow.

Vincent Versace explains his method of controlling the viewers eye so that you don’t simply look at his image, but instead you become entranced with the image. Your eye wants to stay in the image and learn its story. It enjoys coming back to the image to see what else is there. This is what the art side of photography is all about, and Vincent describes with examples exactly how to turn an ordinary image into one that is extraordinary.

With that said some of the things that I found a bit cumbersome in the first edition remain in this edition. There is a LOT of info that can be great if you want to know every detail on how Vincent does his magic, but ADD types like me tend to drift off with that much detail. I tend to be verbose myself so I know this is like the pot calling the kettle black.

This book is so thought provoking that ADD types will find their mind racing with new ideas based on his comments. My instant gratification nature prefers my books to be direct and to the point with lots of screen shots (ala  Scott Kelby). This book is chock full of detail which makes it super difficult for me to focus at times, but the detail oriented types will love it.

Every serious photographer should read this book

This is a book where you want to follow along with Photoshop so you can physically experience editing a photo in the way that is described in the book – much like Scott Kelby’s 7 Point System. If you read it that way then the most important concepts sink in much better so that they become a part of your workflow. This is critically important as it can change your photo editing workflow permanently. Here’s an example of shot I recently did for a client where I have applied a portion of his workflow:

Notice how your eyes are draw to the face, then to the foreground boy,
and finally to the boy in the background before you explore the rest
of the photo. Visual distractions are also removed.

Here’s the before version with an image map overlay (hover over to see the before image only):

With the image map technique that Versace encourages, you can see my strategy for adjusting the brightness of this photo. I try to place more control over the viewers eye by first removing distractions (grass, bright spots on the rocks, etc…) and then adjusting the brightness for the order in which I want your eye to travel over regions of the photo. The net result is a believable probability that subjectively might be to everyone’s taste, but it shouldn’t feel heavily photoshopped.

I came to a major realization while reading this book

The way Vincent Versace describes how he thinks and modifies his images is exactly what I’d like to do to my images – if I had the time and the talent. The reality is that I don’t have the time to put this much energy into a single photo. Sadly I also don’t always know where to darken part of my image 55% and another part 65% - even with image maps done in advance. This is the art part that you can’t teach – you just have to exercise and build that skill over time. In fact, some might argue it’s really a gift which some have and some don’t.

Despite my desire for my images to apply this workflow, reality dictates that I’ll only have time to adopt portions of it. What is great about this book though is that I’ll think differently and try to apply some of the concepts both in camera and in post processing. This is the real value in this book for the average person because you will think differently and look at your images differently after reading this book.

Advanced users can use this book as a tool to get to the next level

If you are a photographer who has advanced to the point where you are getting a lot of things right in camera, and you are doing a lot with layer masks, blending and opacity then I think this is a must read book for you. If you are still at the phase where you fix it in Photoshop, or do it all in Lightroom or Photoshop with just plug-ins, then this book may frustrate you (as it did with me when I read the first edition) until your skills are where they need to be to understand the content.

I’d like to thank Vincent Versace for writing this book as I feel this edition is helping me to grow as a photographer and think differently (much like Bryan Peterson’s Learning to See Creatively (class)). It’s super important to have these “ah ha” moments in your photographic journey to pull you up to the next level. In photography it can be rare for someone to go into such detail about the secrets behind their successful imaging. When you are ready for it, reading this book can be significant in getting you to think deeper about your work, so I highly recommend it when you get to that point.

What’s new for V2

This version removes two chapters of the book (which are available online at Welcome2Oz.com), and improves the organization/workflow of the four chapters that remain. For some reason I was able to follow it better this time, even if I did struggle at times to stay focused.

There’s a lot of good content added online along with some enhancements to the other chapters using Nik and onOne Software Products (special editions included free with the book). For some these free editions of the software can easily justify the cost of the book.

For those wondering if it is worth getting the second edition my answer is definitely yes. Even for those who get this book from the library, you’ll want to re-familiarize yourself with the existing chapters and definitely read Chapter 4 through to the back cover.

Online the “Oz 2.0 The Why To Of My How” and videos are worth a look as well. In addition, you can get Versace’s Wacom Intuos 4 Presets.

Conclusion

My review of the first version of this book was a bit off base simply because I wasn’t ready for this book at that time. Reading this book is much like reading the bible where your eyes may move across some of the content without really grasping the real message. It took me a few reads before I really “go it”, and when I did I found myself constantly pointing colleagues to this book. As a result of that fact alone, I consider it a must read book.

Take a look at my interview of Vincent Versace and his guest blog article to see more of his images and observe how your eye behaves with his photos. If this is something you want from your own work, then there’s no other resource out there better than this book.

Click here to order your copy today and show your appreciation to this blog.

Disclosure

I was provided a copy of this book by Vincent Versace to get feedback from him about improvements in the second edition. I got the first edition from my local library.

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