Jeff Carlson - The Photographers Guide to Luminar AI

We think of photography as images, the photos on your camera or computer or phone or wall. Theyre slices of time, sometimes memorable, sometimes iconic or dramatic.

Thats how I saw photography for a long while, when I was learning the choreography of shutter speed, aperture, light, composition, and all the other technical aspects of making photos. But images are just results.

Photography is experience. Its waking up at 4 a.m. when youd rather stay in bed, pulling on the pile of warm clothing you set aside at arms reach so you could dress in the dark and not wake anyone else, and then driving to a stunning location and hoping weather and luck are with you as the sun rises.

Its waiting in one spot in the forest for the fog to drift enough that shafts of golden light cut through and illuminate dewey moss on old-growth trees. Its spending time with someone, chatting and learning while also suggesting movements and expressions to make a portrait that reveals more about them than you both expect.

And then, after the pixels are saved and the memory cards unloaded, photography becomes the experience of editing and refining those images. Too often this part ends up taking longer than you expect, and far too often it leads to frustration with tools and commands and searching online for techniques you didnt know you needed to know.

This is where Luminar AI can dramatically improve your photography experience. In just a few minutes you can adjust a photo in ways that take hours in other photo editors, because the AI core of the app works a few steps ahead of you.

Did that early morning sunrise result in a mediocre sky? Luminar AI knows where the sky exists in the image and can improve it with a single slider, bringing out color and definition that arent immediately apparent. Do you need to retouch the images from the portrait session and apply the edits to dozens of similar shots to turn them around on a tight deadline? Luminar AI identifies the features of the subjects face and can make improvementsbrightening eyes, adding color to pale lips, smoothing skin, removing blemishesin minutes. It can then sync those edits to the rest of the set, automatically knowing when the model moves in the frame from shot to shot.

Yes, photography is also the images you post online or frame for your wall, but from capture to editing, those experiences are what make photography worthwhile.