According to photography experts, the best time of day to take outdoor photos is during the golden hour. The golden hour is a period shortly after sunrise or before sunset where daylight is redder and softer than when the sun is higher in the sky. Not a morning person, many of my images are unfortunately taken when the sun is out in full force which makes for less than ideal images.
To improve my images, I use post-process editing software to adjust the exposure, colors and other attributes of the digital images. A few of the tools I use include Adobe Photoshop Express, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Snapseed. Recently, I learned about Luminar, a photo editing software program advertised to give you everything you need to make perfect photos in less time.
I’m all for spending less time on my computer and more time out taking photos, so I gave Luminar a spin. The results are in – after a few minor adjustments using the cropping tool, I used Luminar’s presets to create nine different variations of a street scene in Nafplio in less than ten minutes.
Click on each photo in the collage below to see the preset I used for each image. The first image is the original, unedited version. While I had a hard time deciding on my favorite effect, I landed on the “Vivid” preset. Which one do you like best?
Below is a slideshow of the same images. Use the arrow buttons to toggle through the slides more quickly and the stop button if you want to pause the slideshow to take a closer look.
What’s a preset? In simple terms, all the manual adjustments needed to create the various effects you see in the images above have been automated via a tool called a preset. In order to save time when developing an image, Luminar offers an extensive collection of presets that were created with input from Professional photographers around the world.
Inspiration: Variations on a Theme.
Capturing Moments 
Mood enhancer centered my attention and center of attention enhanced my mood.
Cool. Nice play on words with the names of the presets! Fun.
Nice, I like Mood Enhancer.
Thanks for looking and letting me know your thoughts on the presets!
Oh, so if you don’t mind, my follow up question is are you still using Lightroom or something similar to catalog your photos?
I don’t use Lightroom to catalog my photos but plan on continuing to use Lightroom for a few other features I like. Right now I’m using Luminar as a standalone program, however, I will likely add it as a plug-in to Lightroom. As far as organizing my photos, I store them on my PC in folders which works fine for JPEGs. I recently started shooting RAW along with JPEG. For the RAW files I may need to rethink where I store the files. Do you use Lightroom to Catalog your photos? If so, how do you like it?
I do use Lightroom as a catalog, which I started using it as such when Aperture sort of folded. It’s fine as a catalog. But, I am not a fan on the PS subscription. I currently have the LR/PS combo. I am hoping that Luminar will be my answer once they launch their catalog feature. I shoot RAW, so I actually keep all my files on a seperate drive and not on my laptop.
Me too, the Mood Enhancer is the nicest one for me.
Glad you liked it!
Great that you have added the slideshow. For some reason, the gallery doesn’t work like it should. I think…
Hi Dina, I had to turn off the carousel feature. It was too responsive, opening when it shouldn’t during scrolling on mobile devices. My work around is to add a slideshow when needed. I need to contact the theme developer. Thanks so much for your feedback!