Photo Editing Challenge Day 2 – Contrast and Tone Control

Welcome to Day #2 of the photo editing challenge! In this tutorial, you’ll learn what tools to use to adjust contrast and do tone control with Luminar AI.

This tutorial will show you how to lower the contrast and recover detail in a high contrast image, and how to boost it on an image that is low contrast.

Here’s a little before and after preview of how to give more punch to an image that is flat and lifeless.

Photography challenge themes for the week

Over the course of the next five days, you’ll be working with these photography themes and practicing these editing techniques:

• Day 1: Quickstart using Luminar AI templates and tools – Learn how to do quick edits using Luminar AI template workflow and a few of the AI tools.
• Day 2: Contrast, tone control, and sharpness – You’ll learn how to fix a high-contrast image to retain detail all over, as well as how to give a flat image more punch and color. Masking will be covered today also.
• Day 3: Getting creative – Learn how to affect the mood and style of your images with the Creative Tools panel. I’ll provide two photos from my brand new sky replacement pack and two of my Cuba texture images for you to work with this day.
• Day 4: Portrait editing – You’ll learn how to use the amazing Portrait AI tools and other enhancements to make your people pictures really pop, quickly and easily with the Face, Skin, and Body AI tools in Luminar AI.
• Day 5: Fixing issues – Learn how to fix common issues like removing unwanted things from your photos, lens distortion, lens flare, perspective distortion, noise, and removing a pesky color tint.

Follow the steps below to get started, then watch the video tutorial.

AI Photo Editing: Read my review of Luminar Neo, the next generation photo editing using AI. It’s an industry game changer. If you’ve already got it, enrolling in my Luminar Neo course should be able to get you up and editing in days instead of weeks. Check it out.

Step 1 – Sign up to get the RAW files and be entered to win

Make sure to click CONFIRM in the email you’ll get after you sign up. Then look for the next email with the download link for day one. Then you’ll get each of the next 4 days delivered straight to your inbox.

NOTE: If you don’t see the confirmation email, check your spam and junk folders. Also, make sure to add my email address to your contact list or address book so you get all future emails as well.

Not to worry if you’re a day or so behind, you’ll get each of the emails and images one day after the last. Just start on day 1 and continue from there.

Step 2 – Get Luminar AI

If you don’t already own Luminar AI (aff), I’ve arranged for a free trial that’s available to use while you go through the challenge. This download link is available in the first email you will receive once you register. I am a Skylum Ambassador, so I can provide the free trial, but it’s not publicly available so you will have to sign up to get the link.

Using the free trial of Luminar AI will not allow you to learn about photo editing as you go through these tutorials, but also try out and experience what I believe to be one of the BEST photo editing software (especially for beginners) currently available on the market.

NOTE: If you download it today make sure to check for updates and then update to the latest version after you install it!

Luminar AI discount code: If you decide to purchase Luminar AI use my discount code DIGITALPHOTOMENTOR to get $10 off.

Step 3 – Watch the Luminar AI tutorial about how to adjust image contrast

Here are a few other links to things I mentioned in the video or that are related and you might find helpful:

• How to Quickly Improve Your Images by Checking the Background
• How to Resize Photos for Facebook, Email, and Social Media
• Photo Editing Terms You Need to Know

Step 4 – Your turn to practice

Here’s the other before and after example shown in the video.

Now it’s time for you to get working on them yourself. Please share one or more of your finished images in the comment area below. I’d love to see how you make out and what you create with my images.

If any questions about Luminar AI or anything else, please post them below as well.

if you need help opening images in Luminar the first time, read this: Video Tutorial – How to Open Images in Luminar 4 (in that video I demonstrate both the stand-alone and plugin version for Luminar 4 and the process is exactly the same for Luminar AI.

NOTE: If you are having issues uploading your images to the comment area, you need to make sure they are not over 2 MB in size. Watch this to see how to make them smaller: How to Resize Photos for Facebook, Email, and Social Media.

For Day #3 tomorrow, I’ll be back to talk about the creative tools in Luminar AI and how you can add more style and mood to your images.

Cheers,