Photo Editing Challenge Day 1 – Quick Edits with Luminar AI

Are you brand new to photo editing? Perhaps you have no idea where to start, how to approach the process, or how to add style or creative elements? Or do you just want to take your current photo editing skills to a new level?

How does a brand new photography challenge to help you learn the basic skills of photo editing sound? Then this is for you!

This 5-day photo editing challenge will help you get started if you’re new to this process, or get unstuck if you’re in a rut. You will learn different processing techniques and photo editing terms in the video tutorials I share each day. 

But the goal and my mission are to get you to try new things and see for yourself how easy and effective artificial intelligence is at perfecting the final look of your images!

This is all about asking yourself, “What if?” and then going for it! You’ve got nothing to lose here, you can’t mess anything up because you get to use MY images (details on that below)! 

Learn how to take your photos from BLAH . . .

. . . to WOW in just a few clicks!

Over 2.5 hours of photo editing training videos are provided, delivered in easily consumable snippets so you can practice with my files as well as your own.

When we initially launched this challenge back in November 2019 using Luminar 4. It was seven days long with over 2100 people taking part. Here’s what some of them had to say after completing it:

• My first attempt at photo editing (never done this before)….using the trial of Luminar 4…had so much fun and learned a lot from your videos. Thanks, Darlene – Bing D.
• It’s been a great week and I’ve learned so much. I feel 100%+ more comfortable with post-processing as a result. There are a few LR features I miss in Luminar, but the ease with which the software works makes up for that. Thanks so much, Darlene; it’s been a great learning experience! I can’t wait to put it to use with my own images. – Martha S.
• Thanks, Darlene for these fabulous tutorials. I have learned a lot and gained confidence in editing my images. – Diane H.

Brand New 5-Day Photo Editing Challenge for 2021

Now that Skylum has added some incredible artificial intelligence into Luminar AI, they’ve made photo editing even quicker and easier, even for beginners who have no idea where or how to start processing their photos.

In this first Luminar AI tutorial, you’ll learn how to process your images in under three minutes and see some of the artificial intelligence work its magic.

With just a few clicks and moving a few sliders, those photos you thought were unsalvageable suddenly spring to life and pop on your screen.

You’ll see for yourself how easy Luminar AI is to quickly and easily edit your photos. Then over the course of the remaining days of the challenge, you’ll build on your editing skills by practicing the techniques shown in the video tutorials.

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: Quick Edits – using Luminar AI ‘s templates and tools – Learn how to do quick edits using Luminar’s 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 AI, Skin AI, 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, sharpness, and removing a pesky color tint.

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.

Here’s another before and after example of an image you’ll get to use if you register for the challenge.

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 15% off.

Step 3 – Watch the Luminar AI tutorial on how to do quick edits

Here are a few other links to things I mentioned in the video above:

• Video Tutorial – How to Open Images in Luminar 4 – if you want to use Luminar AI as a plugin for Lightroom this video will show you how.
• Luminar AI – Overview of Templates and the New Interface – see a bit more of the template workflow here.

Step 4 – Your turn to practice

Here’s the third and last image you’ll get to work with for Day #1’s lesson.

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.

If you choose to work on our own images, that’s fine too. Share whatever you come up with and any questions you have while going through this Luminar AI tutorial video.

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 #2 tomorrow, I’ll be back to talk about tone control, contrast, and sharpness.