"Adding some drama..."

That quote is something Joel Grimes kept saying in a class I took a few months ago has stuck with me as I have been working on adding to my workflow. I know that I react very strongly to some of the overdone editing I see online. I end up not trying new things because I don't see how they fit. However, in Joel's class "The Retouch" (not a sponsored link, just love the class), he does an incredible job showing how to use various softwares for the specific thing they do best. He talks about how to think of softwares like Luminar or Photoshop as tools in your toolbox. Something about how he described it just made it all click in place in my head.

So, I've been working on these techniques for a few months now. Part of the learning is realizing something isn’t working. I had started editing this photo and realized I had created a ton of noise in one of my early steps of editing. I wish I had noticed it earlier as opposed to 2 hours into the edit. Part of that is due to my computer being a bit laggy. Another part is me just being me and wanting to see how much I could do to the photo. 

When I went to "add some drama" in the clouds, the noise started to really stand out. Also, the clouds were doing this weird, pixelated thing that I couldn’t get rid of. I retraced my steps and found the issue. Since I was using Lightroom, Photoshop and Aurora HDR to work on this photo, it was easier to just start over. Which went a lot faster because I had already done the steps, I just needed to pay better attention to my shadows & highlights. 

So, I might grab Luminar during its July 4th sale (ends on July 7th). I already had Aurora HDR from a previous purchase and I had enjoyed using it as a finishing at the end of my editing. Add in the podcast I recently listened to of Luminar’s CEO and it just seems to be a good time to try some new things. If you are interested in grabbing that software, please use my affiliate link. Thanks for your support!