Luminar 4 Portrait Tools: Get Pro Results in Minutes

The Luminar 4 Portrait tools give you quick, easy methods to get professional portrait, retouching results. And that's what we're going to talk about today in this video. Hi, I'm William Beem. I'm a portrait photographer in central Florida. I'm also the cohost of the photography podcast called I Like Your Picture. I'm glad you're here today. If you like

what you see, please go ahead and subscribe. This is part of the series I haven't been working on Luminar 4 tools, what they are, how it works and how you can get the most out of them. So today we're going to be looking at portrait tools. We're going to take a look at some of the things that does very well to help you get results quickly,

without knowing a lot of portrait retouching techniques that you would have to do in some other tools. And we're also going to take a look at some of the things where maybe you need to pay attention because the AI technology or the tools did something that you can easily correct, but you need to keep an eye out for. So with that, let's go ahead and get started.

Okay. We're in the portrait tab, you can see it right down over here on the side. You can see like the little smiley face. And if you hover over that with your mouse, it'll say portrait. So that's how you know it in the right place. And if you don't see that, just look at the top over here, the list of tools.

Let's go ahead and start off with AI Skin Enhancer. It's really very simple, but there are a couple of things you want to look out here for. So let me go ahead and zoom in our subject and want to point out some things you can see that there's just like a little bit of a blemish right here where my mouse cursor is and a little,

the one over here and just some little small imperfections on her forehead, perfectly normal. It doesn't, uh, this is not an insult. I've heard some people thought that was maybe a little rude to talk about blemishes. Everybody's got blemishes. So don't worry about it. That's why we do skin processing. We have options here for the amount of the skin processing we do to remove any shine.

Like for example, there's a little bit of specularity on our in her forehead and also this one called AI Skin Defect Removal. And that's the one that I want you to watch to see what it does. And if you like the results or not. So let's go ahead. And I usually go, I've gotten to the point where I like to bring things up on these sliders,

to the middle, you know, roughly about 50%. And then I make a determination. Is that too much? Or is it not enough? And then I can kind of go from there where I pull it back or not. So let's take a quick look at the before and after. Bring the compare up, and you see it, it really has made a difference in just all those little small imperfections.

Some of them, you probably didn't even notice until we put on the skin enhancer. So I'm going to leave it there right now. Now we have not yet turned on the AI skin defects. I'm going to go ahead and check that box. So you can see that, like it's got these little small, um, imperfections, and there's like this little spot over here and the spot over here.

Now, when we go back and we'll take a look, you can see that it cleaned that up. And this one is still there. So it's not a hundred percent perfect, but it's done most of the work for you. I'd say it's done at least 90% of the heavy lifting. The one thing I found on this particular photograph, and you kind of want to examine on other photographs.

If you look over here on our eyebrow, it looks just a little bit blurred because her eyebrow is kind of running into this grating that's on the bed behind her. If I turn the AI skin defect removal, you'll see that blurriness goes away. This is very easy to correct. You can go over here to edit mask, select the brush. And all you really want to do is adjust the size of your brush and you want to be able to move it.

So we're gonna come up here and select erase, and we're just going to erase the mask right over that. And you can see we've kind of cleared up that issue with her eyebrow. It was very tiny, probably easy to overlook too. It's one of those things that when you're going to do the AI skin defect removal, take a good look just to make sure that there aren't any things like this.

I would have never anticipated to have be blurry, but it's only because of this particular photo and the bed that she's in. If you've got a photo that has a spot that is showing up blurry, where it shouldn't be, you can just mask it right out and you're done. So I'm actually kind of happy with that. What I want to try now is the shine removal.

And again, I'm going to bring that up about 50% and you can see we've kind of made a big difference in the specular highlight that was on her forehead. If you've got something like this, where you had just something you still need to go back and correct, and the skin enhancer or the defect removal hasn't taken care of for you, very simple,

go over here to the canvas. I like to use the clone stamp tool. So I'm gonna select the clone and stamp. It'll spend just a moment preparing the image, right? Once it's done preparing you see in the center here, it says click to set the source. So since I just want to get rid of this little spot over here,

I'm just going to click right above it. And that's much larger of a brush than I want. So I'm going to hit my bracket keys to make it smaller. And I just want to hit it right over that spot. And you see how quickly and easily that's done. Now, there's another spot over here on her lips, I don't want to use the same source obviously,

cause her skin tone over here is gonna be different than her lips. So I'm going to do is I'm going to hold down my option key or alt key. If you're on Windows and select another source, and then I'm gonna come over here and just touch that up. And that's really all there is to it. When you're done with that, go ahead,

hit done. Once you have your skin cleanup work done, then he can go ahead and take a look at the AI portrait enhancer. There are a lot of tools here. There's a lot of fun that you can do with this. But what I really like about this is it saves time. If you look at the power of these tools, some of these things I could spend 45 minutes to an hour doing in Photoshop.

You can retouch a portrait here in minutes. Let me show you some of the tools that we have inside of the AI Portrait Enhancer. The first one is face light, and it does exactly what you would expect. I'll draw this up and you can see that it's lightening up her face. So here's before there's after. And there are times, it depends on the photograph that you have.

Sometimes, you want to draw the eye to the face. And one of the easiest ways to do that is to lighten the face. You don't want to do it too much. If you drag this all the way over here, you know, it's like I've said in previous videos, you kind of turn the person into a flashlight. So I kind of tend to go around between 25 and 35 is usually a good spot for me,

but it depends on your photograph. Take a look at it and see what results you want. A lot of these tools are what you do to your own taste. Now, red eye removal. I don't really have a photograph where I've got red eyes in here. So that's kind of the time when you have a flash that's on camera, goes directly into their eyes and you get that little red spot.

You can drag that over and it will eliminate that. Eye Whitening. I want to zoom in here just a little bit, take a look at the whites of her eyes as I drag this over just a little bit. So I'm going to bring it up to about 27, 28 30, and you can see how that's really brought the whites of her eyes out.

So like, there's before, there's, after. I'm going to bring the face light down. So it's not competing for your attention. So there's before and there's after. You can see how that just kind of just popped her eye. whites out a bit. Of course, again, you can take this way too far and you can make her look really freaky and electric. I wouldn't recommend doing that again.

This is something that I probably stay between 25 and 30. In most cases. You never, I don't know how dark some photographs are going to be. You may need to bring this up more, but keep in mind. eye, whites are not supposed to be blazingly, brilliant white. You just need to add enough to kind of make them shine up a little bit more,

not sear through someone else's eyes as they're looking at them. But I'm going to bring that down. Okay. So let's go ahead and try the eye enhancement. Want to bring that up to about 30 and you can see how that's worked on the Iris. You can see that there's some more clarity and contrast in here. It's brought the color out and it's kind of upped the exposure a bit.

So let's take a look at before and then after. So you can see that it really helps make the eyes pop, combine that with eye whitening in this case, I'm going to turn it at the same level about 30, and we'll do a before and after. And that just really enhances and beautifies the eyes on your subject. The next one down is for dark circles.

This subject I don't really have, but you can see that what it's doing is it'll basically it lifts the shadows. If you have that issue underneath the eyes of your subject. Okay? So I'm going to bring these back down. We're gonna take a look at these next two, slimming the face and enlarging the eyes. This is kind of something that you do.

Magazines have done this for years. It kind of makes people just look a little bit better when you slim a face, you take it way too far. I'd have done this in the past, probably to look at maybe 5% slimmer than what the face normally looks like. And when you hand someone a portrait and their face looks just a little bit slimmer in a portrait, they're really happy.

And the idea is you don't want to reflect reality. You want to give someone an acceptable illusion of themselves. You're doing something that's a representation of a person, not a document. If all you needed was documented, you just put a flash on the camera, take the picture and say, here you go. That's not what retouching is about. Retouching is about showing someone in their best light.

And sometimes that means you tweak things just a little bit, same as we did with the skin. When we had to remove some of the skin defects and imperfections, I'm going to go way too far up to about 50. Okay? And now let's take a before and after. And you see the difference it makes it's. This is not a woman who needs to have her face slim,

but is just a little bit of a issue where you see the difference. I'm going to go back to fit to screen. And we're going to take a look at this kind of backed off. And I would recommend that when you're doing these changes you back off and look at them, if you do it up close, you're probably going to get the wrong impression of the changes you've made.

So let's go that's before and that's after. It's a subtle change and that's too much. I would probably take her back down to maybe 18 or 20, and it's just a very subtle change, but it makes a little bit of a difference. The same thing with enlarging, the eyes. This is an old magazine trick. I'll bring this back up to 200%,

the larger the eyes, the more kind of reminds you of something that's endearing. Like when you look at a baby, their head and their eyes are out of proportion and we think it's cute and lovely. You can do the same thing here. I, again, I would not do this at an extreme level, but I'm going to go ahead for example,

to show you at about 50% and you see how her eyes is really kind of bugged out. So that's before that's after and it draws people in. I, again, I wouldn't do it that much. I would probably come down here maybe about 20, somewhere in that neighborhood. And then there's a before and after, and let's go ahead and zoom out and we'll look at before and after. You almost don't even notice the change,

but just enlarging someone's eyes. That little bit just makes them a little bit more endearing to the viewer. All right, now this next one, uh, for improving the eyebrows, I'm gonna go ahead and zoom in again. I want to show you how that works. Keep in mind that obviously we have a blonde subject here. As I bring up, improve eyebrows,

her eyebrows get darkened. And if I bring this all the way over to a hundred percent, I mean, it's almost blackened. This tool works very well for brunettes. It is not something that works quite as well for blondes or redheads, or if you have somebody with purple hair and it's not going to work that here, it is kind of adding blacks into the eyebrows is what it appears to be.

Maybe blacks, maybe Browns. And to a certain extent, I think you can make it work with blondes, but you can see her natural hair color right here. And then as we add this up, it is definitely getting darker. So keep that in mind when you're using this. It may not be a problem for you. It may be something that just doesn't work with your subject,

depending upon the color of his or her hair. Now, these last tools I'm going to go through for the lips and we'll get another subject for the teeth whitening. So lip saturation, as I bring this up. You can see the change in the color that she's got to the shade of lipstick she's using. So there's like before and after it just kind of really pronounced it on her lower lip.

Do that again. You can increase the redness, which if you're marketing and you're trying to sell a certain shade of lipstick, I wouldn't do. But again, this is a representation of someone. If that works and helps them look better, go ahead. And you can see that there's a really pronounced change. I've moved that up a 49% and you can see the difference in the shade of lipstick.

And then we'll take it one step further with darkening the lips. And you can see we've gone from this nice soft pink to kind of a deep red look on almost red and it's just dark and things up. We can go ahead and bring down the saturation. We can bring down the redness and just look at the darkening by itself. So that's working on the luminosity value and all right,

let me go ahead and get some, a subject for the teeth whitening. I chose this photograph of two people on purpose. One, so we can show the teeth whitening, but I also want to show you something else. So if you take a look at the young lady's teeth over here, and we just kind of bring the whitening up, you can see that it's made a dramatic difference.

So there's before and after. Now, if you look at the gentlemen the same thing's happening with his teeth. So there's before and there's after. And that's one of the things I want to let you know about these tools is that they have facial recognition. But if you have more than one face, it's applying the same changes to both faces. So for example,

if we go to slim face, I don't know if that's going to work with them turned sideways, but we'll try it. You can see that it's changed both of them. So there's before there's after. Now, if you want to get around that, what I would recommend is that you edit the mask and maybe mask out one of the subjects, then duplicate the layer.

We can do that up here in the layers tab. And what you'll want to do is click this little thing and say, duplicate layer, then run the same tool and mask out the other person. So that way you can individually, you know, do the enhancements on their faces that you want to do, and you'll get the results that you want.

If you just do it on one layer, then the portrait tools are going to affect everybody in that layer. So that's just one little workaround you might want to keep in mind when you're using AI Portrait Enhancer. The High Key tool is something that you use, kind of have a light in open, kind of post-processing tool. In other words, you're looking for something that's bright and airy.

That's the way my daughter describes the photo shoot. She tells me that the photos I take tend to be dark, and there's just a little bit of light coming out. If I take a photo of her, she wants it to be bright and airy. That's, that's the phrase that we go with. So this is a photograph of a young woman on a white background,

and it's a perfect example for high key. You don't want to start with a photograph that is already dark. You want to take something that looks like it's bright and you want to make it brighter. So let's start off just by moving the slider over. And again, we'll go to about 50, 52 and let's take a look at some of the changes you can see what's happened here.

First off, the color saturation on her is kind of brought out. It's given me more of that porcelain look. Also take a look at her hair. I mean, it's gone from having some red and it's been de saturated just a little bit. So this is a look that people like with high-key. You've got a couple of options down here with standard high-key and dynamic high-key.

And quite honestly, I'm just going to say, play with that. The more you bring up the standard high-key the more you see the desaturation and that porcelain kind of look. So I'll bring that down. When I bring the dynamic high-key slider over, take a look over here, kind of on her left temple, and you can kind of see, there is a slight brightening. Dynamic is going to work differently depending upon the photograph that you have.

So it's one that I can't necessarily say, look at this photo and you'll see the same thing on every photo that you take. It's something you can just simply adjust and see if it gives you a look that you like on your own portrait. Now, with the blacks, you can bring it all the way over here. You kind of turn the blacks down.

You can bring it back all the way this side, and you can bring some blacks and contrast back in. With a high-key look. I tend not to really want that much of the blacks in there. I'm looking for this kind of very light, almost pastel kind of color. And that's what we go for. Under the advanced settings. You've got a few different tools.

If you want to boost some saturation back in you, can I actually kind of go the other way and pull some more saturation out. I tend to like that desaturated look when I'm going with a high-key portrait. You can also go ahead and boost some contrast back up. Okay. If you're working with glow, I would recommend using it with a mask.

And the reason is there are certain parts of the subject that you want to be sharpen and clear. So for example, the eyes, the lips, I'd say the nostrils, the eyebrows, and probably even the hair, but let's go ahead and take a look. So I'm gonna bring glow up to about 70, and then there's the effect. And now I'm going to brush that effect out.

So we're going to go over here to erase, brush this off of her eyes. I brush it off of her eyebrows and her lips, right? So keep in mind, the mask is working, not just on the glow, but everything on the high-key effect. And that's how you can kind of get some of these interesting looks. So for example, her eyes are really popping out, but her skin,

has that kind of porcelain look. You can change the mask. So for example, up here, you can change the softness of your brush. This is very soft. This would be a very hard edge. You can also change the opacity. So let's go back and clear this mask. We're going to change the opacity and bring that down. Maybe 30%.

Let's go ahead. And, um, edit the mask, I want to show it, we're gonna invert the mask and now I'm going to bring out. And you can see you're not getting that clear view. I'm only getting 37% of the mask moved away. So I'm getting some of what I want in there, but not necessarily eliminating every part of the effect.

So now that I'm done with that, I'm gonna go here and click done and you can see there's the effect we have. So let's go ahead and look at before and after. If that's the effect you're looking for high-key is really wonderful tool. And I can do this again much more quickly in Luminar 4 portrait tools than I can in Photoshop or some of the other tools that I use.

Now, the last item down here is similar to glow. It's called the Orton effect. This is another way of softening your photos. It is something that was originally developed for landscaping by a guy named Michael Orton. There's two types in here. And really all you have to do is choose which type that you want and move the amount slider. So let's go ahead and bring this up and you can see,

again immediately, there was a lot of softening that went on here. Let's try a type two just to see how that looks and they're different, not terribly so. I would say play with it, see which ones you like. And under the advanced settings, you can change, you know, is there a brightness to it? Is there a softness that you want to see and do you want to add or remove contrast and the same thing with a saturation?

You can bring that up. But again, I would go in here with a mask. I would get my brush and come back over the eyes, working on the eyebrows. I come over here and work with the nostrils to get my edge defined there and do the same thing with the lips. Just to give them a little bit more texture and clarity.

You've anyplace else that you have an edge that you want to make sure something's in place. If you were looking at somebody's ear, maybe if their head was tilted around, you might want to do it. And then when you're done, go over here, select done, and then you can see the effect of that. So let's look at before and after. I've taken a bit of time going over this,

but honestly, if I were just going through this one portrait, I could have been done in less than five minutes, and that would be such a complete time savings working with the Luminar 4 portrait tools. I hope this gives you an idea of the time that you can save and the professional results that you can get using Luminar 4 on your portraits.

The next video I'm going to come out with is going to take a look at the Luminar 4 Pro tools. There's dodging and burning, and a lot of other things that will really help you enhance your portraits and other photographs as well. So we'll check that out. So if you think this was helpful. Please go ahead, Like this video. And if you're looking to see more of them,

go ahead and hit subscribe and ring that little bell notification so that when I bring up the next video on the Pro tools, you'll be notified about that. And any others that I come up with. Thank you so much. We'll see you again in the next video.