Editing a Photo from the Coolest Location You Never Got to See 

Enthusiastic and great lesson, I liked. Thank you Thomas!

I agree your first edit was little too blue. Really like how you have saved your image by going back to edit it warmer. Well done, and thank you for the lesson.

I almost commented “too blue” till I waited for the end. I like the final version! Lovely colors. And you are right about taking a break to let the eyes reset and come back. I learned that lesson while editing.

Great channel, new subscriber here. Wondering where do you put the line, when is editing so heavy it's not really a photograph anymore? Would love to hear your reflections.

Or you could find the grey pixels for the photo numerically in photoshop. This technique allows you to correct color temperature and tint issues at the same time. Open background image in photoshop. Create new layer. Fill layer with 50% grey. Change blending mode to difference. Create a threshold layer, move the threshold slider to a value of one. Increase from one until groups of black pixels become visible (but don't go higher than a value of six). Zoom into a group of black pixels. (The black pixels are actually middle grey, or close to it. 128 x 128 x 128 or so in the rgb values.) Use the color sampler tool to mark a group of black pixels. Discard the new layer and threshold layer to the trash. Add a curves adjustment globally to the image, click the grey point eye dropper in the curves dialogue and click on the marker you left over the grey pixels you found. Boom, no more color cast. Works amazingly for 95% of photos.

"One not-necessarily obvious thing is that the layer has to be filled in order to see anything." More specifically, Luma Range *modifies* the existing layer mask, as opposed to simply defining it.

Me too

I went through the exact same thing. I HATED Ps for the exact reasons you listed. Completely unintuitive, seemingly needlessly complex and every day I would be screaming at my computer. Stick with it. I promise you it's worth it. There's a level of polish you can't get with Lr alone.

Addiction to celebrities, where everything of value must be associated with some hack on TV, can be treated with counseling/reeducation.

Luminar 4 isn't for everybody. I've tried it, and I was completely unsatisfied with it. Very little control over the effects. If it works for you, great. I personally am sticking with Capture One. But certain influencers who tout that Luminar is the “future” of photography and the beginning of AI becoming the next greatest revolution don't really have as much control over their images as they brag about having.

@@longliveclassicmusic Yeah. That's true. They have a lot to improve. But for editing thousands of images, it can be a lot easier, Being new to photo processing, Luminar feels calm and satisfying. But it has most of the features of PS. Also, I think the erase/clone tool is better than PS.

@@longliveclassicmusic BTW are you a Fuji user? If so have you tried Raw File Converter by Silkypix?

+1 - I visited Lassen Park in 2002, an underrated spot. Very cool.

Watch your lenses in those sulfur clouds, they can destroy the coatings. I live just about 20 minutes from Lassen NP.