Doc Barry Loc: Huntsville, Alabama USA

Our great-niece took a photograph of her daughter in her prom dress (yes, she is wearing new tennis shoes as seems to be the style for young ones) at the Big Springs Park in Huntsville, Ala. She used a Canon EOS Rebel T6. You may notice the focus on her face is not quite on the mark and the composition could have been better. The image she sent me was 640x960.

I have a variety of programs for post-processing, but I figured that Luminar NEO would be appropriate. The first step was to use the Upscale feature to increase the pixel density for obvious reasons. I note that Upscale and Topaz Gigapixels yield similar results based on some tests I have made. Next, I cropped the original and then used the Develop, Noiseless, and Supersharp functions. The background is disturbingly sharp and detracts from the "star" of the day. I finished up using the Portrait Bokeh feature (almost a single step) and the Face and Skin features in the Portrait Section. The Portrait Bokeh features locates her and masked her beautifully and introduced the bokeh as shown below. I found that Lunimar NEO did a fine job of "fixing" the disturbing background.

Luminar NEO has essentially replaced Luminar AI and I feel does a better job. The Skylum Team seems to be working their rear ends off adding new features and improving existing features.

Our great-niece and our great-great-niece were very pleased with the results of my post-effort. BTW, it took less than 10 minutes as I recall.

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MrPhotog

Looks nice. But that light pole growing out of her head needs to go away. The base of the pole in the first shot turned into a dark rectangle in the second. Part of the sharpening process, perhaps? Can you blend that area into the background early in the process, and let the bokeh effect help hide the editing?

yssirk123 Loc: New Jersey

Very nicely done - kudos to you. Should be an easy fix to remove the light pole.

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

And if you are removing stuff, I would also fill in the white rectangle in the upper left.

Doc Barry Loc: Huntsville, Alabama USA

Thank you for the comments. First, I only had <10 minutes to enhance it from a cold start. The dark rectangle you mention was pick up by the auto masking of the gg-niece. If I had noticed it, I could have easily removed it from the mask. Removal of the light pole and base is also easy to do. The process was to upscal, sharpen, the generate the bokeh.

Doc Barry Loc: Huntsville, Alabama USA

Thank you Bill and John. The white rectangle would be good to remove as you suggest.

rdemarco52 Loc: Wantagh, NY

Much improved from the original.

leftj Loc: Texas

I agree on the light pole. Should be an easy erase.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Nice result

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

bkwaters

I agree. It’s become a very complete but easy to use program. I just wish it saved the edits as a LRC compatible XML and not in a proprietary catalog. Or, alternatively, as a DNG.

Doc Barry Loc: Huntsville, Alabama USA

You are correct Bkwaters. Skylum is rapidly improving the program and seems to desire user input for changes and new features. I have noticed an increase in activity coming from ON1 also. Perhaps this is an example of competition at work. FWIW, I like ON1 too, and I use it a bit less than NEO.

Although NEO doesn't offer DNG (yet), you can export in PNG which may be adequate. All of the formates have pluses and minuses, but I normally shoot and save my images in RAW.

Thank you for your comments.

Doc Barry Loc: Huntsville, Alabama USA

I took a few minutes and cleaned up the photograph to get rid of the troubling areas you folks mentioned. Indeed, it is improved.

Again, thank you for the comments.

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Wingpilot Loc: Wasilla. Ak

That really cleaned it up. Now, the last thing to do would be to clone out what looks like a black trash bin in the background. Looks good.

Doc Barry Loc: Huntsville, Alabama USA

Thanks Greg, but I'm done with it now.