Highlands Ranch, Colorado.

In March, I featured a couple of images captured by my cell phone and discussed my first impressions of Luminar Neo. You can recall that story here. Then Luminar Neo was sitting at version 1.0.2 and I commented that it could have used a little more refinement to meet the expectations their pre-sale advertising garnered.

As I write this, it is now early June, and Neo is now at version 1.0.7. With the addition of a couple of the latest features, most notably the ability to save presets and the automatic masking function, the program is much more aligned with promises made pre-release. I am most impressed with how AI Mask scans the image and locates with accuracy several object types. Though it isn’t perfect, tweaking the mask with a brush allows some sophisticated subjects to be isolated for special treatment in any photograph. Additional masks were also added for radial and linear gradients. Masks can also be copied and pasted for multiple operations on the same masked subject. Luminar Neo has now replaced Luminar AI as my final processing tool for most images, even though there are still a couple of features missing in earlier versions of Luminar.

About the photo: As I wrote in that post in March, Highlands Ranch is one of the largest planned developments in the country and is large enough to be its own city, though mail addressed to Littleton Colorado will get delivered to the correct address in Highlands Ranch. Formerly part of the Big Dry Creek Cheese Ranch, a portion of the ranch still remains as Cheese Ranch Park. Along the walking paths, a replica windmill, a small pond, and interpretive signs tell the history of the park.

As we walked along the path, I noticed some trees leaning heavily with what appeared to be the prevailing winds on the Colorado plains. After walking under the trees, I turned around and saw the symmetry of the leaning trees and captured the image. A rework in Lightroom and Neo provided this view of Cheese Ranch Park. You can click the image above to pixel peep in HD, and to view the other images of this two-part series on Cheese Ranch Park. You can view the entire album here.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge-response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment.

John Steiner