Ibiza, Spain.

As we sailed into the cruise port at Ibiza, I noticed the lighthouse was still operating, but I couldn’t capture an image then. After breakfast, I saw the excursion buses were starting to arrive. I captured a shot of the lighthouse from my balcony during the morning hour but well after sunrise.

The lighthouse was built in 1861 and has been operational for over 150 years. With more modern navigation technologies in place, the time for lighthouses has passed. For many years, the Ibiza Lighthouse has only been used as an entrance beacon to the port.

About the photo: I captured the image with my Samsung S23U and processed it with Adobe Lightroom Classic and Luminar Neo. I cropped out the view of the excursion bus and formatted it as a landscape instead of a portrait. Then, I sent it off to Luminar Neo for some creative editing. My usual technique with lighthouses is to lower the exposure to create a day-to-night shot, and then I use the Luminar Neo Sunrays tool to make the two light beams. This time, though, I would try something different.

One of Neo’s new creative tools is the Twilight tool. Instead of lowering the exposure to simulate night, I adjusted the Twilight slider to give the image an after-sunset appearance. I then sent it back to Lightroom Classic for masking since I’ve been using those masking tools for several photos, and they work better than the Sunrays tool in Neo for lighthouse illumination effects.

In Lightroom, I used a brush mask, starting with a small brush to illuminate one side of the light. Then, I enlarged the brush and did a shift-click at the edge of the photo to simulate the beam spreading out. I duplicated that effect on the other side of the image and then used a tiny radial brush to better illuminate the center of the light source. You can click on the image above for a better view via my Flickr site.

I processed the image more conventionally for those who prefer a more traditional approach (as in not AI-altered). I will soon post the other photos I captured while in Ibiza in a Travel Tuesday post.

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 also acceptable. 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. Oh, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner