Luminar AI: Structure vs Detail

hey guys welcome back hope you're doing well and today i'm in luminar ai and i'm taking a look at a few different image examples trying to walk through the differences between structure ai and details they tend to do different things to a photo but i often use the terms a little bit interchangeably even though they're not the same thing so i thought i'd walk through some examples and try to illustrate what they actually do to an image and what the differences are here's the first image this was shot up in new england we were just driving down a back road i saw some english phone booth in the middle of a field had to stop i'm not really sure why it was there but there it is so when i'm talking about structure ai i'm always talking about adding a little bit of crunch and i don't know why i grabbed my fist but like a little bit of crunch and a little bit of crispiness with details i don't tend to do details as much but i often might say the same thing you know i want to give it a little bit of crunch um and so like i said i kind of talk about them in terms of doing the same thing but they do different things structure ai does tend to enhance uh kind of like clarity kind of like edge or local contrast in an image and that can give the appearance of more detail but i also think of it in terms of accentuating texture in an image so i'm going to continue to try to use the word texture when i'm talking about structure ai because i really think it does accentuate the texture in an image and then details it'll actually focus those soft edges and create a little bit more kind of like clarity but it definitely brings up a little bit more sharpness or crispness and so now i'm thinking of structure ai in terms of texture in a photo and i'm thinking of details in terms of how crisp is the photo let's walk through this example the only thing i've done here is i lifted the exposure a little bit so it was a little bit dark so and i cropped it so there it was before there is now just a slight difference to make it a little bit more visible i'm going to start with structure ai um obviously you drag the slider to the right you've probably seen me before and if you haven't or if you're new here or haven't noticed this i'll often drag it to the left to soften up things to make smoother parts of an image and then mask it in so like skies and water i do that a lot but mostly focused on going to the right in this video so the amount of course is how much and you can immediately notice and i'm at 100 which i don't recommend doing but you immediately will notice the difference in contrast if you look at the areas that are bright versus the areas that are dark and like if you look here in the grass like this section right here you can see it's a little bit darker and that's a little bit lighter if i show you the before and after it's a little less pronounced and now it's a bit more pronounced if you look here at the phone booth itself a little less pronounced and a little bit more pronounced so keep that in mind you are impacting the contrast in a photo and so depending on what's in the background and the existing contrast in the photo your results or your mileage may vary so just keep that in mind boost is as the name implies it boosts whatever it is you're doing so if you're going to the left and then adding boost you're going to get even smoother photo but in this case we're going to the right and as i boost it it'll just accentuate that even more and starts to create kind of an hdr like look which may or may not work depending on your photo i'm going to reset that to zero on boost but i'm going to leave that at 100 and just turn it off so before and after you can see quite a large visible difference in the photo also this is what i'm talking about with texture like all this stuff like if you look at the phone booth and the grass if i show you the before and after it's just got a little bit more texture to it i think this is particularly good on certain parts of a landscape maybe rocks or mountains and then in cities it works really great on streets or concrete things like that i think it works really well in other words mostly on man-made structures although it can work fine of course on natural things that have some texture in them already rocks mountain tops maybe trees but i wouldn't necessarily use it in leaves and things like that or these grasses maybe just a little bit and in fact in this image i might would use it a second time in local masking and go negative in the background just mask it in here with the positive values into the telephone booth and then maybe go add some negative structure to the background with a local adjustment but i'm going to turn that off for now and then go over to the detail slider and here as you can see and as i'm sure you know it's broken down by small medium and large details also sharpening to be clear i'm not going through everything here i'm not going to get into these things in the bottom i just want to focus on the difference between details and structure ai like i said structure ai is more about the texture in a photo and details is more about how crisp is the photo so the small medium and large sliders they just kind of set the sharpness of the different level of detail so there's often a lot of small detail in a photo and so it might work in some photos to drag it a little bit but i would never go very high because you get that kind of look which is really overly sharp and really way too detailed and frankly just not very attractive so i almost never use small details i would probably use medium details i'll go to 100 here to show you the difference at 100 i mean it doesn't look horrible but it doesn't look great but it looks better than it did when i had the small details cranked up all the way but just be careful again everything is seasoned to taste just go a little bit gentle here but you can see it does provide a little bit more kind of sharpness to the overall look of the photo and i think like in the low 30s looks pretty good there again i would probably mask it into the phone booth but that's my personal preference i tend to like a little bit smoother less busy backgrounds and let me show you the large details not nearly as much of an impact i tend to find it works that way larger details there's fewer of them medium there's a good amount and small there's there's quite a bit also i noticed the contrast difference with large details you can see that there it's slight with medium it's a little bit more and then with small it's a little bit even more pronounced also the photo just appears a brighter overall because it's basically sharper everywhere so i'm going to reset that so basically the detail slider is increasing kind of the clarity of the focus and making the photo appear sharper overall essentially it's making it more crystal clear now ideally what you're going to do is on any particular photo is use maybe some combination of both so here's structure ai there it is at 100 and there it is turned off let me go to details and i'm just going to mess with medium and large and i'm going to go kind of high here just to show you the example i don't want to go 100 on both because it feels like it's even more than just the 100 on structure ai so if i turn that off before and after quite a bit different look to the photo versus here i think you're going to see more of a contrast difference again contrast being the difference between the dark and the bright it's really getting accentuated when i add structure compared to when i add details it doesn't seem as pronounced here's another photo i'm just going to increase the exposure a little bit so it's more visible across the entire image but i haven't done anything else to this photo i just increase the exposure which you just saw i want to show you another example here of structure ai versus details and the difference i think you'll really notice the contrast difference here so structure ai0 structure ai at 100 that actually looks a little bit hdr but it looks kind of reasonable it doesn't to me look over the top i would probably mask this in selectively maybe take it out at a lower opacity across the trees but you look at the contrast look at the difference in the sky and the foreground massive difference using structure ai so let me go ahead and turn that off and with the details if i bump up medium and large details i'm just getting a crisper photo i'm not getting near the difference in contrast and the sky is really not affected at all whereas you go over here to structure ai and you're seeing large impact on this guy right so keep that in mind the difference in that contrast with structure ai is having a bigger impact overall i think on the photo and i think it actually works better in a photo like this i don't really like the use of details here but regardless of your photo i think it makes sense to maybe examine them both depending on what you're trying to accomplish with the photo and then mask each of them in selectively let me show you also a portrait okay here's a portrait this is not mine this is from unsplash i'll link to the artist down below now structure ai as i mentioned before is human aware and so that means it's not going to have a huge impact on the skin or the skin tones or the skin details things like that in an image so if i drag this to the right you're going to see the rest of the image kind of gets a bit crunchy in those outer edges but if you look at her skin it's really not being impacted at all and even if i zoom in and show you before and after before and after really minor if even visible at all a difference in her skin i can almost not even tell the difference maybe there's a slight difference in the light and then boost even though i'm boosting it you're not seeing her skin get impacted right whereas you are seeing the stuff around her get impacted so i'm going to reset boost just because i don't really need it so keep that in mind that it's human aware so before and after it's a great way to accentuate kind of the background or things around a portrait without impacting the the skin itself now if i go to detail let me turn that off there we go now if i go to details that's a different story i'm going to zoom in here and i'm going to start with large details and you're going to see that impact some of her skin her eyes are getting certainly a lot crisper and um you know a little bit um a little bit on her skin but not a ton but if when i start going into medium details and small you'll start seeing that more prominently right so you'll see her skin getting affected as i drag that slider to the right and then of course small details is really going to do a lot on our skin and that's one of the risks of details on a portrait is it will impact the skin it's not human aware details are global in nature so it's impacting small medium and large details wherever they are in the photo whereas structure ai being an ai based tool it's human aware so that's a long way of saying i would probably almost never use details on a portrait unless it was like some really grungy person and you're just accentuating that kind of look it could make sense but on a typical portrait something like this where you want them to look their best i think details is potentially uh dangerous to uh to use their personal opinion again your mileage may vary and your taste may vary which is totally fine but if you compare it let me just pull some of these things up but if you compare some of that um before and after you can see it impacting her skin and structure ai there we go you'll see that's not touching her skin at all so just keep that in mind human aware versus not human aware and again your mileage may vary the best thing to do as i've already said is figure out what works for you in any particular photo and then mask it in selectively either structure ai or details don't hesitate to use structure ai multiple times if you need to via a local adjustment and that's it i just wanted to walk through some of the differences in terms of what structure ai does to a photo and what details due to a photo and again i'm trying to get this in my head so that i say it in my videos more frequently and that is structure ai for me is more like accentuating the texture of a photo and of course details ai is more about accentuating how crisp or the crispiness in a photo not the crunchiness crunchiness is more like texture which is more like structure ai so i say you know let's get a little crunch in there i say those kind of things and again a little bit of crunch a little bit of touch texture whereas on the other side details a little bit of crispiness a little sharper and i think with details you have to be a little bit more careful because again it's global in nature so it's impacting small medium or large details anywhere in the photo so just be careful with it and i feel like you see a bit more over the top and over sharpened looking photos using detail slider than you would with structure ai in a lot of situations not everyone so season to taste mask it in have fun with it experiment see what works best for you that's it my friends just trying to share a few uh thoughts i was having about these tools have fun out there editing appreciate you guys coming by i'll see you guys next time and adios

Channel: Jim Nix

Views: 3,353

Keywords: Jim Nix, travel, photography, post processing, editing, training, tutorial, photo editor, photo editing, Luminar AI, structure, detail

Id: w65I42dZzOw

Length: 12min 20sec (740 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 22 2021