When you come home from vacation, you’re typically tired from travels… but also because it’s time to go through hundreds of photos. Thankfully, Radiant Photo makes this task easier.
Ease of use and consistency are the two features I like best about Radiant Photo. It analyzes a photo quickly and applies improvements. The interface is simple to use, so making additional alterations is just fast. I feel I can perform basic photo improvements at least 4x faster in Radiant vs Photoshop or other similar software.
The changes that Radiant applies are always consistent. If it nails the improvements on the first try, you’re almost guaranteed that the rest of the photos from that location/setting will look similar. Now, Radiant can’t always work miracles if you provide a poor photo (think bright lights in a very wet and foggy sleet), but nonetheless it improves the photo and cuts down the noise as best it can – consistently.
As an example, here are three vacation photos that were improved with Radiant Photo.
First, here’s a before and after of a German landscape. Immediately, Radiant does what it does best, which is add exposure, color, and strength. It helped pull out detail in the foreground trees and defined the buildings in the middle. This was the first photo of the trip that I dragged into Radiant, so I spent a few extra seconds tweaking it. Sometimes, I find Radiant goes heavy on the strength slider and detail sharpening, so I pulled it back. I thought it went a little too cool, so I barely adjusted the tint. Finally, I added the goldenrod foliage tone to make the yellowish trees pop. And I think we end up with a nice vacation memory.
From here, I recommend saving out a preset to apply to other similar photos. I’ve had Radiant get this perfect on the first try, but if Radiant only gets you close to perfect, make your adjustments to train your own Smart Preset.
Next, I input an image of snowy Salzburg. Instantly, it detected a winter landscape and boosted strength, color, and sharpening, which I pulled back a little. Then, I saved this as my “Cool Winter Town” preset for subsequent time saving.
For the title image of this article, I tried the Cerulean Blue Sky toning, which brought some life to the sky, domes, and brighter buildings. Again, going through these iterations was only seconds, and obviously much less with a saved preset. Maybe this will become my new “Cool Winter Town?!”
Finally, I moved into my interior photos. I didn’t alter Radiant’s improvement at all in this example. It quickly boosted the rich gold tones and increased the sharpness of the architectural flourishes.
If you’re showing smartphone photos to family or posting on social media, it’s quick to give a better impression. For more serious users or uses, the easy-to-use tools allow you to get more granular in a shorter time frame. So, whether you need quick improvements to vacation memories or so much more, Radiant is a useful and efficient tool that may be perfect for you.
