Thurstaston Beach

The above photo was taken as a single RAW file at 2:15pm on the 1st August 2026 and later developed with Luminar.

I had previously put time into developing the image with On1 Photo RAW as a black and white, because I couldn't get the colours to work cohesively, but with Luminar, colour was working well with the content.

A New Holiday Location

The Wirral peninsula is a new holiday location for Gill and I, and on our short time there, we enjoyed good weather. On the first day, we went for a walk along this beach, which was just a short walk from the caravan site. For the second and final day of our stay, we had a walk through Royden Country Park.

The location is promising with regard to our requirements for countryside walks and landscape photography. But considering it was only 45 miles from our home, it took over an hour and a half for the journey there, and the same for the journey home. Perhaps we were unlucky with the traffic?

Developing with Luminar

I'm picking up where I left of with Luminar, and having used it from the beginning, despite switching to On1 Photo RAW periodically over the time, I think I'm now going to stay with it for my photography. 

Other photo editing softwares that I've trialed over the years mostly don't offer the creative tools that Luminar has. Most alternatives obsess over ultimate RAW conversion and noise reduction at the expense of creative content development.

I'm beginning to respect the simplicity and functionality of the edits stack, and in particular, the fact that you can access the Develop RAW tool at any point. Most editors that develop a RAW file and then move to pixel-based editing don't allow you to go back and make changes to the RAW conversion without starting over.

Developing this Photo

I spent a long time developing this image and came back to it again and again with fresh eyes until I was happy with it. Perhaps I didn't realise at first, but calming the clutter in favour of light, lead-in lines and glow eventually gave an image I was happy with.

Comments welcome below: