Transform Your Drab Photos: A Lucy Starkiller Tutorial for Photoshop and PSP

When I first created Lucy Starkiller, I did so in protest against companies that sell plug-in to people for hundreds of dollars, when the same effects can often be achieved with the tools already included in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro (and other programs). I had no expectation that it would become so popular, and yet people come looking for it every day.

But it occurs to me that some people may not quite understand what Lucy Starkiller is for, or how to use it, hence the long overdue creation of this tutorial.

Okay, ready? We’re going to use this image of a Mustang parked by the sidewalk. If you have already downloaded LSK, the original full size image is included in the zip file, so you can follow along.

Not exactly an exciting photo, and the fact that it was taken on a drab, cloudy day doesn’t help much. While we could run LSK directly on this image, we can get much better results if we first punch it up a bit.

In Photoshop, choose Image|Adjustments|Hue/Saturation…, in Paint Shop Pro, choose Adjust|Hue and Saturation|Hue/Saturation/Lightness…, and bump the saturation up by 30 points.

That looks much better, but let’s live dangerously and really go crazy with the saturation, we’re not going for realism here, after all. Repeat the previous step and bump the saturation up by 20, for a total of 50 points.

Ah, there we go, delicious candy colours, a perfect base for Lucy to work it’s magic. Now comes the hard part, and by hard I mean easy. Run the Lucy Starkiller Sharp action/script from either the Actions palette in Photoshop, or from the Script toolbar in Paint Shop Pro. Sit back and let it do it’s work. After a few seconds a a dialog will appear. In Photoshop it will look like this:

This dialog controls the local contrast of the image. Basically that means it determines how much contrast appears between fine details in the image. The higher the number, the more “comic book like” the effect will be. In Paint Shop Pro the dialog looks like this:

This dialog looks a lot more complicated doesn’t it? Don’t worry, the only part you need to worry about is the Opacity setting (circled in red), and it works exactly the same as the Photoshop version.

The intensity of the effect is also dependent on the size of the image. On a 5+ megapixel image, you could use the 100% setting and get a good result, however on a 800X600 pixel image, anything beyond 20% is likely to be overkill. It is also affected by the individual image, so keep the preview box checked and experiment to find a setting that looks best. For now just leave the setting at 100%.

Not long after you click OK, another identical dialog will appear. No, this isn’t groundhog day, this time the dialog is for adjusting the overall contrast of this image. Often this setting can be set right at zero, again it depends on the image. For now leave it at 100%. Click OK, and we have our final image (Mouseover to view the original, or click to view a larger version):

Pretty dramatic, eh?  And it took less than 30 seconds to achieve. You can now further fine tune the intensity of the effect by blending the LSK layer with the original image beneath it. But it doesn’t stop there, with six versions of the action, and limitless control over intensity, you can create a huge variety of effects.

Want the “Dave Hill” look? Just de-saturate and ad a vignette and a little noise:

Here’s another example featuring people that utilized both Lucy Starkiller and the Dave Hillify Action.