From gray reality to Cyberpunk: How to see a movie scene in an ordinary street

We all carry a smartphone with a camera in our pockets these days. And every day, we snap boring, uninspired shots. Just look at the typical Actifit updates: "Hit my ten thousand steps on the way to work today" — accompanied by a generic photo of some street. Flat lighting, zero character, washed-out colors. Some people have hard drives (or blogs) full of photos just like that.

Some people try to "fix" the photo. A bit more contrast here, a touch of saturation there, a little sharpening ‒ and you're still looking at the same boring street, just technically a bit cleaner.

Then there are moments when something just snaps. You think to yourself: Why not? Why should this be just another shot out of a million identical ones?

You start thinking about those cult classics: Blade Runner, Dark City, Children of Men…

You throw on the Chernobyl soundtrack by Hildur Guðnadóttir.

Then, in your editor ‒ Luminar Neo by Skylum, obviously ‒ cease looking for the "safe" sliders. You dive into tools that wedding photographers or people who take pictures of kittens wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole. Curves, Color Harmony, Vibrance, Light Depth… the kind of stuff "sane" photographers avoid like the plague. After all, a photo is supposed to reflect reality, right? How many times have we read that in those social media groups? Merde!

The original shot is just the "grind of the daily commute." The second one is pure emotion hidden in the pixels. It’s that classic "Teal & Orange" contrast, but pushed to the absolute limit ‒ contrast on steroids.

If you're new to these kinds of edits, I’ve got something for you. Among my preset collections for Luminar Neo, there's one called Synthwave Street. It’s designed for exactly this. It won’t do the whole job for you, but it handles those first, most critical steps. The final result? That’s entirely up to you.