A Guide to Portrait Editing and Sky Replacement Using Lightroom and Luminar 4

On-location portraits can be a great way to add more visual interest to your images, but unfortunately, the sky does not always cooperate as you had hoped. You can't just cancel your shoots whenever you do not have great weather, though. This great video will show you how to retouch a portrait in Lightroom while replacing the sky using Luminar 4.

Coming to you from Eli Infante, this excellent video will show you how to retouch a portrait (including replacing the sky) using a combination of Lightroom and Luminar 4. I have been using Luminar 4 for about half of a year now, and one thing I really enjoy about using it is how quickly you can easily and convincingly replace a sky (and cycle through different options to find the perfect fit). It is a blast to play with and makes what used to be a tedious process relatively quick and straightforward. That makes it a huge boon to anyone who can't just reschedule a shoot because of the sky (such as architectural photographers) or for anyone who enjoys the creative fun you can have with it. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Infante and give it a try on your own images. 

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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6 Comments

I don't believe in sky replacement. If it wasn't there when I took the shot, I won't add it afterwards. That's just me.

Me too, unless the photo is considered as digital art !

It's a blessing for real estate photographers who are working on a gray day. I had a system in place to replace a sky in about 3-4 minutes (accounting for branches and leaves, etc.), but Luminar does it in a flash.

That is a much-touted feature although there is more to Luminar. Best used as a plugin to LR or similar apps.

I have a couple of videos on this...

https://youtu.be/917x9Znb0_I

And another which shows that Luminar is still to grow up a bit...

https://youtu.be/YaVxd6GRUfE