Replacing the sky in a landscape or outdoor portrait can be both a difficult and very tedious process. Skylum is preparing Luminar 4 for release this fall, and the marquee feature is its automated sky replacement that can allow photographers to quickly replace a sky in a convincing fashion. Is it the groundbreaking feature it has the potential to be? This great video review answers just that question.
Coming to you from Dustin Abbott, this awesome video review takes a look at Skylum Luminar 4's new AI sky replacement feature. One of the most frustrating things for landscape, architectural, portrait, and wedding photographers is the simple fact that the sky just doesn't cooperate sometimes. For something like a wedding or a client needing a fast turnaround, it simply isn't an option to return when the skies are better. However, replacing a sky in Photoshop can be quite a tedious process, particularly when it comes to masking around intricate things like trees. Matching the light and color to the rest of the landscape also takes some time. If Luminar 4's AI replacement feature can do the job convincingly, it will be a huge boon for photographers that will save quite a bit of time. Check out the video above for Abbott's full review.
That's awesome, I have a smugmug account and they recently gave us luminar 3, I wonder if the upgrade will be free too.
I have to admit the masking feature is good enough (and fast enough) that I would use it. But I certainly won't use any of the built-in skies for any publicly displayed images for fear everyone will recognize the sky.
It's going to be hilarious if Fstoppers does a landscape competition in the next 6 months and we see a bunch of entries with identical horizons.
Matching focal lengths and pixel sizes between the original image and the replacing sky is the critical part. If you don't match those, it will always look fake AF.
On the moral part of the argument, my opinion is that replacing such large and important elements is lazy and dishonest.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on one's position on the matter, the digital era has ushered in the capability to manipulate and UNdo reality for anything and/or anybody. We just have to live with it.