About Thomas Fitzgerald

Thomas is a professional fine art photographer and writer specialising in photography related instructional books as well as travel writing and street photography. 

Skylum Previews Luminar 4’s AI Sky Replacement Filter

Skylum Previews Luminar 4’s AI Sky Replacement Filter

Skylum software announced the first preview of the upcoming version 4 of Luminar. Specifically they announced the inclusion of a brand new “AI Sky Replacement” filter which will automatically replace skies, including automatically masking out foreground elements and matching colours.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release:


How does it work?

AI Sky Replacement works by automatically detecting not only the sky, but also objects in a photograph’s scene. This helps make sure the photo ends up being as realistic as possible once you insert a new sky. It removes things like halos, artifacts and edges of transitions, problems that often were present in existing sky replacement techniques. With the AI Sky Replacement you will also be able to adjust the sky to fit the rest of an image — things like depth of field, tone, exposure and color — making it great for not only landscapes, but also portraits.

When working on an image, the AI Sky Replacement technology automatically creates a mask for the sky, taking a step that would oftentimes take minutes or even hours, and boiling it down to mere seconds with just the click of a mouse. But that’s not all it does — AI Sky Replacement also correctly detects the horizon line and the orientation of the sky to replace so that it looks as realistic as possible.

Furthermore, with the scene relight technology, you’ll see the rest of your photo change in terms of light and color when you select your sky of choice. This makes sure that an image and sky match so they appear they were taken during the same conditions. Because of the toning that AI Sky Replacement does to an image, it looks as natural and smooth as possible.

The new AI Sky Replacement filter is the perfect tool for recreating that special moment that you might not otherwise be able to revisit. It’s great to bring life into vacation photos where the weather wasn’t perfect, or surprise moments where you couldn’t plan for the perfect conditions. And best of all, it’s available through a simple, easy-to-use tool in the Luminar 4 interface.

Now, with AI Sky Replacement, it’s easier and faster than ever for photographers to achieve their goals, and focus on what they enjoy most — photography.


It looks pretty impressive from the demo video they put out, but it’s hard to say how good it will be until I get to try it in person. I’m looking forward to it seeing it. It’s really interesting how far this technology has come.

You can learn more about the new Sky Replacement filter on Skylum’s Website. Luminar 4 will be out sometime in the Autumn and you can pre-order now.


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