Luminar 4.2 Launched - New AI Augmented Sky Function
Luminar version 4.2 has just launched. The latest update adds a new “AI Augmented Sky” tool. This allows you to add objects into the sky without any masking and will allow you to compensate for things like lighting and colour.
Here’s what the official announcement says about the technology:
AI Augmented Sky detects your photo’s sky automatically and then places the chosen element directly into the sky area. Using content-aware technologies, foreground objects are recognized and taken into account, making the object blend naturally with your existing scene. You can drag the new element around the sky for ultimate control, yet retain those realistic qualities.
Other new features include a “shine reduction” function in the Face and Portrait tools, as well as under the hood improvements to the face recognition technology. From the press release:
With today’s update, we’re introducing a new Face Features Detection Network, which enables us to give you even more accurate and realistic automation when it comes to enhancing portraits. This technology is trained to detect different faces no matter what position, angle or tilt they might be in. It even recognizes those badly lit or partially hidden faces, as well as those with heavy makeup. No matter what the skin color or age of the person, Luminar 4.2 will recognize faces — even if it’s a group photograph.
Luminar 4 is available now from the Skylum website. You can use my code: TFP10 to get $10 off.
My thoughts on this release
The AI Augmented Sky function is pretty clever for what it does, but I can’t help but feel that the creative energy from the programming team at Skylum would be better off addressing some of the software’s many limitations. We’re still waiting on much promised functions, like even basic metadata import and export, which I think would be far more valuable to much more people. And speed is still a big issue for many people with the software.
To me this new feature feel like a bit of a gimmick. I know people said that about the sky replacement too, but I could at least see that being useful now and again. I guess it allows for some creative expression within the software, and I always applaud anything which makes creatvity more accesible.
I suppose if you do a lot of compositing, then AI Augmented Sky is a handy tool too, but you can only add one object at a time. To add multiple objects, you have to create a flattened layer and then use the tool on the new layer, which bakes the underlying layer on. In other words it’s not very practical for anything complex. A less sexy, but in my opinion more useful option might have been to allow you to automatically create a mask from the detected sky. Anyway, I'm not trying to be too negative - I mean, it's good and all, but I’m just not seeing how this got priority over other things that the company previously said it was going to do. I’m just saying!
What do you think of the new features? Am I being too critical? Or not critical enough?
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