Photographer Anthony Morganti has been playing for a while with a pre-released version of Luminar 4 from Skylum and on this video he shows how easy and quick it is to replace the skies in an image and how well it seems to work.
Skylum has revealed several interesting features of its upcoming Luminar 4 image editing software which use artificial intelligence (AI). we have covered most of them including what the company calls AI Structure which is essentially an advanced content-aware tool that automatically adds detail to an image but knows to avoid introducing excessive artifacts and details to people or other objects. We also covered AI Skin Enhancer and Portrait Enhancer.
The Sky replacing feature is something that Skylum themselves demonstrated but there is always a big potential difference between what a company shows (which can be the best case scenario) and how a specific software feature work in the real world. In this case, if we can trust that Morganti really tried different images like the ones shown in his demo above the results are nothing short of amazing.
What seemed to impress us the most is that even with very complex foreground objects like trees with lots of foliage or a lighthouse with windows – the software did not get confused and did not produce and visible artifacts – again pretty amazing if this is how it works on any type of image.
There are a few options to choose from and you can pick the one which works better with your particular image.
It would actually be interesting to see if these sort of features will evolve in the future in such a way that the AI will learn the lighting direction in an image (where shadows fall in relation to objects) and position the sun accordingly, although as a first step this can be a user option to choose from.
AI-based image (and possibly also video) editing is the future and it seems that the technology is evolving fast and things that required minutes and sometimes hours of complex work by a professional will soon be done with a few clicks by almost any user.
It is worth mentioning that creating a memorable image can be much more than a technical process and there is also an artistic side to it which might be more difficult (some might say impossible) to replicate by an algorithm.
You can find more info on the upcoming Luminar and its features on the Skyloom website.