The Scene Relighting controls do a pretty good job of adapting the exposure and color and even include a “Relight Human” slider to adjust the appearance of the sky’s color when people are detected in the scene. The Sky AI tool includes a manual Mask tool (as do most of Luminar’s tools), but in this case I can paint in rough areas using only a brush tool, exposing or hiding only the areas the AI has generated. That’s because the algorithm that detects the sky has decided they’re not part of the mask, and there’s nothing I can do to convince it otherwise. However, none of the controls can coax the sky into the windows at the bottom.

After all, the goal is to present the illusion of a natural sky, and those are obvious flags that can ruin the effect.Īdjusting the Mask Refinement controls improves the treatment of the branches. Nothing ruins the illusion like a new sky with the original sky reflected in the water below.Īnd let’s not forget the obvious, which is the responsibility of the editor: Make sure light sources match and shadows are cast in the correct direction.

The tool should take into account reflections.

There needs to be a way for you to fine-tune the mask and the color in areas the software didn’t catch.

A sky isn’t just background-it’s the light source and filter for everything we see.

The non-sky elements of the image need to match the exposure and coloring that the new sky would cast over the scene.

This is usually the most difficult part because the software must determine which areas belong to the sky and which belong to the foreground. The sky should have a clean edge, taking into account interruptions.

The goal of a successful sky swap is, of course, to make it appear as if the new sky was originally there all along.

Luminar sky