AI Sky Replacement Tool

If your photo lacks a compelling sky, AI Sky Replacement makes replacing it easy. The tool is designed to work with flat or blown out skies, but can often be adjusted to work with most skies by refining the sliders. Using the power of artificial intelligence, the AI Sky Replacement tool automatically analyzes an image, identifies where the sky begins, and ends, then seamlessly replaces the sky to create a realistic look.

Standard Controls

• Sky Selection. Choose from a library of sample skies to get familiar with the tool. Be sure to load your own skies as well by choosing the *Load Custom Sky Image *option. See this article for more details on using your own skies.
• Horizon Blending. This smooths the transition between the current horizon and the new one. Since there is often a soft transition here, using a higher value is often more photo-realistic.
• Horizon Position. Luminar attempts to automatically align the horizon of the original photo with the new sky’s horizon. You can override this alignment and shift the image up or down to taste.
• Relight Scene. The AI Sky Replacement tool relights the entire photo so the lighting and colors of the original image match the lighting and colors of the sky. This slider adjusts the intensity of the relighting effect.
• Sky Global. This affects how the texture is mixed into the scene. A higher value will increase the amount of new sky that is added.

*Easily access your own skies.
Be sure to load your own skies into this menu. From the top of the Sky Selection list choose Show Custom Skies. You can copy your own JPEG files into this folder. See this article for more details on using your own skies. It is recommended to keep fewer than 50 skies at a time loaded for better performance.  You will see the skies from this folder appear in the main list of skies available for AI Sky Replacement. To remove the skies from this list, remove them from the folder.

Advanced Controls

• Close Gaps. This slider fixes small details and holes that were not filled by the replaced sky initially. You may need to adjust this if the image has fine details such as trees or wires.
• Sky Local. This slider is useful to control the overlap of the new sky with the original clouds. This slider is designed to influence how much the original clouds are replaced.
• Sky Defocus. This slider will defocus the sky and is useful when a shallow focus is used with a foreground object.
• Flip Sky. This option will flip the new sky texture to change the direction of the image. This option is useful when the photo has shadows in the scene that you are trying to match.
• Atmospheric Haze. Use this slider to add a soft haze to the sky. Haze is useful to match the sky to the original image, especially if there is moisture in the sky or environmental pollutants.
• Sky Temperature. Use this slider to warm or cool the new sky texture to match your needs.
• Sky Exposure. This option controls the exposure for the new sky texture and allows you to change the look and feel easily.

*Once the sky is replaced, you can take advantage of useful options like AI Enhance to improve the overall scene.

!FAQ:
I’m trying to use Sky Replacement and the sliders are greyed out. How come? If the AI Sky Replacement is disabled there are two likely causes. First is that the skies are not visible enough in the image. The other cause is that you’ve applied the effect to an adjustment layer. In this case, be sure to use the original image layer or a Stamped layer for the AI Sky Replacement tool.