AI Sky Enhancer for brightening up dull skies
Wednesday 17 October 2018, 18:36 by Michelle Peeters | 4,793 views | 2 commentsThis article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.
Skylum (formerly Macphun) announces a new filter that lets you give the sky in your photo a huge boost with one simple slider.
The new AI Sky Enhancer filter will be available in November as a free update for all Luminar 2018 users. This is ahead of the introduction of the new Luminar Libraries in December.
Everyone knows how important it is to have a good-looking sky in your photo, and how difficult and time-consuming it can sometimes be to edit such photos. Especially when you have different objects and people in the foreground.
This means you would have to use masks, layers, edge selections and other tools and techniques to make the sky look great in a realistic way. It is a complex process that can take quite a bit of time. According to Skylum, AI Sky Enhancer does all this difficult work for you using artificial intelligence (AI).
AI Sky Enhancer was developed in the company's AI Lab to add depth, definition and detail to the sky without creating artefacts or affecting other aspects of the image. Openings and translucent objects such as bridges and trees that appear to be intertwined with the sky can also be handled.
AI Sky Enhancer is a new addition to the previously developed Accent AI and Foliage Enhancer filters that are currently available in Luminar 2018. These filters also provide a fast and powerful trio of solutions under a single slider for automatic image correction.
Machine learning
Skylum's AI enhancement filters are made for photographers who have neither the time nor the desire to spend hours correcting photos and would rather concentrate on taking pictures.
Skylum's AI Lab consists of a team of computer scientists and professional photographers who build bridges between science, technology and real human experiences.
'Machine learning' is actually taught by people in Skylum's AI Lab. By analysing tens of thousands of photos, the scientists and photographers teach the machine (computer) to eliminate unwanted aspects and make improvements.
Skylum recently made the unprecedented decision to include every new release of Luminar, large or small, at no extra cost to customers until 2019.
This includes the Libraries, among other things, the long-awaited addition to Luminar. Libraries allow photographers to organise, browse and edit images.
AI (Artificial Intelligence)
Skylum is also incorporating AI technology into other software packages, including Aurora HDR.
The new Quantum HDR engine uses AI technology to analyse and extrapolate the best details from each image (in brackets) used in the HDR process to create a single file.
The end result contains more detail in the shadows, highlights and midtones than was ever possible before.
The Quantum HDR image can also work on single raw photos, making Aurora HDR a very useful tool as a first step in editing photos.
Complete AI automation can be seen most clearly in Skylum's new Photolemur 3, a consumer-focused image correction software that automatically analyses and corrects exposure, noise, contrast, colour and various skin and portrait correction features with incredible accuracy.
About the author
Michelle Peeters is fotografe en oprichter van DeuxBleus Fotografie. Michelle herkent het bijzondere in het gewone en het gewone in het bijzondere. Ze heeft zich nooit willen specialiseren en is daardoor van alle markten thuis.
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2 comments
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Huub Keulers
wrote on Thursday 18 October 2018 at 08:56
| reply
Nice explanation Michelle. I own Skylum and will definitely try this filter sometime to see if it’s something for me. It could save some work when it comes to giving dull skies a bit more punch.
Translated from Dutch. -
Henk van Weert wrote on Thursday 18 October 2018 at 15:29 | replyMichelle, I’ve been using Luminar for a few days now and I’m becoming more and more enthusiastic. The program is simpler than that of the previous Adobe challenger, Affinity Photo. The possibilities are extensive and they’re easy to use. Sky Enhancer will be a great feature, I think, but of course it’s only a small step in the battle with Adobe. I’m curious whether Libraries - the library that Luminar doesn’t have yet - is the real big step forward and is competitive with Lightroom in terms of quality. I invested 49 euros in Luminar and, according to Skylum, I’ll get that library for free later on.
Translated from Dutch.
That 49 euros is equal to a few months of a Lightroom subscription! I’ve always resisted Adobe’s imposed model and I believe I’m going to be proven right. By the way, I can’t find anywhere whether photographers will pay more than I did after the introduction of Libraries.
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