If you want to try a real world landscape test, here is one of my photos to try.
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Well, I’ll show what Luminar 4 can do for sky replacement. This is not the same a Remask AI, which is a broad masking tool but for skys, it rocks.
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Do you have any control over the fact that it is changing the colour of the yellow foreground leaves?
There are controls for lighting and you can apply light color to match the sky to look more natural. In my pictures above i don’t see any color difference in the leaves. Background changes such a a sky color can cause leaves to look a bit different.
I see substantial color changes. That is not a clean mask whatsoever and is not usable as is.
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Well, you can post your version of the picture with a new sky to show us your mastery. Be sure to include how long you worked on it. My Luminar picture took less than 30 seconds to get a new sky.
Yup and it looks like 30 secs were spent on it. Joking aside, I think the Luminar product is a single task sky replacement which changes foreground colours. You may not see it but I do on my monitor on others have remarked on that as well. You can see examples on DPreview in the retouching forum. The Luminar product is a single purpose novelty tool and it is good at that. But it is not a replacement for a generalized masking tool and one which does not alter the foreground AT ALL.
I definitely see brighter, yellower [is that a word??] leaves in your 2nd example too. Less ambers and oranges certainly in the upper leaves.
I am nowhere near a computer for the next 5 days.
What happens if you use your 2 alternative masking programs, create masks with each and replace the skies for each with solid black?
You can see the problems Luminar is causing (if you are looking for a clean mask) in this snippet comparison
Also Here
As I said it’s a good novelty product for people who don’t care about how the foreground is changed.
Folks looking for a clean masking tool that does not affect the foreground better look elsewhere.
I can see a small difference in the leaves at the top of the right hand tree but so what? I would prefer the bright yellow leaves. There is a masking tool in Luminar 4 to remove the sky. Try to replace the sky with Photoshop (which I used for years) and you will get lousy results on this complex photo. Luminar has many tools for different photos, not just sky replacement. It’s an excellent program but maybe not for everyone.
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I tried the Luminar Sky replacement tool on this image and can’t confirm problems with a “clean mask”. If I am lucky I might get a similar selection with the Topaz Mask AI but with Mask AI it takes relatively a lot of time and effort to make a selection, whereas the Luminar selection is fully automatic and instantaneous. In Luminar 4 you can alter the selection manually, just as you can in Mask AI.
Luminar does indeed alter the colors in the original to fit the sky (there are settings where you can tweak the results). The product Landscape Pro by Anthropics also does this when replacing skies.
The altered colors usually make the inserted sky look more natural, especially when the sky replacement has different light conditions than the original sky. There is nothing that screams “sky was replaced!” more than when the lighting and colors of the sky and foreground don’t match. Here is an example of the same image with a sunset sky. The result is Luminar “out of the box” with no tweaking of the mask or adjustments to the sliders made. the colors are more muted, but they would be at sunset.
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I thought I saw a rumor/preview that the Ps CC 2021 announcement (Adobe MAX this wk) will have a new sky replacement tool or feature. I thought of you when I saw it!
Will be interesting to see how it compares to Luminar (which I don’t have, so will rely on your insights!).
From the preview I saw it seemed like when a user applied the new sky (in Ps) the image alters a bit to match the color toning in the sky (I guess that could be a good or bad thing depending on your artistic direction - seems like it would be a good thing to have a check box to say use or don’t use the match entire image to sky feature… bet they’re glad I don’t beta test for them. Though I have done some 1:1 focus grp things for them).
I have found cases where Luminar 4 applies the sky over the foreground objects (trees, buildings) and looks like shade (darkens areas and color shifts). Sometimes you can use a mask (also in Luminar) to remove this but its not always possible and not always needed. I don’t plan to get PS again as Affinity Photo and Luminar + Topaz products do what I need.
Skylum is coming out with a totally new version called Luminar AI in the next month of so. Sky replacement will be one of the features but I don’t know if it will be improved. Overall I like Luminar 4 and have pre-ordered Luminar AI.
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Good to know!
I’m watching Adobe MAX right now. Sure enough there’s a sky replacement. And, some cool new “neural filters” in Ps. Plus new color grading in Lr…
