I regularly get comments from people asking “why didn’t you just use x software” or from people who think its somehow hearsay if any particular application can’t do everything on its own. One other lesson to take away from this, apart from the compositing tips, is that you shouldn’t be afraid to use multiple tools to do a job. After you do a composite, you often do some grading or film grain on the final comp as it just helps tie everything together, and this works with still images too. This is a technique that I often used when working in Visual Effects over the years. Without this, it still looks a little fake, but covering it with a mild film effect and a little grading makes it look more realistic. Finally I sent the image back to Capture One (as this is where it had started) and I applied one of my own styles from my T-NEG collection. I did some additional tweaks back in Photoshop, with a few adjustment layers.

The other advantage of this is that the layers are kept non-destructive, and I can go back in at any time ad do some further tweaks. There may well have been a way to do this by some combination of stamped layers, but in my opinion it was just as easy to do it in Photoshop. In the video below I’ll prove you how easy and fast it is to replace the sky using Luminar.If you’re wondering why I didn’t just use a mask on the Sky Replacement tool in Luminar, it’s because that would have masked the relighting too, and that was an important part of the image. If you ever do sky replacement in your images, you’ll love Luminar AI. It even relights your photo to match the lighting and colours of the new sky! This technology works perfectly even with the tiniest details intersecting your sky. Thanks to the new “Reflection Amount” slider, you can also adjust the intensity of the reflection. The software now automatically reflects the new sky in the body of water (lake, sea, pool…) as well, in the most realistic way. With the recent update of Luminar AI, they brought this feature even further. When the sky replacement technology first launched, it was a game changer.

This is just my personal choice 🙂 However, I totally understand the need for some people to do it, especially for commercial/advertising photography. Full disclosure! I’m a big fan of obtaining my images right in camera and my inspiration comes from being outdoor, seeking for the perfect moment.

Luminar ai sky replacement