Luminar AI update adds sky reflections, Texture and Template improvements

(Image credit: Skylum)

Skylum has released the second free update to Luminar AI, its easy to use photo enhancement tool powered by artificial intelligence and cutting edge image effects.

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If you’ve already got Luminar AI, you will be prompted to download and install the Luminar 1.2.0 update the next time you launch it. If you don’t, the new features might just tempt you to give it a try.

Improved Sky AI, now with reflections

Luminar’s Sky AI tool does an amazing job of substituting dramatic and interesting skies for dull and boring ones, using its own library of replacement skies, or by merging in ‘sky’ images of your own.

But outdoor shoots with water in the foreground have always posed a problem for sky replacement tools because in real life the water should reflect the tones and colors of the sky.

Well with this latest update, it will! With this update, Luminar AI won’t just add a reflection of your replacement sky to the water, it will match it to the perspective and depth of the image too. You can also adjust the reflection amount, to get the most natural looking result possible.

Luminar AI already had a Scene Relighting feature to make the overall lighting of the picture match the new sky, but it’s now improved to eliminate strong color casts from subjects in the foreground, and adds control over the exposure and saturation. It even adds Relight Human controls for more natural looking people shots.

New orientation controls make it easier to match the sky with the horizon and Horizon Blending and Fix Details tools can perfect the join where they meet. There are also six new skies with this update.

Improved Texture Overlays with Local Masking

Luminar AI does not support image layers in the same way that Luminar 4 did, but you can still add, edit and manipulate Texture Overlays, such as bokeh effects and text, and with local masking you can ‘paint’ the overlay in and out over different parts of the image.

Improved Template experience

Skylum has also worked on the way Templates are used, which are at the heart of Luminar’s AI experience. All Templates, including Favorites, My Templates Purchased, and Legacy Templates, are now available within the main Templates tab. Template Group previews are now uniform in size to make them more visually accessible and comfortable to work with, and Templates purchased in the Luminar Marketplace are now automatically added to For This Photo and may be presented by Luminar AI when suggesting enhancements for your photos.

Luminar AI new camera support

Luminar AI adds support for the following cameras: Canon EOS R5, Canon EOS R6, EOS 850D, EOS-1D X Mark III (lossy compressed files), Fujifilm X-S10, Leica M10-R, S3, SL2-S, Nikon Z 5, Z 6 II, Z 7 II, Olympus E-M10 Mark IV, Panasonic DC-G100 / G110, DC-S5, Sony ILCE-7C (A7C), ILCE-7SM3 (A7S III) and Zeiss ZX1.

Rod is an independent photography journalist and editor, and a long-standing Digital Camera World contributor, having previously worked as DCW's Group Reviews editor. Before that he has been technique editor on N-Photo, Head of Testing for the photography division and Camera Channel editor on TechRadar, as well as contributing to many other publications. He has been writing about photography technique, photo editing and digital cameras since they first appeared, and before that began his career writing about film photography. He has used and reviewed practically every interchangeable lens camera launched in the past 20 years, from entry-level DSLRs to medium format cameras, together with lenses, tripods, gimbals, light meters, camera bags and more. Rod has his own camera gear blog at fotovolo.com but also writes about photo-editing applications and techniques at lifeafterphotoshop.com