It’s a very rare occasion that I would do a complete sky replacement for my photos. But this time, I wanted to try out just how good Luminar AI “sky replacement” is and can it deliver a realistic photo in the end? So, what better way than to try it on the KLCC twin towers and its surrounding skyscrapers? Also, due to the raining season now… it’s almost impossible to get any kind of sunset.
Opportunity came knocking when Henry Lam, a fellow Aussie, extended his invitation to me (together with a few local photographers) to join him in his hotel room for the “poster shot” of KLCC twin towers. Here’s a “behind the scene” shot.
Yup, we were literally shooting in a very cozy hotel room… fully air-con, with chairs and carpeted floor… all the goodies a creature comfort would asks for. Of course, shooting behind the thick window glass itself would present some amount degradation in our final image… a compromise we all had to deal with.
So, let’s look at the 3 bracketed shots that I have chosen.
All these 3 bracketed photos were shot on the widest 10mm focal length with aperture F16, lowest ISO at 160 and shutter speed each at 5s, 20s & 80s. I did some adjustments on Lightroom like warming up the white balance slightly, zero out the sharpening ( which Lightroom auto sharpens when importing) and fixing the vertical perspective.
There’s a steel roof lining on the top left side… and also some obvious reflection on the left side as well. Let me zoom it up for you to see.
Back to the 3 bracketed photos, I started merging them in Photomatix using the tone mapping option, click on default preset on the right panel and dial in some of the slider adjustments on the left panel. Here’s the result below.
After that, I loaded up Photoshop and using the healing brush and stamp clone, I removed the steel roof and reflection on the left side… also cloned out some of the dusts. Followed by adjusting the contrast using Color Efex Pro 4 by Nik Collection. Lastly, I cropped the photo slightly tighter to get rid of the construction building on the right. Below is how it looks like so far.
Now that everything is set, it’s time for sky replacement. Loaded the file into Luminar AI, choose the type of sky i wanted… hit apply and it’s done! No tedious masking or brushing or whatsoever. Very easy to use. Below is the side by side comparison of before and after sky replacement.
However, I’ve noticed one of the twin tower antenna had gone missing. The software must have mistaken the antenna as part of the sky and totally replaced it. Welp, nothing is perfect… even for a software. Refer to below.
But it’s easily fixable in Photoshop using clone stamp tool. And here’s the final result after cloning the antenna.
Conclusion? The future is finally here. Gone are the days us photographers sitting in front of the computer in hours… endlessly brushing and masking away the skies. With Luminar AI, all you need to do is select the “ideal” sky you want and hit apply. It’s that simple!
Oh btw, here’s the group photo before we call it a day and adjourned for dinner. BTS and group photos courtesy of Henry Lam from Darwin (or soon to be Brisbane :P).
