Photo editing and processing are becoming a major focus point for AI, specifically in the domain of filters. Luminar’s sky replacement filter shows why AI does a much better job as a filter, in comparison to traditional filters in editors like photoshop or lightroom.

The impressive demo shows how an AI filter can intelligently mask an image’s “sky” region, and apply an alternative sky on top. Some of the images in the demo show really complex scenarios, that would take a human editor a long time to achieve manually.

Having powerful AI filters is no doubt the image and video editing of the future. You can even tell that changing the sky changes the color of the rest of the image. that is truly impressive. Here are a few things that I am missing in this demo.

1. Can the user apply his own sky image, or only use one of the prebuilt ones?
2. Does the photo adjust for lighting? For example, will a new directional light accurately create shadows in the relevant regions of the non-sky area, similar to the demo by NVidia’s GauGan?
3. How does the filter handle complex sky scenes such as rain/lightning/snow storm skies?
4. Does this work on video !! This would require some “memory” for motion tracking, but would be awsome.