Fun with Luminar 4 (Sky Replacement)

Photographic situations are not always perfect – something or the other is often missing. Lighting may not be ideal, the subject may not be in the best possible position, you may not be having the right equipment, the sky could be bald, and the weather could be inclement. Anything is possible.

- Rohinton Mehta

Let’s take the case of a bald featureless sky. Everything else is to your liking except the sky. A bald sky ruins an otherwise good photo. There are several ways to replace a bad sky in a photo but most of them are not easy to implement.

Enter Luminar 4 from Skylum. The current version of the software is known as Luminar 4.2. The program can be used as a stand-alone or as a plug-in to Photoshop or Lightroom. I am not going to get into the nitty-gritty of explaining the entire software and what all it can do and cannot do. I am going to show you how easy it is for anyone to replace a boring sky. Luminar allows you to use a pre-set sky (several of them are included) or you may use your own sky picture. It is a good idea to build a stock library of your own sky pictures. Take horizontal as well as vertical framed shots.

In this sky replacement article, I will use Luminar 4.2 as a plug-in to Photoshop and use one of the skies included with the program.

Open Photoshop. Open the Layers panel (F7). Open the photo on which you wish to replace the sky.

Make a copy of the Background layer by dragging the Background to the second icon from the right (where it says ‘Create a new layer’) at the bottom of the Layers panel. In the Layers panel, you will see that as a Background copy (Printscreen 1)

Go to Filer > Skylum Software > Luminar 4 (Printscreen 2)

Luminar will open (Printscreen 3 shows the opening box).

Once Luminar 4 has opened, you will see four vertical tabs on the right of the screen. The topmost one is highlighted. This is the Essentials tab (Printscreen 4).