Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Photography
  3. News

Luminar (re)touches the sky with a simple A.I.-powered slider

Hillary K. Grigonis
By
The All New Luminar: AI Sky Enhancer

Great photo, but not so great sky? There’s now artificial intelligence for that. On Thursday, October 11, Skylum Luminar unveiled A.I. Sky Enhancer, a tool designed to add detail and drama to the sky while leaving the rest of the image untouched. The tool will roll out in a free update to Luminar 2018 on November 1, followed by a new library tool in December.

Skylum says that the A.I. Sky Enhancer adds depth, detail, and definition to the sky without introducing artifacts. The company says the tool leaves the remainder of the image untouched, and adds that the tool even works to retouch the sky in gaps inside trees, bridges and other objects.

Recommended Videos

While existing tools across different photo editors can use a mix of graduated filters and brush tools to apply changes to only the sky, the A.I. Sky Enhance uses a simple slider, skipping the process of actually selecting the sky. Skylum says the tool can help save time compared to manually selecting and adjusting the sky in an image.

Related
1 of 2
skylum luminar sky enhancer 5 1 jim nix before
Before Jim Nix / Skylum
skylum luminar sky enhancer 5 2 jim nix after
After Jim Nix / Skylum

The tool joins other A.I.-powered tools like the Accent A.I. and Foliage Enhancer in Luminar 2018. A result of the Skylum A.I. Lab, software engineers created the tool by feeding hundreds of thousands of images to the computer and differentiating between good edits and bad ones.

“We are extremely proud of the tremendous solutions our AI Lab has developed to help photographers quickly correct images,” said Alex Tsepko, CEO of Skylum Software. “Boring skies can minimize the impact of even the most beautiful scenes, but AI Sky Enhancer restores the drama and beauty of the sky using a simple slider as opposed to complex selections and masking processes. This frees up time that can now be spent artistically developing their personal vision using other creative tools available in Luminar.”

The update continues Skylum’s focus on A.I. technology in photo editing, including machine-learning tools inside Aurora HDR and the consumer photo software that edits for users with A.I, Photolemur 3.

The A.I. Sky Enhance update rolls out on November 1 as a free update for current users. Skylum says the previously teased update adding a digital asset management library will arrive in December.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Hillary K. Grigonis
Hillary K. Grigonis
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Hillary never planned on becoming a photographer—and then she was handed a camera at her first writing job and she's been…
Google’s LaMDA is a smart language A.I. for better understanding conversation
LaMDA model

Artificial intelligence has made extraordinary advances when it comes to understanding words and even being able to translate them into other languages. Google has helped pave the way here with amazing tools like Google Translate and, recently, with its development of Transformer machine learning models. But language is tricky -- and there’s still plenty more work to be done to build A.I. that truly understands us.
Language Model for Dialogue Applications
At Tuesday’s Google I/O, the search giant announced a significant advance in this area with a new language model it calls LaMDA. Short for Language Model for Dialogue Applications, it’s a sophisticated A.I. language tool that Google claims is superior when it comes to understanding context in conversation. As Google CEO Sundar Pichai noted, this might be intelligently parsing an exchange like “What’s the weather today?” “It’s starting to feel like summer. I might eat lunch outside.” That makes perfect sense as a human dialogue, but would befuddle many A.I. systems looking for more literal answers.

LaMDA has superior knowledge of learned concepts which it’s able to synthesize from its training data. Pichai noted that responses never follow the same path twice, so conversations feel less scripted and more responsively natural.

Read more
How the USPS uses Nvidia GPUs and A.I. to track missing mail
A United States Postal Service USPS truck driving on a tree-lined street.

The United States Postal Service, or USPS, is relying on artificial intelligence-powered by Nvidia's EGX systems to track more than 100 million pieces of mail a day that goes through its network. The world's busiest postal service system is relying on GPU-accelerated A.I. systems to help solve the challenges of locating lost or missing packages and mail. Essentially, the USPS turned to A.I. to help it locate a "needle in a haystack."

To solve that challenge, USPS engineers created an edge A.I. system of servers that can scan and locate mail. They created algorithms for the system that were trained on 13 Nvidia DGX systems located at USPS data centers. Nvidia's DGX A100 systems, for reference, pack in five petaflops of compute power and cost just under $200,000. It is based on the same Ampere architecture found on Nvidia's consumer GeForce RTX 3000 series GPUs.

Read more
These apps use A.I. to automate your life and save you time
best ai apps oval app lifestyle

Artificial intelligence (A.I.) can do a huge amount to help our lives, and that's especially evident in the devices we use every day. There are tons of apps that make great use of A.I. to introduce fantastic new features that save huge amounts of time, identify whatever you point your camera at, and much more.

If you are looking to get a helping hand from some ingenious algorithms, look no further. We have rounded up the best apps that can do the hard work for you on your mobile device or computer. Just download them and start reaping the benefits.
Scan Thing

Read more