Luminar AI Update 4 - now with Portrait Bokeh AI!
Well friends, we finally get the long-awaited bokeh AI tool in Luminar AI, which was first promised when the product was originally launched, late last year. Was it worth the wait? See sample screenshots below, and check out my full demo video as well!
My opinion? It’s quite good, and it will be really useful too!
Now, when it was first announced last year, it was just called Bokeh AI. But now it is Portrait Bokeh AI. So keep that in mind. In other words, it is designed for portraits, and not just any photo. It uses AI to recognize humans in an image - even groups of them - and automatically creates a mask over them. Then you can adjust the bokeh for the background, as well as quite a few other things: brightness, temperature and more!
I love when new products or new features come out, and even though this isn’t exactly something I need all the time (if you follow my work, you know that taking portraits is not my thing). But I do feel that with this update, they have done the impossible - they’ve made me interested in portraits! LOL
Honestly though, I am having a lot of fun with it and think you will too.
Check out my full First Look video here:
Here are some sample screenshots, showing how the mask looks over this photo. Keep in mind, this mask was AUTOMATIC and was done in a couple of seconds. It’s amazingly fast and accurate too. Of course, if you need to adjust the mask, you can do so with the brush in the Portrait Bokeh AI tool. You can paint over parts of the photo to either add focus to them, or blur them. It’s quite ingenious and of course all you portrait photographers out there are going to love it.
Unedited photo on the left. Photo showing mask in the middle. Final edit (with new sky, too!) on the right.
Click any image to enlarge.
Now here is the other thing I want to point out about this tool. This is the FIRST TIME that Skylum has actually shown us the mask with their AI tools. Take Sky AI (automatic sky replacement) for example. Sure, the sky goes in automatically and looks great, but you never actually see the mask. It’s not hard to figure out, of course, but I think this is a big deal because in the past these things have been obscured. So I think this is a positive development.
And as I said, it will also handle group portraits with ease. Here is a sample group shot. You can see the mask, which is 95%+ accurate. I think that is pretty amazing all around.
If you want to see more of this tool in action, I recommend watching my YouTube video about it. I will also be back soon with even more videos about this tool.
And just to make sure that Portrait Bokeh AI doesn’t overshadow the other big updates, I wanted to share them here. The Sky AI tool has been improved and simplified. A new on-screen tool makes it even easier to get a new sky in the right position. They replace 3 separate sliders with a new Horizon Position tool, which operates a little like an adjustable gradient. It’s quick and easy, and I cover that in the video too.
And lastly, the Texture tool was updated to include visual previews of textures. This is great because many times the name of the texture might not be very clear, so this visual preview helps a lot! There are two new sets of textures included, and you can even load your own folders of textures and get a visual preview of them, too. It’s awesome!
There are also a lot of bug fixes and performance updates to round out Luminar AI Update 4. Keep in mind this is a FREE UPDATE for current customers, so it’s no cost to you my friends. Get it and have fun editing!
