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A stunning sky can make all the difference in a photo. Adobe now shared a preview on YouTube of its newest Sky Replacement Photoshop feature, which will make adding dramatic skies to photos faster and easier than ever before, as Adobe promises.

The new Sensei-powered AI tool uses machine learning to automatically distinguish between the foreground and background or sky of a photo. With just one click at the sky, the current one can be replaced instantly. Without creating complicated masks to separate the different photo layers. “Adobe Sensei-powered models do the heavy lifting of masking and blending,” Adobe product manager Meredith Stotzner says in the video.

As soon as the sky is changed, Photoshop uses its algorithms to automatically adjust the colours and lighting of the foreground to match the new sky, making the photo more realistic and believable. For example, if you add a warm, golden sunset, the AI will update the colouring of the rest of your picture and add warm, golden hues to your photo. With a midday sky, the AI will adjust the brightness, contrast and shadows. It remains to be seen how this automatic process works with different photos. Adobe’s video promises a lot. Especially concerning speeding up the editing process. Which leaves more time for fine adjustments in order to achieve even better results.

The video shows the Photoshop sky replacement feature in action

“What’s the most powerful part of this feature? The full force of Photoshop that’s preserved with every layer, mask, and non-destructive adjustment,” says Sr. Photoshop Product Manager Meredith Payne Stotzner in the video. Despite the fact that the feature does a lot of things automatically, users are still in full control. You can make adjustments and fine-tuning at any time, for example changing the foreground colour, adjusting the brightness and colour temperature of the sky or moving and fading the edges. Resizing the sky is also possible. Everything happens on separate levels and is reversible at any time.

The new tool will be found under the Edit menu. Users can choose from a selection of preset skies or can upload their own sky photos and group them into collections.

Adobe is not the first one to offer this sort of tool. In July last year, Skylum released its own automatic AI-powered sky replacement feature with its photo editor program Luminar 4. Adobe has not yet revealed when the new function will be added to Photoshop. However, further details on this and other features are expected for the Adobe MAX 2020 conference in October.

We are definitely excited to test the new tool.

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