For as long as we can remember, creative decision-making has been largely subjective. In the past decade, however, the subjectivity of creativity has begun to change. More than ever, decisions within major companies and even the arts have been straying out of the realm of subjectivity and into the realm of objectivity and data. When a record label signs a new artist, it wants to see Spotify data signaling this artist's fanbase is trending up and to the right. When a car manufacturer hires an advertising agency and asks for creative campaign ideas, it wants those ideas to be backed up by data that signals emerging demand.

Skylum has officially launched Luminar AI which comes packed with multiple AI-Powered editing tools including an enhanced sky replacer and several new ways to reshape and change the human body or face. Skylum has heavily hyped this latest software release with months of teasers and online chatter. The company says that with the launch of Luminar AI, it hopes to offer an alternative to the approach that traditional photo editors present and give creatives a workflow driven by artificial intelligence. Skylum says its goal was to remove tedious tasks and eliminate learning curves. The first step in this goal is realized through the new Templates system that automatically scans each photo for subject and problem areas and then recommends a Template that Skyulum says "challenges an artist's creativity while also helping them achieve common tasks."

With traditional photo editors, creating the perfect photo is a time-consuming process that involves moving dozens of sliders. Many seek to use presets to speed this up, but there are severe limitations. Presets tend to only work on images that are virtually identical to the original. To change this tedious and frustrating process, innovative companies race to embrace Artificial Intelligence. But some creatives have been skeptical about its effectiveness and limitations.

Skylum has released the latest version of the Luminar photo editor, and in addition to the expected performance enhancements and minor updates, Luminar 4.2 boasts a new feature called "AI Augmented Sky" that makes creating surreal photo composites the work of a few seconds. As the name suggests, AI Augmented Sky takes advantage of computer vision and machine learning technology to help you composite elements into the sky in your photos. Skylum claims that the feature will work seamlessly, even if your photo has "complex backgrounds" like trees or buildings, and there's "no need to involve masking or layers" to get the job done. Finally, the feature doesn't HAVE to be used to create surreal composites. More subtle edits are also possible, like moving the moon to a more "pleasing" position in the sky, or adding in some clouds without fully replacing the sky.

On November 18, 2019, Skylum will release Luminar 4, the AI photo editing tool for anyone who makes pictures. At PhotoPlus in New York, I talked with Dima Sytnik, chief product officer and co-founder of Skylum about the new artificial intelligence tools in Luminar 4. We're working with engineers to bring you the best technologies possible to make your photo editing workflow flow easier and faster than ever. The new technological advances in Luminar 4 is our new AI engine. We call it Artificial Intelligent Engine Skylum 2.0 and we have 4 AI-powered filters in Luminar 4, which is very unique to the market. So, photographers now can achieve the results much faster and much easier than before, but the quality is very high.

Visual 1st, the annual Silicon-Valley imaging conference for industry leaders and upstarts, once again brought together a worldwide audience for a day-and-a-half executive conference. The event, held Oct. 2-3 at the Golden Gate Club in San Francisco, addresses topics as far-reaching as artificial intelligence and as every day as printing. As with most conferences, the real meat of the event is the hallway discussions and informal meetings over a beer or wine at the reception. Below are some photos from the conference, courtesy of sponsor, Sweet Escapes. Each year, a panel of high-powered industry experts presented the four Visual 1st Awards to the most outstanding among 30 products competing in this year's show-and-tell demo sessions.