Lightroom users in particular will benefit from the ability to swap out skies in outdoor shots, a job you can’t do within Lightroom. The Sky Swap AI feature in ON1 Photo RAW 2023 is still there, but by separating this feature as a standalone app, ON1 has made it available to photographers who use other software and workflows. Normally, effects created by external editors like Sky Swap AI cannot be undone later, but ON1 says you can re-edit your images using its Smart Photos plugin technology. The Sky Swap AI technology can also ‘relight’ the rest of the scene to match the color of the new sky, and even add reflections to water in the foreground. In many instances the sky replacement will work fine straight out of the box, but ON1 Sky Swap AI has a collection of masking tools for fine-tuning the results. These include 125 skies from premium supplier OcuDrone. It uses machine-learning algorithms to automatically identify the sky in any scene, and then offers no fewer that 231 different ‘skies’ to drop in instead.

Sky Swap AI works in much the same way as the AI Sky Replacement first introduced in Skylum Luminar and now part of Luminar Neo. (Note that the Life after Photoshop 20% discount code does not currently apply to this product.) You can check out the ON1 store via the links below, but note that ON1 Sky Swap AI is also available as a free 14-day trial, so you have plenty of time to try it out and decide for yourself. It’s also a lot cheaper, costing just $29.99 for what ON1 says is a “limited” time. This means you can use ON1’s clever AI-powered sky swapping technology without having to launch (or buy) the full ON1 Photo RAW 2023 application. ON1 Sky Swap AI is now available as a standalone program and plug-in. You can open ON1 Sky Swap AI as an app, or launch it from Capture One, Affinity Photo, Corel Paintshop Pro, Apple Photos, Photoshop or Lightroom Classic.

Sky Swap AI is one of the big features in ON1 Photo RAW 2023, but ON1 has now split it out to also offer it as a standalone program and plug-in.

Lightroom standalone