Remove powerlines with ease, thanks to Luminar Neo

In the new Luminar Neo, Skylum has added some great new tools to help save you time. One of these is the ability to remove power lines from images.

You can find this tool in the Erase tab, located under the Essentials tools. Then, you can click Remove Powerlines under the Objects Removal section.

To test out the tool, I found an old photo of a NASA rocket. I wanted to see if the AI would remove the cables holding the rocket. I simply clicked the Remove Powerlines button.

After about 5-10 seconds of the AI working, the cables were successfully removed. This is certainly an efficient feature! The clouds, blue patches, overexposed areas and painted lines on the rocket did not confuse the software.

Working on a landscape

Next, I gave Luminar Neo a more difficult test. I used the Remove Powerlines feature on this landscape photo where the power lines were thin, distant and on a background that provided more camouflage and less contrast than before. After a short time processing, the AI was able to remove some of the powerline over the water. However, there were a lot of power lines left.

Finishing the job

While I have no doubt the AI engine will continue to be refined, the beauty of Luminar Neo is that there are other AI tools available to complete the job. I was able to use the Erase brush to paint over the areas with the power lines. I eventually painted over the wooden utility pole, too.

Then, I simply pressed the Erase button and let the AI work its magic. The end result was a clean photo. While you could have done this with a small clone stamp tool and a lot more effort just to save a tiny bit of detail (possibly), it’s extremely exciting to see what the AI in this software could do in about 20 seconds.

I continued to test this feature to great success for images with power lines over blue sky, cloudy sky or close in the frame and the feature worked beautifully. For more distant landscape images like the one shown in my example, the tool was able to do a partial removal and was easily cleaned up with the erase brush. In all cases, I saved time thanks to the power of AI.

Want to see the feature in action? Check out the short tutorial video below.