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• Aurora HDR is a photo editor focused on creating high-quality HDR merges from image brackets. With HDR-specific tools like HDR Denoise and HDR Structure, among a variety of others, Aurora is recognized as the world’s best HDR software by photographers around the globe. 1 license can be used on up to 5 devices whether it's Mac or Windows.
• Aurora HDR Review (2020 version) HDR images are some of the hardest to get right. They often come out too highly processed and looking terrible. In this Aurora HDR review we run through every details so you can know more about the Aurora HDR.
• Dec 08, 2020 Aurora HDR Review Aurora HDR is the flagship HDR software created by Skylum. Skylum has created other popular software like the post-processing program Luminar 4. This particular program offers powerful HDR image creation and an excellent set of post-processing tools.

Aurora HDR is a photo editor focused on creating high-quality HDR merges from image brackets. With HDR-specific tools like HDR Denoise and HDR Structure, among a variety of others, Aurora is recognized as the world’s best HDR software by photographers around the globe. 1 license can be used on up to 5 devices whether it's Mac or Windows.

Perhaps the earliest method of producing high dynamic range images started in the 1800s, when French photographer Gustave Le Gray shot and combined two negatives in the darkroom to produce a well-exposed print of a high contrast seascape. Not surprisingly, todays HDR processing tools are much more sophisticated and much easier to use thanks to software applications like Macphuns Aurora HDR.

While there are other HDR software applications out there (and most have been around longer than this one), Aurora HDR stands out for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that the application is a collaboration between Macphun and HDR wizard, Trey Ratcliff. Ratcliff has probably done more to promote and popularize HDR than any software manufacturer or photographer ever has. He is incredibly prolific and has always been extremely generous with his HDR knowledge and advice. And Macphun has done an excellent job with this software, as well as other applications such as Tonality Pro (one of my Macphun favorites), so it is a win-win in my book.

HDR has generally been a love-it-or-hate-it proposition among photographers but it does not have to be. You can go to extremes, with eye-popping colors and crunchy details or keep an image looking natural looking, with just enough tweaking to maintain details in both highlights and shadows in high contrast scenarios (HDR is ideal for real estate photography, for example).

Aurora HDR is currently for Mac only (but a Windows application is promised, so hang in there PC users). Available in Standard ($39) and Pro ($99) versions, both operate as a standalone app with multiple licenses for up to 5 Macs, and is arguably one of the best software for HDR photography. The Pro version also offers plug-in for Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Elements and Apple Aperture, includes unlimited numbers of brackets, ghost reduction, native RAW support, PSD file support and some of Trey Ratcliffs signature HDR presets. It’s designed to work with other Macphun software as well, so you can adjust a photo in Aurora HDR and then export it to another Macphun app if you’d like. I tested the Pro version of Aurora HDR in standalone mode on a MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM.

Installation was quick and easy; getting started was equally as easy, thanks to the softwares clean and intuitive interface and plentiful presets. If you’re new to HDR (or even if you have some experience), it’s best to check out some of Macphuns tutorials to dig deeper into the software’s many features.

Pay attention to the opening screen, which allows you to choose a reference image for ghosting reduction to help minimize any movement in the image. While it worked well, I would love to have a manual option within the software to re-apply deghosting if necessary. Deghosting and alignment take a little time so be patient when waiting for the software to do its thing.

But once the images have been combined, it’s time to get to work. Initially, it’s probably best to start off with some of the application’s presets (you can also download additional presets) if you would like. The presets are organized into sets including , which are organized into categories such as Realistic HDR, Dramatic, Landscape, Indoor and Architecture.Starting with a base image, Aurora HDR provides a huge number of options for tweaking and adjusting images. These include tone mapping, tone curves, saturation, vibration, contrast, temperature and many, many more.

A couple of my favorites include the Top and Bottom Lighting option, which allows you to adjust lighting in different areas of the image. The areas affected can be chosen much like using a gradient tool, with options for increasing/decreasing the coverage, as well as angle rotation.

I also love the glow feature as well, which adds a beautiful glow to the image. Of course, there are options to control the amount, smoothness, brightness and warmth. And, you can easily see the before/after versions.

One you get settled in with the basics, then start playing around with layers and masks —particularly luminosity masks. With the latter you can selectively apply changes to just highlights (or when inverted) shadow areas. You can also layer textures onto the image for some extra creativity.I have used a lot of different HDR

Aurora Hdr Express Reviews

software and, while most of them have been quite good, Aurora HDR has taken its place at the top of my list. I may not work in HDR very often but it’s intuitive user interface, familiar tools and generally excellent end results have made me a big fan. And there are plenty of options to make your images look better, even when you bypass the more extreme HDR looks.

You have probably already heard about the new program from Macphun and Trey Ratcliff. Even I already posted about it. And today, I will share with you my thoughts about this new pieced of software. You can get Aurora from the StuckInCustoms store here or from Macphun here.

First of all, Aurora HDR is only available for Mac OS currently. For me that’s a bit of a complication, as I use Windows on all my devices. But so I can take a look at this software, I borrowed a Macbook Pro and tried it on that. It was not the newest model, so it was a bit slower when confronted with 36Mpix files, but it was still usable. But let’s get back to Aurora.

When looking at Aurora, in comparison to other HDR tonemapping software I use or used, I will define it as a middle ground between Photomatix and Photoengine, with a part of Lightroom sprinkled in. What I mean with this, that it’s not as straightforward as Photoengie, but does not overwhelm you with tonemapping options as Photomatix. And on top, it offers many edits that are very familiar from Lightroom.

If you look at Aurora more, you will quite quickly see what the goal is here. It’s to take the most used edits you perform on HDR photos, and instead of having them in multiple applications, they tried to put them all into one program. This may work for your work-flow, or may not. For instance if you have a whole library in Lightroom, it quite easier just to do a mass edits there, before you even start with HDR processing. On other hand, if you are just starting with HDR, and still looking for your work-flow, this may work just fine for you.

In my personal workflow, the tonemapping software is just one step, before I go into Photoshop. I prefer the more gradual control I can get there, to a more limited set that is usually available in tonemapping software. The most important thing for me there, is the quality of the tonemapped image. In this Aurora provide very good results. You can see this easily, just by loading the brackets into the software, and moving the tonemapping slider. If you see a strong HDR effect, light inversion and bright outlines, the algorithm is not the best.

Features

As I mentioned, Aurora offers a wide variety of possible edits. You get quite a long list, with Tonemapping, Tone, Structure, HDR Denoise, Image Radiance, Color, Details, Glow, Top & Bottom Lighting, Tone Curve, Color Filter, Color Toning and Vignette. Some are new, some will be familiar to you if you used other software. But again, as I mentioned, just from the list you can see what everything is put together in one place in Aurora.

You can of course skip any editing and just use the provided presets, but than you will miss all the fun of creating your own style.

Let’s look at few. I quite like the default tone-mapping that was applied to the images I tried. For most images I had no need to even tweak the Tonemapping, just the Tone. Here I actually had to tone down the Smart Tone quite a bit, as the default gives a too strong HDR look, compared to what I like. But going down into negative values, corrected this rather quickly. Also, the default made every single image too bright, so that had to be also corrected under tone. Additionaly, same as other tone-maping software, there is quite a lack of contrast in the results, and that has to be added. But what you get here, is already quite a nice tone-mapping result, and a good start to further edits.

Aurora Hdr Free

I really liked that under Tone, you can find separate sliders for highlights, midtones, shadows, black and whites. I especially like the midtones slider, which is missing from Lightroom. Having these all right here, makes for much better control about the result. Next you have structure. It looks like a combination of clarity from Lightrom, with Detail extractor and Tonal contrast form Color Efex. It’s an interesting effect, which needs to be used very gently, as it’s very easy to just oversature your photo with detail.

Another very nice implementation is of the gradient filters. here its called Top & Bottom Lighting, and they added two separate exposures sliders, which makes it very easy to to balance the brightness, if your image is split along a horizon. Other edits you can do, is to de-noise your image or add sharpness, add radiance or glow. It really tries to provide a one software solution to most situations with HDR. Like this it even can be used when you goal is not really a HDR picture, as Aurora allows you just to add a single exposure as input.

Aurora also supports layers. This work quite similar to adjustment layers in Photoshop. So what you do is, you create a layer, make adjustments on it and then tweak the mask and opacity to where and how much the effect is used. This work very nice, if you have images where different parts need different adjustments. Of course if you need a more pixel based layers, if you do retouching and similar, Phothoshop is a must.

Overall

Overall I’m quite impressed with what all Aurora provides and what results it can bring. I still need more time to experiment more, and get used to it, but that will come after a Windows version is released. But for you, if you are using a MacOS computer, you should give it a try.

You can find a trial version on the aurorahdr.com website.

Aurora Software Hdr

And to end this review, here you have 4 photos edited only in Aurora (with only some dust spots removed in Photoshop). I can imagine in all doing few more tweaks in Photoshop, or even more directly in Aurora, but in all cases, this is a very good result.