![]() Start With a Presetīefore you even start processing an image in the digital darkroom, consider how you want it to look. Not doing so can result in heavy ghosting in the image that Aurora HDR cannot adjust for. This ensures you have the same camera/lens profiles, cropping, spot removal, etc., applied to all images. When using adjusted TIFs, make your adjustments to one image, and then Sync these to the other images you will be using. Letting Lightroom run the images through Adobe Camera Raw first avoided these problems, providing both the fastest processing and the best looking images. When using unadjusted RAW files, I found the HDR image was noisy and often had strange or flat colors. The best results I had, by far, were produced by using adjusted TIF files, via the Aurora HDR plugin for Lightroom. I can’t say this enough times, shoot in RAW! This gives you the most flexibility in your workflow, and when you learn something new you can go back and use it on old images, like I did here. Photomatix was a close second, I think this may just come down to personal taste between the two. The colors are right on the verge of over the top, partly because it was an amazingly colorful sunrise!. This one is tough, but I gave a slight edge to Aurora HDR using Lightroom adjusted TIF files. There are things cameras do well, like shooting the HDR series, but processing an HDR series is not one of them!ĭisclaimer: I processed each image in both examples below as similarly as I could within each program to try to get the best looking image possible from each.Īurora HDR - Lightroom Adjusted TIF files The “Winner” Just for fun, I also threw in the HDR JPEG file saved straight out of the camera. The best way I can think of to test the new kid on the scene is with a head-to-head comparison, taking the same image through Aurora HDR side by side with other programs I like, Photomatix Pro 6 and Nik HDR Efex Pro 2. Since I use this technique often, over the year’s I have tried many programs. The forests, coastlines, and wetlands I often find myself shooting in lend themselves perfectly to HDRs. You’ll have a final image which preserves contrast in your mid-tones while having details in highlights and shadows that may not appear in a single exposure, due to your camera’s dynamic range limitations. These are “merged” together to form a HDR image using specialized HDR software like Aurora HDR. Typically, this is done with 3 images (sometimes more), one each for shadows, highlights, and midtones. The HDR technique attempts to increase the range of light to dark in a single image by combining multiple images shot at different exposures. In nature this range is huge, our eyes can capture only a small part of this, and our cameras an even smaller range. Think the darkest shadows to the brightest light. In photography, dynamic range is “the range of luminance values from lightest to darkest”. Technical Moment: High Dynamic Range (HDR) Images A lot! Getting a chance to take the new Beta version of Aurora HDRfor a spin, I was cautiously optimistic that a new contender for High Dynamic Range (HDR) image processing on a PC had arrived. I figured Macphun’s software would always remain out of reach until Macphun released Luminar for Windows earlier this year. ![]() ![]() Until this year Macphun software wasn’t available for us PC’s. I’m a Windows guy, a sometimes lonely place to be in the oft Apple dominated world of graphic design and photography. ![]() Until recently, I’ve felt a little left out when it comes to the Macphun line of photo editing and effects software. ![]()
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