Aurora HDR 2018 is the most advanced and complete high dynamic range photo editor available for Mac and Windows. It contains everything you need to tackle tricky lighting situations that demand HDR photography techniques. Discover 20 Exclusive Landscape Aurora HDR 2018 and 2019 Presets This styles creating by professional Photographers Speed up your photo editing workflow with versatile presets made to help you improve light, color, contrast, and tone in your photos They will also save you time and money. For your first look, something photo-realistic is the best approach. If you’re interested in obtaining the image files I used in this video series as well as several bonus images to practice on, or perhaps purchase my huge set.

If you’ve had even a passing interest in HDR photography over the last decade, you’ve undoubtedly come across Trey Ratcliff, or at least seen some of his images online (even if you didn’t realize it).

Trey is hands down the most well known, and arguably most talented, HDR photographer in the world. He has built his brand Stuck in Customs by displaying incredibly detailed and clear HDR photos from all over the world.

Every time you read the blog it compels you to want to hop on an airplane, buy a new camera, or in most cases, both.

But here’s the good news, you don’t necessarily have to do either to begin getting results similar to Trey’s.

Frankly, it was inevitable. What am I talking about? Well, Trey has become so well known in the HDR world, that it was just a matter of time before he released his own HDR software.

And that’s exactly what he has done with Aurora HDR 2019.

Aurora is the newest and most high profile piece of HDR software to come out in years, and fortunately for all of us photo mortals, it was worth the wait.

The latest version boasts improved performance, speed and features. It also now comes in a Windows version answering the prayers of a whole lot of non-Mac users out there.

Originally produced by a company named Macphun, they changed their name to Skylum in 2017 when they decided to add the Windows version to the mix.

We’re going to take a look at the “Pro” version of Aurora in this review. At $99 it’s priced competitively with other high end HDR programs. Apparently there’s a scaled back “Express” version available for $39 but for the life of me I couldn’t find a download link for it.

Maybe I just missed it or maybe Skylum wants to “encourage” you to buy the full version.

Side Note: Skylum is also trying to capture the general photo editing market with their Luminar program. It’s usable as either a stand alone or as a Lightroom plug-in and covers a lot of the same day in and day out editing chores as Lightroom. It’s one time pricing of $69 also makes it an attractive alternative to Lightroom users who now have to pay an annual subscription fee. But we’ll save that for another review.

In this Aurora HDR review we’ll look at what it is, see if it lives up to its lofty expectations, and take look at how it compares to some of the old HDR standbys like Photomatix Pro 6.

Ready to dig in and see if Aurora HDR is worth investing in? Great, let’s do this.

New Aurora HDR Features for 2018

Most of the improvements in the 2018 version over the 2017 version focus on performance improvements and bringing the Windows version more in line with the Mac version. However, if you’re new to Aurora I think you’ll be generally impressed with the interface, feature set and tools it has available.

We’ll be taking a look at the Mac version here. Keep an eye out for a specific take on the Windows version soon.

OK, enough with the preliminaries, here’s what we found as we put Aurora HDR 2018 through its paces.

Aurora HDR Review: First Impressions of Aurora HDR

After hearing so much about Aurora I was excited to see what all the fuss was about. Frankly I’ve fallen out of love with some of the HDR programs out there so I was excited to see what Trey and his team would do with their fresh take. Full disclosure here…I really wanted to like it.

The Aurora HDR download was quick and smooth and I had no issues with the install. So far so good.

The startup screen gets you quickly to links for a huge variety of user guides and instructional videos if you want them. I thought these were particularly well produced and informative, not only on basic operation, but also on a variety of creative scenarios. Good stuff here.

There’s also a link to the Aurora Marketplace where you can access some additional presets. It’s a little on the limited side so far but hopefully this is something Aurora will continue to update and add to.

On the overly aggressive marketing side of things they’ve included a link to Luminar, their photo editing program. Maybe a little heavy handed but possibly worth a look considering how well integrated with Aurora it claims to be. See the link above.

For those of you who can’t wait to try it out they’ve also included a sample set of brackets for you to play with.

Creating My First HDR Image in Aurora

Getting started with Aurora is pretty straight forward and typical of other HDR programs.

Select your images and here’s your merge view:

I thought the Alignment checkbox was pretty easy to miss if you’re not paying attention and the default seems to be “unchecked”, so be aware.

This is also where you get a drop down menu for Ghost Reduction and Chromatic Aberration Removal.

If you’re in a situation where you have movement within or between the frames such as moving cars or people, Ghost Reduction is where you take care of it. Aurora will help reduce or eliminate the blur you would otherwise get when combining those frames that include motion.

Chromatic Aberration is a kind of color fringing created by the lens in very high contrast transitions.

I’m a little on the fence about needing to select a specific frame at this point to base Ghost Reduction on. A little more feedback here would be nice. Since there’s no preview function like Photomatix Pro has, if you don’t like the result of the merge you’ll basically have to start over.

In any case, punch the Create HDR button and away you go:

This is where I think Aurora really starts to shine. I immediately felt comfortable with the layout of the presets, and other features. For as much as I still like Photomatix for some things, when comparing it side by side with Aurora, it’s pretty clear that Aurora has moved way past the dated looking Photomatix interface.

The presets are arranged in a row at the bottom of the screen with edit controls lined up on the right. Tools for magnification, comparison, crop and history are on top.

I think the organization is much better and more intuitive than I’ve seen elsewhere, not to mention Photomatix doesn’t even have a history function and it’s magnification tools are a little clumsy at best.

The stock preset categories seem to be well organized and descriptively named.

I’m not sure it’s really designed this way but the presets seem to be arranged left to right from more realistic to more enhanced or “artsy”. If you’re looking for a more natural look you’ll probably want to start with the leftmost preset (conveniently already named “Realistic”) and start your edit from there.

However, once you select a category the nomenclature sometimes gets a little dicier.

The standard categories make some sense but once you get into the “designer” presets contributed by people like Trey Ratcliff and Captain Kimo, you get names like “Egg Yolk Mishap” and “Pigeon”. Suffice it to say you need to rely on the small preview thumbnail and trial and error to find what you like with these. As a personal note, these are probably not presets you should ever plan on using anyway.

Before you even touch the deep array of editing tools you have access to, you get an “amount” slider accessible on the preset thumbnail that gives you the ability to reduce the overall degree of the selected preset. In many cases I found that a couple of clicks to the left or right with the slider was all I needed to get where I wanted to go.

Tools in Aurora HDR

Since we’re not doing a tutorial here I won’t go into a tremendous amount of detail but the tools available at this point are very well thought out and allow you to create just about any effect you can imagine. Here’s the “collapsed” view.

I liked the range and flow of the effects tabs and the broad range of adjustments available to make tweaks to any preset. The stock adjustments that have been used to create the selected presets are highlighted so if you want to tweak those specific settings you can go to the dropdown menus and fine tune from there.

The collapse/expand view of each is a nice way to keep your workspace a little less cluttered feeling as you finish with individual settings.

Of course if you want to add additional effects or make adjustments from the other menu items you can do that as well.

All of the tools you have available here are very well thought out and have descriptions that seem logical and easy to understand. The ability to easily collapse and expand the categories also makes it a bit less overwhelming if you’re just getting up to speed on the interface.

Some of the highlights in the toolbox include:

Layers
The ability to create and stack layers within a project gives you an incredible amount of creative flexibility and allows for non-destructive changes or fine tuning within each layer.

Lens Correction & Transform
Here’s where you can make adjustments for specific lens problems as well as correct for leveling issues in your frame.

The Lens Correction function is where you can take care of issues like barrel distortion and pincushioning. This is also where you can correct for color fringing and Chromatic Aberration.

The Transform function will come in pretty handy for correcting for things like wide angle distortion and unlevel framing. One minor quibble is that you’ll have to do some manual cropping once you’ve made your corrections

HDR Structure
This gives you some additional control over the overall HDR effect, particularly in terms of fine tuning the detail areas or “microstructure”. It felt like this feature allowed you to change some of the subtleties of the effect that is sometimes missing in other HDR effect sliders.

Tone Curve
If you prefer to make your color adjustments with a curve tool, you’re good to go here.

Polarizer
A nice touch that will allow you to create additional control over the contrast and saturation of sky and water elements by simulating an actual polarized lens filter. I thought it worked pretty well for quick enhancement to an area that is where you often end up concentrating anyway.

Without Polarizer

Ability to toggle adjustments on and off individually

If you want to do a quick before and after comparison of an individual effect this is an easy way to do it. Just turn it on or off to see the difference. You can also reset these parameters with the click of a button.

Top and Bottom Tuning

Another nice feature, this allows you to set a gradient area at the top and/or bottom of a frame giving you the ability to simulate a graduated color or neutral density filter.

Dodge and Burn
For those of you who recall your film darkroom days with fondness and a bit of nostalgia, Aurora has you covered with their dodge and burn tools. This can be really handy for brightening up or darkening down specific areas of the frame using a brush tool. Be aware though that none of the brush tools are currently “edge aware”.

This means that as you brush along a portion of a frame the program will identify hard edges and “color within the lines” so to speak. This can be pretty handy when you’re working on something like a city skyline or something where you might want to apply an effect to the sky but not the buildings. This is an update promised in a future release.

How to Finish Your Images in Aurora HDR

On the way out you’ll have options for sharpening and resizing your images as well as options for color space and format depending on what your plans for the finished image happen to be. I thought the output quality was high even when tinkering with JPEG quality if you have need to control file size.

Things I Like Most About Aurora HDR 2018

There were a lot of things I liked about Aurora HDR 2018 but here are a few highlights:

Easy integration with Lightroom

Tailored to both beginners and advanced photographers.

I didn’t feel like I needed to do a lot of additional editing after processing a photo. Good result as a stand alone program.

User Interface

For me this is hands down the best HDR user interface on the market. Logical, intuitive and feature packed, I found I was able to get around in Aurora quickly and practically effortlessly from the very beginning.

Dodge and Burn

Having a tool to quickly knock down or brighten up small, specific areas of a frame is a great feature.

Layers

A really important tool that gives you the ability to create non-destructive layers you can stack and the turn on or off at will to fine tune details as you build up a potentially complicated composite.

Polarizing Filter

I thought this was a handy and effective tool to quickly enhance sky and water elements in the frame.

Before and After Mode

It’s easy to review your before and after view with either a keystroke to toggle back and forth or to grab a bar and be able to do a sliding split screen evaluation. Since it’s sometimes easy to forget where you started this can be a great way to keep track of what changes you’ve made.

History

Having a history list makes it easy to go back in time to revert to a specific spot in your project.

Things I Didn’t Care for in Aurora HDR 2018

Although it’s hard to fault too many things about Aurora here are a couple of nitpicks:

Presets

I had a little trouble finding presets that I thought were perfect “right out of the box”. That said, there were several that were close enough that I only had to make minor tweaks to fit my personal aesthetic.

Preset Slider

Another minor gripe, but the slider bar under the preset thumbnails is really thin and sometimes hard to grab onto.

Aurora Hdr 2018

Final Thoughts on Aurora HDR Software

I’ve probably said it a dozen different ways so far but this is by far my new favorite HDR editing program. Between the updated and user friendly interface and a slew of unique and useful tools, Aurora HDR has set a new bar for what’s going to be expected of others in the future.

Aurora Hdr 2018 Activation Key

Grab Aurora HDR at the Skylum Website Here.

• Excellent user interface
• Nearly every feature you could want
• Works seamlessly with other programs

Aurora Hdr 2018 Vs 2019

• A little spendy in the Instagram world we live in
• Many of the presets felt pretty useless

The Breakdown

Aurora HDR is photographicsoftware developed by Macphun Software for Mac OS X and Windows. MacPhun changed its name to Skylum in early 2018.

Aurora HDR is a High Dynamic Range (HDR) editing and processing tool released in November, 2015. It was made through a collaboration between software developer Macphun and HDR photographer Trey Ratcliff.^[1] HDR image editing techniques are designed to overcome difficult lighting situations where highlights and shadows are prevalent in the same image, but have also been used to create highly processed, fanciful images as well.

By automatically aligning and merging multiple exposures of photos, Aurora HDR can create a single tone-mapped image. A collection of powerful editing and processing tools also allow for layered compositions and targeted areas of photo and graphic processing.

Aurora Hdr 2018

Versions and plug-ins[edit]

Aurora Hdr 2018 Coupon

Aurora HDR comes in five different versions for two different operating systems. Versions, previous and current, include: Aurora HDR (optionally sold on the Mac App Store); Aurora HDR Pro; Aurora HDR Pro + training, Aurora 2017; and Aurora 2018. The software runs as a standalone or as a plug-in to host applications like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop Elements, and Apple Aperture. In early 2016, Aurora HDR was updated with support to run as an editing extension for Apple Photos for Mac.^[2] In 2016 Macphun released the next version of Aurora HDR - Aurora HDR 2017 along with a Windows version. In 2018 Skylum released Aurora 2018 for Mac and Windows operating systems. ^[3]

Key Aurora HDR functionality[edit]

Initial merging[edit]

Aurora HDR works on single images or multiple exposures, and initial merging options change depending on the number of images loaded. If a single image is provided to the software, only the 'Chromatic Aberration Reduction' option is available. If multiple exposures are selected, 'Alignment' and 'Ghost Reduction' options are revealed. Alignment should be checked if the multiple images were recorded while holding the camera by hand vs. a tripod. Ghost Reduction relates to minimizing the effects of moving objects in a multi-exposure merging process.^[4] If you have moving objects, choose this function.

Interface[edit]

The user interface of Aurora HDR consists of the following:

• Large preview window
• Open & Export/Share
• Zoom & navigation controls
• Comparison controls
• Undo/Redo
• Cropping tool
• Move (hand) tool
• Brush
• Layers
• Histogram
• Presets
• Advanced tools

Presets[edit]

Presets are pre-installed one-click controls that apply a specific 'style' to the tone-mapped image. This style is created entirely by the use and modification of the Advance tools containing in the software. The Preset panel in Aurora HDR Pro contains 7 separate categories applicable to all types of photos: Trey Ratcliff's Signature presets, Basic, Realistic HDR, Dramatic, Landscape, Indoor, Architecture, each of which contain thumbnail graphics representing several or dozens of styles. In addition, users may designate a preset as a 'favorite' or create their own.

Aurora Hdr Download

Tools[edit]

Aurora Hdr Pro Download Free

Aurora HDR comes with an extensive list of tools and functionality designed to help photographers edit their images using HDR techniques. The tools range from those that can help reproduce a natural, realistic look to those that enhance images towards a more fantasy-like direction. Each tool listed below has a unique set of controls to modify its effects.^[5]

• Tone Mapping
• Tone
• Structure
• HDR Denoise
• Image Radiance
• Color
• Details
• Glow
• Top & Bottom Lighting^[6]
• Tone Curve
• Color Filter
• Color Toning
• Vignette

Layers, brushes and masking[edit]

Aurora HDR Pro features the ability to create up to 9 layers (4 in the Mac App Store version), and provides brushing and masking functionality common in many image-editing software programs. Layers can be automatically loaded with either (a) the previous layer, (b) a custom texture, (c) the original tone-mapped image, or (d) any one of the exposures in the bracketed set. Brushes and masking, including Gradient Masking are used to selectively apply or erase effects from the image. An advanced feature of the Pro version of Aurora HDR is to designate a layer as one that contains 'Luminosity Masking.'

Opening, file formats and exporting[edit]

Aurora HDR opens a variety of popular image file formats, including RAW camera files that are the native to specific camera manufacturers (e.g. Nikon's NEF and Canon CR2). It saves in a native file format (.mpau) which allows for the resumption of editing after saving and closing the file. The software exports in the following file formats: JPG, PNG, GIF, JPG-2000, TIFF, Photoshop, and PDF, and can also transfer images directly into Macphun's Creative Suite for further editing.

Sharing[edit]

The software permits sharing to image galleries like 500px, Smugmug and Flickr, plus social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Additionally Aurora HDR can send images via email or Apple Messages.

References[edit]

1. ^http://www.stuckincustoms.com/trey-ratcliff/
2. ^'Archived copy'. Archived from the original on 2016-01-22. Retrieved 2016-01-27.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link) CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
3. ^http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/software/graphics-and-media-software/image-editing-software/macphun-aurora-hdr-2017-1329760/review
4. ^https://www.slrlounge.com/school/motion-blur-vs-ghosting-the-difference-between-these-2-artifacts/
5. ^http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews/aurora_hdr_2017_review/
6. ^http://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/article/gjcxf6bn/when-to-use-graduated-neutral-density-filters.html

External links[edit]