If you rely on batch processing, look elsewhere, at least for now. While that is a good tip, your ambassador not being able to explain what a particular slider actually does is not a good sign for me. He'll just go and say 'drag it all the way to the right and/or left to see what happens'.
Also, I like Trey Ratcliff, but if you watch most of his videos on how to use the app, he can't even explain clearly what's the purpose of some of those sliders. I ended up returning to Lightroom and Photoshop. I did try the presets, experimenting with the sliders, but nothing went well.
So much noise and the image quality has noticeably dropped as well. I've purchased the Aurora HDR 2018 and the images that were generated from the files I've uploaded were just horrible! They did not have one and told me I can always return the software. I emailed Aurora looking for a video about their batch editing workflow. This is really too bad cause I got excited when I saw this article. What I hear is 'make sure that you show value to customers who already have our software'. ' I’ve reprocessed images that I initially used Aurora 2016 or 2018, and found immediate improvements' that line screams ghost writer.
I'm not convinced you even have the software lol. I don't think this qualifies as a review. If you haven’t purchased, you can preorder for $89, but for individuals looking to upgrade, your preorder cost will be $49. Regardless, Aurora has definitely earned a place in my bag of photo editors. Personally, I hope people don’t go too extreme when playing with the different Looks and filters that Aurora offers, but hey, to each their own! Can't reorder the filters Final Thoughts Overall, this is another home run from Skylum, giving their customers as much flexibility and power as they could hope for when working on HDR images. Opacity sliders on the HDR presets What I Didn't Like. Adjustment layers for global or targeted adjustments.
If for no other reason, this improvement justifies the argument for me on whether to upgrade or not. I’ve reprocessed images that I initially used Aurora 2016 or 2018, and found immediate improvements to the trouble areas in the images. I’m also impressed with the improvements made to one of the biggest telltale signs of HDR images, haloing, which is typically found around contrasting areas. Skylum has designed Aurora to allow users to import their own LUT’s or navigate out to Skylum’s Marketplace for additional LUT packages. The image above included the use of Faded Afternoon from the LUT Mapping tab. That's impressive!Ī new addition to Aurora 2019 is LUT (lookup table) Mapping, which gives the user further color grading options. Needless to say, there are quite a variety of Looks for editing your images.įor the image below, I utilized the Bright Sun Look, making the image pop with just a single click. Aurora 2019 HDR has a multitude of different Looks, with categories from Trey Ratcliff, Serge Ramelli, and Randy Van Duinen.
Skylum has also brought Windows users into the fold with their tools, and the Windows version worked just as seamlessly as the Mac version throughout my testing. Once you save your tone-mapped image back to the corresponding folder, X4 should detect the new image for you to continue editing. For users of tools such as Exposure X4, Aurora can easily be used as a standalone tool as well.
Personally, I’ve installed the plugins packaged with Aurora to allow opening from both Lightroom and Photoshop, but Aurora also allows for plugin installation with Photoshop Elements and Apple Aperture as well. An easy adaptation of my workflow makes quick work of loading both bracketed sets or single images into Aurora for tone-mapping. Take a few minutes to see Ratcliff work on images from Burning Man with Aurora 2019. With brand ambassadors such as, and HDR hall-of-famer supporting and utilizing Aurora in their workflow, Skylum has gained a reputation for producing easy-to-use, powerful software since 2008. The 2019 release of Aurora does not disappoint. I’ve been a longtime supporter of, who takes a different approach to photo-editing software with both. Enter, an AI-powered all-in-one HDR image processing solution that Skylum is set to release on October 4. High dynamic range (HDR) image editing can often get the best of both newcomers and veterans alike, but Skylum aims to change that with their latest release.
Winning awards such as Apple’s Best Mac App and Digital Photo Editors’ Choice, Skylum software is set to unveil the next iteration of their AI-powered photo editing software in October.