This week I wanted to write about another of Macphun’s wonderful programs called Aurora HDR 2017. Macphun keeps turning out program after program for photo editing on the Mac platform and Aurora HDR is another home run for people who want to create stunning HDR’s without needing three images of varying exposures. This first image is the starting window when you launch Aurora HDR 2017.
When you fire up Aurora HDR you get a small simple window that allows you to drag and drop an image and then click the Create HDR button. Now the software loads it’s entire editing interface window so you can get to work making an HDR image. There are several presets that you can use that are really good, but on the right hand side of the editing window, there are also categories and sliders under each category to do your own manual editing to create a custom look of your own. The image below shows what the editing interface looks like.
Once you have chosen a preset or created your own custom edit for your own HDR style, you can then save the image in a proprietary HDR file format native to Aurora HDR and then you can also export as a new image. The new image save will use the existing file name and then append HDR on the end of the filename before the extension. This last image is my starting photo after I selected the Realistic & Detailed preset and then exported my image as a JPG file.
One last word on Aurora HDR 2017, just don’t use HDR for every image you shoot as people tend to get tired of them rather quickly. I personally love the look I can get with Aurora HDR 2017, but I only use it sparingly.