Friday, October 05, 2018

First look at AuroraHDR 2019

I had been eagerly awaiting the release of the update to Aurora HDR (AuroraHDR 2019) particularly to see what use Skylum would be making of their AI capabilities (Quantum HDR engine). I was impressed but also a little surprised!

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I needed to use the anti-ghosting selection because the girl on the path is walking towards me and the leaves on the trees were blowing in the winds. It worked well.

The way the AI  enhancements are applied is individually to each image before they are merged (a surprise but probably the best approach). However this slows the merge process considerable as the program goes through the following steps (at least it tells you what is it is doing, where several other programs just show a static screen and make you wait.

  • Loading Images
  • Detecting Scene Type
  • Detecting Scene Objects
  • Improving Dynamic Range
  • Enhance Image Structure
  • Improving Colour
  • Final Touches to make it Awesome*

i*after the google+/google photo failed attempts at AutoAwesome, I’ve been sceptical of any awesome claims]

The wait is worth every bit of the delay. The default tone mapped image was really great, (I refuse to use the word awesome) and the tiniest amount of adjustments to smart tone, highlight and shadows, then straightening and cropping gave me the wonderful results below. Pretty dare good for a first run through.

Towards the old Exhibition Building

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