Aurora HDR 2019 Demonstration + Review | 4K

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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to give you a look at a brand new piece of software from what was formerly MacFoon and now is the company Skylam and they've rebranded recently
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And this is the new Aurora HDR 2019. Now these are the same people that brought you the Luminar editing software, which has become a really popular alternative to Lightroom or something
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similar for those that don't really want to go to Adobe's kind of cloud model and prefer to own
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software and maybe spend less for it in the long run. And so Illuminar has become a popular
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alternative there. Now they have launched a new HDR-specific piece of software. And so I'm here to
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give you a demonstration of how it works today. And if you'll stick around until the end, I'll also
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give you my final verdict on what I think of the software and give you some information on how
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you can get it and maybe get it at a discount. So let's jump in and let's take a look at this
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new piece of software. And so I'm going to demonstrate to you two quick processes
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here. First of all is using this as a standalone piece of software and so we're
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going to just drag in. You can also of course you know open them up through other
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means but on this case I think the simplest most straightforward is I just
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dragged three exposures that I want to blend here. And so you see it is
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during this process you know as it's kind of queuing things up it's exactly
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the actual exposure values of the images themselves, and so it's given you a proper EV value
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which would become very important in how it actually processes images, which is something that I haven't seen always with every piece of software
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So I think it's important often to click the auto alignment. In this case, sometimes I do handheld HDR
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sometimes I do off a tripod, but either way it's better safe than sorry
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So after you've done that, I just, just click for the process
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Now, if you direct your attention towards the top of the screen here
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one thing I like is, while this process does take a few seconds
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it does give you some idea of what's happening kind of behind the scenes
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Okay, and so now we have loaded in the image itself, and so you can see in front of you
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And so here, what you're going to see down below is a number of different things
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First of all, you've got a huge amount of different presets here that you can select from
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And what's great here is that you actually have thumbnails that show you
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give you a look of how these would be applied, which is really, really helpful
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And if you click the collections here, you can pop up different warrant to load up different things
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So, for example, if I click here the Better Sunrise Preset, you'll see that it will quickly, you know
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kind of load up that particular look. One thing I really like is that all of these different looks here
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you've got a slider that you can actually, you know, just very quickly set the degree to which the preset is applied
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And so, you know, in some other places, you know, say Lightroom, for example
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you don't necessarily have control over how much of a preset is applied
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And so in this case, you can literally do a real-time kind of observation
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as to you know how much it's going to impact the image and so you know I can
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hear at 30% and then I can go to 100% then if you look over to the right side you
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have very you know similar to a lightroom type structure but what you have is
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all of these tools that are really designed more around HDR and so you can add
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luts lookup tables radiance you know you can even play here with a
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polarizing type filter. And so let's just throw it to an extreme. And so you can see it's done a
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little bit of polarizing to the sky and removing that. And so, you know, you can play some with those
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various things. Details, glow, all of those different things that are there. And then you can go
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into things like the tone curve. You can play with the actual control over saturation, you know
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hue, luminance of each of the different colors. And, you know, on and on
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you can go right down to where you can do dodge and burn and so you can actually use a brush and so it actually gives you a lot of editing type tools that in some ways allow this to function somewhat as a standalone editor as well because you do have the ability to do some brushing here and here I'm just going to click done you also have the ability to actually create a few
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different layers and so you can blend a different mask there or
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excuse me blend different layers as a part of that and then you can also do some work on transform And so you got some of those basic tools there You can also do some lens correction type work there
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And so if you wanted to, you know, let's just say here quickly that if I wanted to rotate this
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you know, horizon is a little bit off. And so I have the option to just tweak the horizon a little bit and get it, you know
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where it's sitting a little bit more easy. hit done you can see right now the preset is not applied but when I come back
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into the main menu after that the preset is there I also have the option if I
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want to go in and do some cropping here obviously I have some areas because of
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what I've accomplished there so just if you look at the top right here I've done
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kind of a free but you also have the option to go into all kinds of different
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ratios here and some helpful things you know you got Facebook cover Facebook
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feed just a lot of kind of modern approaches there. So I'm just gonna click original here
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and that will constrain the crop to the original dimensions and so I can play with it accordingly
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And so anyway, yeah, easy enough there, hit crop. And then once I'm all set and done
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I can play with other type images and there's some kind of specialized
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from some of their key people, different looks. And we'll come back to this in just a moment
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You can also create and save your own presets and load those into a look
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And so, you know, after you're all done, you have the option of just saving it as a project
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or you can export it in a file format of your preference
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You have control over the color space, you know, the depth, all of these things
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and so very handy there. I'm just gonna cancel out right now. We're gonna close this down
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So you also have the option to run this as a plugin out of your editing software of choice
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In this case, I've opened it up in lightroom but you can do it out of Photoshop out of even Lightroom elements or
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Photoshop elements I should say out of Apple Aperture all of those different things and so
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let's just take a quick look at the same kind of process here and so we're going to grab
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this we're going to grab this we're going to grab this and I'm just going to it's made
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copies of these I'm just going to use the original D&Gs and and so I'm going to right click
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here I'm going to click edit in and then I'm going to select Aurora HDR. So open up this and you're
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going to want to select that and then what you'll see it happen is it's going to send the images
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from Lightroom into Aurora here and load that up. Now, you know, if you have a certain
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workflow like for someone for myself, this allows me to start and end in the place that I want
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to, the place that I'm most comfortable is kind of my personal hub. for loading this. Now, I just do want to note, I've been working in the software all morning
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It's, in this video, it seems to be running slower than what it actually is, and that's for
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the reason that I am doing 4K screen capture right now, which of course creates a drag on resources
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So you can see same kind of process here. We have had those images that have loaded up, and now
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we're going to run into this process. Now, you can see here that
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in some ways it's actually loading up more quickly here because there's been some of the initializing process that's come out of running it as a lightroom plugin
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I do actually find that for whatever reason, I find it runs a little bit faster as a plug-in than if I stand-alone load the images
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And that's somewhere in that handoff process. But, you know, just like before, we have the option of, you know, putting a preset on there and, you know, seeing how that looks
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So let's just, you know, for the fun of it, let's just look in some of these others
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And we'll choose something else here. And so let's just, let's try this ethereal drama
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And so we'll allow that preset to apply. So we've got a completely different kind of look here
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I'm not going to really make any kind of other tweaks here. I'm just going to show you the process. And so up now in the corner, we see there is now this blue apply box
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So I'm going to click that. And what it now is going to do is it exports the image and kind of automates
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this process. It's going to export the image. It then closes itself down and opens the file
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back up in Lightroom. And so then I can make choices about what I'm going to do with the combined
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HDR image after that. Okay, so you can see we're now back here in Lightroom, and so we have
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seen that process to where it has tweaked all those things. And so now right back here, it's going to show up
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is number one of four but here we have a the image that we just brought out of there and so you know
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now I back in a familiar space you know where if you know if you someone like me I worked here for years and so I know all of these tools very quickly and I can make appropriate tweaks I could go on into you know for example Photoshop if I wanted from here
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you've got a couple of spots on the sensor. So just clear those up real quick. I could go there
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as I mentioned to that. I could even take a couple of different layers. You know, here I've created
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a couple of different looks out of the software that I like. And then what I've done is I've
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actually taken those as layers into Photoshop and given it a little bit more
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tweaking and so you can see here is for example a finished product from that and a
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you know just a great looking HDR image now let's look at a couple of other options
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here I want to show you something else and so let's let's just go back into our
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library module here for a second so you know another area where you're going to
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use HDR often is when you're trying to combine images for interiors or architecture. So I'm not going to go through the whole process here. These are some
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images that I shot at one point. I was shooting a project for a hotel chain. And so here trying to
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highlight for them how, you know, the kind of views you can have out of a room. And so obviously we want
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to give some of the look of the interior of the room, but then also to, you know, let someone see
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there's all this awesome stuff that's happening right outside your window. And so in this case
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I've been able to have very effectively combined exposures for two hugely different exposure values
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that of the room and then the much brighter exterior scene, and you can see how effective that is
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Let's do one more final one here. And so this is actually, and I want to show you this kind of more for comparison purposes
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And so here is an image that I did for while shooting in the White House and in Washington, D.C
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And so there is this room that's got, obviously, some great kind of formal looking furniture in there and curtains
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So, I mean, some portraits of presidents here. Really, really cool. But of course, I also want to show off the fact that outside that window
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let's look at the under-exposed image here, that outside that window, you've also got this, you know, great view out onto
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I think this is the South. lawn and moving out towards the Washington Monument, all of that
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You know, so very cool. So what I've done is I have run this through Aurora HDR here and just selected in this
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case a preset for interiors and gone into the architecture. And I selected one that I like there
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And so you can see really cool in result here where I've combined the look of the interior
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of the room. And I've also given you the view outside. Now, this image that you're looking at has not been edited in anything outside of Aurora HDR
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Mostly just a preset, and then I did a very minor temperature tweak to it there, but it's all done right in there
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And so as you can see, we've retained really excellent detail everywhere
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This was a handheld HDR, by the way. Didn't have the opportunity to set up a tripod in there
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Despite that, you can see we've got fantastic detail. You look at all the detail like in the curtains there
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And then, of course, you've got some, you know, distortion because of the very thick, probably bulletproof glass here
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But at the same time, you do have a look looking at the image globally outside
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You know, you've got great detail up here in these portraits. It's just retained a huge amount of EV information despite some very different exposure values
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Now, one final thing that I want to show you is that I've used Lightroom's own HDR program
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maybe before I show you that final image. Let me just quickly show you what the image looked like
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before I did a fair bit of work here, as you can see
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Here's my steps over here. So I had to do a fair bit of work to get that end result
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So this is what actually came out of running the HDR within Lightroom
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And so there's lots of information embedded there, but you have to kind of know what you're doing
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to get the steps. to get the end result that I have achieved here
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And so if you're not confident in doing all those things, something like Aurora HDR is obviously taking a whole lot
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of the mental work off of your shoulders and putting it into the software itself
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Now obviously I haven't achieved an identical look here, you know, not identical steps
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You know, you can determine which one of these you like better visually
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I've retained a little bit more contrast in this image. So I mean personally for me, I like the Aurora look here
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but it's a matter of taste. And I certainly could create the same look
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I quite confident within Lightroom As far as the detail that been retained in these I don see a tremendous amount of difference here Again there a little bit more contrast in the image here
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but I'm not seeing any additional noise in either one of them. Our textures look good. Colors are
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a little bit richer here on the Aurora version, and here I definitely like the richness of that
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But, I mean, it just gives you an idea that this is a piece of software
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that that, you know, whole bit, let me run you now through this process here in Aurora
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and just show you how, you know, kind of quickly I achieved that end result. In this case
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it's evaluated, you know, EV values are obviously not entirely consistent. And so I've done
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click the auto alignment. By the way, you have, you have some other options there if some other
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things you want to do. If you want to, you know, take down some ghosting or a chromatic aberration
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that's easy to add that into this process. Okay, so this is the way that it comes right out of the image itself
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In this case, if I recall correctly, I think I just clicked the natural look
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And so, again, I really like just that simple, straightforward. You also have the option, in this case, of architecture
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And so you're wanting to, let's say, I'm looking at, for me, I tend towards the more realistic end of things
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So this is a realistic interior. And it looks good. I just think that I liked the original natural preset a little bit better
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And so, I mean, if you wanted, like, you know, I might want to just open up the shadows a little bit more, maybe for the sake of those portraits
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And then, let's say with the white balance, I want to just cool the image a little bit
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I want to retain some of that, you know, warmth of it. but I don't want it to become overly yellowy
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So anyway, just a few minor tweaks there, and I'm going to click Apply
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And you see up here, we're working with a 32-bit final result here
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So tons of information that's there. By the way, these images here are off of a Sony A7R mark three
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so very high resolution. So as you can imagine, you're pumping three huge files through this
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And so when you consider all of that, it actually does its thing
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fairly quickly. So as you can see this is an extremely robust piece of
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software that has really enough fully full features to it to even work for
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those of you that don't have a primary piece of editing software and I didn't
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cover it in my segment because it's not the primary purpose but you can even take a
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single image into it you can tone map it and then you can apply some of that
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preset information and get you know some killer looks on your images even out
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of a single image and so I what I really really like is that
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all of the presets have that very easy to use slider. Someone like me has years and years of processing experience
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I've got a workflow that works for me. But I also recognize that a lot of software has a really steep learning curve
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And there may be some of you that are watching right now that just really aren't all that comfortable in post-processing
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The ability to just see all those thumbnails and the different looks that you can apply
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and then to be able to use that slider to control how much of an impact it has on your image
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I think is going to be really, really handy. I also like the fact that you can use it both standalone
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for those of you that don't have other editing software, but you can also use it as a plug-in for some of the major players
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which it makes it far more useful to me because it works within my own workflow
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And so all in all, I'm really impressed. There hasn't been any kind of major issue that I have seen
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that stands out to me that I don't like, and I feel like I'm getting good clean in results
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So about getting it for yourself. It's coming to market in another month and in the meantime you can pre-order it and I'll throw a link into my description down below and during the promotional period in the pre-release period you can actually get it at a discount and so that's worth looking at also throw a promo code there. It's going to be Dustin HDR and that will allow you even after the initial promotional period to get it at 10% off if you're interested in getting it for yourself. In the U.S. market, somewhere around
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around 100 bucks during this promotional phase here in Canada 119 I believe during the
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promotional phase in Canadian funds and so I mean certainly a reasonably priced in the
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big scheme of things and with the compared to the other HDR software that I've used before I think
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it's far more robust and produces cleaner results with a whole lot more finite control over
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the end product and so I think that it's a it's a pretty awesome piece of software and
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it looks like they're going to continue to support it with more and more presets you can
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get some for free and then probably also some commercial packs if you want to get those to load into
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that so really a lot there going on for your money if you'll look in the description down below you
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can find the links to follow me on social media to become a patron and of course if you haven't
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already please click that subscribe button right here on youtube thanks for watching have a great day

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Aurora HDR 2019 Demonstration + Review | 4K

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