It’s the combination of the adjustment sliders with layers and layer masks that makes Aurora so powerful.

The adjustment sliders in Aurora are much more useful and realistic than any other software I’ve used. The reason why it’s come back to life for me is Aurora HDR. The only way to make a good image is to combine exposures. In this example, you can see how the dynamic range of the scene was so great that none of these frames have a good exposure for both the sky and the foreground. So when camera sensors started getting better and able to handle a higher dynamic range of light, I found that I was able to achieve the look I wanted using a single exposure along with the highlights and shadows sliders in Lightroom.Īnd when the scene had such a huge dynamic range (meaning that the sky was super bright and the foreground was in deep shadow) that even the new sensors couldn’t handle it in one exposure, making HDR a necessity, I found the results weren’t very natural using the software I was using (which was Photomatix).

Achieving that look was challenging with the software that was available to combine exposures and time consuming to do it by hand in Photoshop.

I used to enjoy HDR many years ago, but I have always wanted my final images to have a natural look.

I’m having so much fun playing with HDR again!

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