

My testing certainly bore out these claims, and I was quite impressed by the quality of the composites that the new engine creates without any help from the user. Image processing is one area where machine learning has really taken incredible strides even in just the last year.Īccording to their press release for the launch, “Whether you’re working with bracketed shots or a single image, the Quantum HDR Engine tones down oversaturated colors, loss of contrast, and noise, as well as reduces unnatural lighting caused by halos and unstable deghosting.”

Oftentimes when companies claim to be using artificial intelligence it’s just marketing hype, but in the case of the Quantum HDR Engine it really does seem to have some merit. The biggest change is their new compositing method known as the Quantum HDR Engine, which they describe is being ‘powered by AI’. Rather than wasting your time with an endless series of bad HDR editors, follow along with my review process and use the time you save for more photoshoots! Detailed Review of Aurora HDRĭespite the fact that only a year has passed since the release of the previous version, Aurora HDR 2019 has some great new additions. I’ve watched the technology mature and felt its growing pains as the software gradually became more and more popular – and even (eventually) user-friendly. Accessible HDR photography was in its very early stages then, as most people outside of science labs hadn’t even heard the term before. Hi, my name is Thomas Boldt, and I’ve been experimenting with HDR photography since I first got serious about digital photography over a decade ago. What I Don’t Like: Localized retouching a bit limited.

Batch processing could be improved, and it would be nice to get a bit more control over the compositing process with layer-based editing, but these are fairly minor issues in an otherwise excellent program. New users will love the simple workflow, and users of Aurora’s previous versions will appreciate the tone mapping improvements provided by the Quantum HDR Engine. Many of the other dedicated HDR editors available are virtually unusable and produce terrible composites, but Aurora takes all the hassle out of the process. Once the tone mapped image is ready, making further adjustments is just as simple and intuitive as editing a typical RAW image.Īurora HDR is easily one of the best HDR software available today. Compositing is fast, even with automatic noise removal enabled across 5+ high-resolution source images.

The new Quantum HDR Engine does an excellent job of automatically tone mapping your images, and automatic alignment and de-ghosting correct any camera or subject movement between your bracketed images. Aurora HDR takes the complex process of HDR compositing and makes it extremely simple.
