Aurora HDR 2017

Professional editing for HDR enthusiasts

$99 Developer Macphun, aurorahdr.com Requirements OS X 10.10.5 or later

HDR photography is the practice of merging multiple exposures of the same composition to create shots with greater dynamic range than normal cameras can produce. So, if you have a landscape photo with very bright highlights and very dark shadows, high dynamic range processing can produce an image with neither over-exposure or under-exposure. The main purported benefit is an image with lots more detail in bright and dark areas, but over the years HDR processing has come to define an entire style of digital photography, noted for its highly saturated, metallic-looking images.

The effect itself falls squarely into the like-it-or-loathe-it category of image processing, but for converts of the style, Aurora HDR offers a wealth of tools for merging bracketed exposures, or creating HDR-style images from individual shots.

You’ll get the most value from Aurora if you commit to HDR photography, taking at least three different bracketed exposures each time you take a shot. With this approach you can take advantage of Aurora’s excellent shot-alignment tool, which lines up images that differ slightly in their composition due to wobbly tripods and so forth.

For those looking for a quick hit, Aurora also offers a wealth of one-click filters. In keeping with HDR’s polarizing aesthetic, these filters range from the fairly subtle to the positively eyeball-watering, but photographers who want more control and are willing to get their hands a little dirtier will find Aurora worth its admittedly high asking price.

The right-hand toolbar offers a vast number of sliders and controls, from the industry standard (curves, color temperature, exposure, and so on) to HDR-specific tools missing from the likes of Lightroom or Affinity Photo: controls such as a software polarizing filter, HDR-specific denoising, as well as an ingenious luminosity mask that allows you to select parts of an image based on how bright they are. You can also create adjustment layers, unlike Lightroom.

A further boost to Aurora’s credentials is the presence of a professional-grade batch processing mode. Very usefully, this lets you select a folder full of images and not only choose a filetype and resolution for them, but will also automatically align folders that contain bracketed exposures – again, a boon for purist HDR photographers.

It’s those photographers who will get the most from Aurora – using its presets on single exposures won’t produce radically different results from most other applications. But the integrated imagealignment tools, batch processing, and fine-grained editing controls make it well worth the asking price for fans.

the bottom line. An awesome selection of tools for power users. Dave Stevenson