High octane HDR with Aurora!

Mt Aurora trial has ended but before it did I thught I would see what it could do with a really dud bracketed set.

The denoise in aurora, in itself, is a dud. I know it adds a workflow step, but denoising after aurora seems to work better. I use topaz denoise which I find superior to nik and all others. In photoshop I mask in the denoised image where necessary. And yea, aurora seems to create a whole bunch of noise.

A question: when the aurora trial is over, do they offer additional discounts beyond the $99 retail asking price?

Picture North Carolina wrote in post #18670302
The denoise in aurora, in itself, is a dud. I know it adds a workflow step, but denoising after aurora seems to work better. I use topaz denoise which I find superior to nik and all others. In photoshop I mask in the denoised image where necessary. And yea, aurora seems to create a whole bunch of noise.

I do both denoise within Aurora and during PP

Picture North Carolina wrote in post #18670304
A question: when the aurora trial is over, do they offer additional discounts beyond the $99 retail asking price?

I have had an email from the Sklum Team asking how they performed after asking a question about image alignbment but there was no special offer after the trial.

Hi, Drag this one up again. Skylum as you probably no are ready to launch a new version of Aurora 2019 just wondered if anyone has seen a review of the 2019 that is NOT by a person who is or seems to be trying to sell it through giving opinions that are so blatant about how it will be the next king of HDR software. Thanks, Russ.

I see you used a Canon PowerShot. As HDR inherently makes the existing noise very visible, it's most advisable to do hdr with a camera which a priory produces as little noise as possible namely FF or at least or ASPC. On the other hand, post processing is even more important. A hdr image doesn't really have to look that terrible. Sometimes, this is simply about pushing the sliders too far unnecessarily.

raminolta wrote in post #18715790
I see you used a Canon PowerShot. As HDR inherently makes the existing noise very visible, it's most advisable to do hdr with a camera which a priory produces as little noise as possible namely FF or at least or ASPC. On the other hand, post processing is even more important. A hdr image doesn't really have to look that terrible. Sometimes, this is simply about pushing the sliders too far unnecessarily.

I think you missed the point of my post. It was aimed to show that the few who hanker for grunge can still create horrible HDR with a modern tonemapper.!

BTW, I have now moved on to a Canon G5 X with 20Mpix. Much less noise now.

I'm afraid you've made nothing from nothing.

Thanks Martin, I'll cross that one off my list.

russellsnr2 wrote in post #18713831
Hi, Drag this one up again. Skylum as you probably no are ready to launch a new version of Aurora 2019 just wondered if anyone has seen a review of the 2019 that is NOT by a person who is or seems to be trying to sell it through giving opinions that are so blatant about how it will be the next king of HDR software. Thanks, Russ.

I tried whatever version is out now. It was okay. It did some scenes well that you simply cannot do in a single shot. But I find that either using filters to get the shot into the range of your sensor, or if impossible, to blend the shots manually to produce better results. Maybe I'm not doing something right but what I also found interesting was that the software produced wildly different results with the same selected images when processed the same way. Sometimes there would be horrible noise artifacts introduced by what I can only imagine was it pulling up shadow details too far from the wrong exposure. But other times, the same images loaded did not produce that result. I am not a huge fan.

russellsnr2 wrote in post #18713831
Hi, Drag this one up again. Skylum as you probably no are ready to launch a new version of Aurora 2019 just wondered if anyone has seen a review of the 2019 that is NOT by a person who is or seems to be trying to sell it through giving opinions that are so blatant about how it will be the next king of HDR software. Thanks, Russ.

Hi Russ - I pre-ordered the upgrade for $49 and will test it when it comes out. Should be interesting.

Kirk

kirkt wrote in post #18716838
Hi Russ - I pre-ordered the upgrade for $49 and will test it when it comes out. Should be interesting.

Kirk

Also pre ordered but have to say there customer relations have a lot to be desired. I like to use SNS-HDR for output but the ghosting in there is not (and only my opinion) the best so I like to create .exr files and send that to SNS-HDR, when I asked/pointed out in a question to Skylum that an option was promised in the Aurora 2018 soon for an option to create .exr files I had this reply. Quote:- 'As it is stated in the User Guide, this option is not available yet. Hopefully, it will be implemented in the future updates.' So I pointed out that about 1/2 way down there page here https://skylum.com …aving-and-exporting-files under NOTE you can see what it states. They do seem to be fond of empty promises of what is to come in there softwares. Russ.

I have also asked them to include an option in their batch processing that permits batch saving of the “project” so I can batch produce the master “HDR” file instead of LDR results. No dice.

Kirk