In 2005 when I first discovered HDR I used Photomatix to create a single-image HDR. It wasn’t very good. In fact, it was a boring photo out of my parent’s kitchen of the snow-covered pool. I decided to compare what Photomatix was able to do with a single-image in 2005 to what the HDR leader, Aurora HDR can do to a single-image in 2021.
Transcription was done by Descript‘s automated transcription services which means it’s an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain spelling, grammar
Today. I want to talk about HDR. You see, I don’t really photograph HDR much anymore, but I thought it would be kind of fun to revisit a in HDR photo from 2005. Hey, this is Scott one giveaway. It’s a storyteller with a camera talking about all the things photographers like you and I are thinking about. And in this video we’re going to dig into in HDR photo from 2005 and what HDR software can do this time. In 2021, that’s a long time for software to be improved. In 2005, I was using photo Maddix from HDR soft. And the photo you’re looking at right here is the first photo I ever did in photo Maddix. And of course, this is me experimenting. This is before I knew anything that there was to know about HDR photography. And this photo was one frame out of whatever camera was using at the time and brought into photo Maddix and let photo Matics do a one image HDR.
And at the time full automatics, wasn’t capable of doing much with one image. And of course, HDR in general, the software wasn’t quite where it is today. Today. I don’t use photo Maddix as much, and I don’t really do, like I said, HDR as much, but I thought I’d bring it into the HDR software that I would use if I was doing an HDR photo of roar, HDR from loom. And as you can see, it’s one image. It, uh, there’s not much to it. It’s a very boring image, but again, 2005, and I’m just going to hit create HDR from this one image. And in seconds in seconds, we already have an HDR image that if I was to show you the before and after, you will see a big difference from the before to the after of what Aurora HDR can do for this photo, as you can see, it is bringing down the skies.
So it’s clear, it’s bringing some more blue out of the snow. Of course, this is a little bit too blue. And then, uh, it’s actually brings some detail out of the trees, which is fantastic. Even that light. If you look the difference of the before and after the light coming through the trees is even better. But the first thing I’m going to do is switch this to daylight white balance, and you can see it actually comes out even more blue with daylight white balance. So we might have to adjust that even further to make it a little bit warmer. So we could actually go in and warm that up a bit to make it even more natural. That looks a little bit more natural actually. And again, here’s the before and the after, and now it actually looks more like, like the photo was actually, uh, like a golden hour type of look, it’s got this nice warm glow to it.
Of course you could go in and you could use some of the presets that are built in some of these looks that are built into a roar HDR. You can use all the developer filters and controls that you have. You could add Lutz, you can do a ton of different things if you want, but you see that in one shot, just from opening that one photo inside of our HDR, I already already have a better HDR photo created without even doing anything. One of the cool things about Skyland software is they use a lot of AI. So I could even take this and I could save this file, bring it into Skyland Lumina, and then add in some sun flares. And, and some, even if I wanted to make the sky more dramatic, I can do that. But just as an HGR itself, if you were to compare this version to this version, which was from 2005 versus 2021, you can see a big difference in what HDR can do in just a matter of a bunch of years to improve ACR software.
Now, of course, this was done in photo Matics in 2005. This was done in H in Aurora HDR in 2021 different software different year, but still it’s come a long way. So why am I sharing this with you? I’m sharing this because if you have some older HDR photographs that you might want to revisit, update yourself software, try it again, go back to your archives and hurt. But if you’re also in the need to photograph an HDR, let’s say you’re doing real estate photography, and you need to do HDR for that. Then you’ve got software that is available to you. That has come a long way. Now, I personally now recommend Aurora HDR. If you need HDR, if you use Lightroom, you could do HDR and Lightroom Lightroom. Isn’t designed to do one image. HDR is designed to do it with three or five or seven or nine, et cetera, but you could still use light room and do it inside of there. If you want, of course, this also goes for anything, including black and white conversions or anything like that. So think about this next time. You’re in the need for a certain software for certain things. And you might have used something in the past. You might want to revisit. I hope you enjoyed this quick comparison from a 2005 photograph to, uh, redoing it in 2021 and basically one click. Thanks for watching. I’ll see you in the next video and don’t forget to subscribe.
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