Essential Apple Podcast 114: Luminar 2019 with Libraries Launch

This week Amazon announced the Apple Music service will be available on their devices by Christmas. Amazon also announced it is going with custom designed ARM Graviton chips for AWS servers. The iPhone Xr is declared best selling iPhone, Apple offers increased trade in values on old iPhones and Apple supports anti AIDS efforts. PLUS our guest this week is Alex Tsepko of Skylum who returns to the show to tell us all about Luminar 2019, its Libraries features, free updates, forthcoming additions and lots more.

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Aurora HDR 2019: A Review by Allister Jenks (@zkarj)

Let me start out by describing myself. I am a keen amateur photographer and I love to play with technology. I am expert in neither discipline, but I’ve been doing both for quite a lot of years now. As such, software like Aurora HDR 2019 is right up my alley — cool technology applied to photography.

I’ve dabbled in HDR photography in the past and know the basic principles of tone mapping, but I’ve not spent a lot of time making HDR images. I own a license for the original Aurora HDR Pro, now referred to as Aurora HDR 2016, and I’ve used it to create a number of pleasing results such as this vivid shot of one of my favourite buildings, made from 5 bracketed exposures.

AH2019 0 Aurora HDR 2019: A Review by Allister Jenks (@zkarj)

So when the opportunity came up to review Skylum’s Aurora HDR 2019, I was keen. I wondered how far the product had come in the intervening three years.

Continue reading → Aurora HDR 2019: A Review by Allister Jenks (@zkarj)

Press Release from Skylum: Aurora HDR 2019

HDR Photography Takes a Quantum Leap Forward with Skylum’s Aurora HDR 2019 and New Patent-Pending AI Technology

Enhancements to Apple’s reigning Mac App of the Year delivers an HDR photo editor that blends power and intelligent tech with intuition and seamless workflow

Bellevue, WA – October 4, 2018 — Skylum Software is now shipping Aurora HDR 2019, its fourth generation, high dynamic range editor, whose predecessor is the current Mac App of the Year. Skylum’s goal is to give photographers a powerful tool to create vivid, captivating, and true-to-life high dynamic range images. Skylum’s AI Lab analyzed thousands of images from professional photographers to create a custom algorithm that would deliver optimal results automatically, drastically reducing editing time. In addition to landscape photographers, real estate, architecture, environmental portrait, food and street photographers will all benefit fromAurora HDR 2019.

“Aurora uses its Quantum HDR Engine with AI technology to analyze and extrapolate the best details from each bracketed image to create a single file that renders more details in the shadows, highlights and midrange than ever possible before,” explains Alex Tsepko, CEO of Skylum Software. “Leveraging advances in RAW file technology, photographers who create single exposures can also recover hidden details from their photos using Aurora HDR.”

HDR Smart Structure is a new feature that lets users add contrast, depth, and definition to areas in an image using a single intelligent slider. And, it does this without creating unwanted halos, noise, color spotting or artifacts most noticeable in areas of sky, clouds, and smooth surfaces.

Aurora HDR 2019 also incorporates LUT mapping, an industry standard in photography, cinema, and television to help photographers jumpstart their creative color process by allowing them to apply color grading and film stock simulations.

Aurora HDR Looks is another new feature that allows photographers to use their own combination of filters and LUTs to quickly fix or adjust their images. It also enables quick edits and batch processing of images shot under similar lighting conditions. Skylum partnered with top pros to create signature Aurora HDR Looks to inspire professionals and help new users easily achieve finished images.

Continue reading → Press Release from Skylum: Aurora HDR 2019

Essential Apple Podcast 94: Talking Photolemur, Luminar & Aurora HDR with Skylum

I am joined by Alex Tsepko the CEO of Skylum Software to talk about Photolemur, Luminar, what happened to the DAM module, and Aurora HDR… Actually the interview was done in two parts because we had issues trying to record while Alex was driving across the Ukraine… (who’d have guessed that?) But regardless of that we got a really great interview. Also Suffolk Pete (@hermboy) and I chew over the news of the week.
Why not come and join the Slack community? You can now just click on this Slackroom Link to sign up and join in the chatter!

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Press Release from Skylum – Who appeared on the show 1st July.

Update to Skylum’s Aurora HDR 2018 Brings New Tools, Faster Performance and Loupedeck+ Integration

Aurora HDR 2018 now up to 2x faster on MacOS and compatible with the brand-new Loupedeck+ photo editing console

Bellevue, WA – June 20, 2018 – Skylum Software today released the latest update to its award-winning photo editing software, Aurora HDR, bringing improved performance, new features, and updated tools to both MacOS and Windows versions.
Aurora HDR is now faster across the board with a massive boost in performance on both Windows and MacOS computers. Specifically, performance on MacOS computers is up 180% when working with bracketed shots and 175% when working with single images. On Windows computers, Aurora HDR is now 500% faster when working with bracketed shots and 400% for single images. Aurora HDR also makes better use of memory, with more intelligent management and improved stability.