image path

[MikeFromMesa]

You are, of course, correct. I have actually only tried Aurora with single images (tone mapping) because I don't have any bracketed images so I never really considered that it's best used for brackets. And given I don't usually do bracketing, only tone mapping on a single image, I can achieve the same effects just with Luminar.

You could, if you want to spend the time, try opening Aurora with a script using a single image, uncheck the Tone Mapping option at left and hit the Create HDR button. When the image opens in Aurora you could then open any 3 of your bracketed images and you'll get them in the workspace and hit Create HDR again and see if that actually uses just your bracketed images and does so properly. The only edit you'd have to do with the script is to have it return the finished image to PSP as a new image rather than as a layer on the existing image. Just a thought.

Oh! And if you did try that, when you save you'd have to do Save As, use .tiff as the format (at least that's the format I use in the script to do lossless saves), browse to your Documents file, click on the copy of the original image that was saved as Aurora_temp.tiff (or whatever name you chose in the script to use) so that the processed image could overwrite the existing temp image and save it then close Aurora. Otherwise Aurora will try to save the file in whatever format it was originally (like .jpeg) and in the same folder from which you opened the files.

I am going to give that a try, if I can figure out how to get the trial versions of both on my Windows VM. I downloaded the Windows trial of Aurora 2018 this morning but when I started it I was told that I had 0 days left in my trial. Since I have never installed the 2018 version on my system I assume it has to do with the old Aurora version on the Mac side, although that seems odd.

I have contacted MacPhun asking them why I can not run Aurora 2018 on my VM and will have to wait for their response. I will also try Luminar, although I am not sure that it adds much to what is already available in PSP. Still, I find the ability to use PSP as a main tool with all of these other tools basically available as "plugins" through the scripting to be liberating. It means that I no longer have to switch from tool to tool, exiting one to run another one. It is very, very nice and I expect it will change the way I process images.

[JoeB]

I will also try Luminar, although I am not sure that it adds much to what is already available in PSP.

I agree that Luminar - and most plugins - produce many effects that can also be achieved in PSP. However, in my experience, it often takes a lot more time and effort in PSP, particularly if you're not quite sure exactly what you want the effect result to finally look like. Plugin presets often give you a good starting point.

And the problem with some of those plugins is that there is limited tweaking available for each of the presets. My experience so far with Luminar is that is has the advantages of both choosing one of a great variety of presets that kind of looks like what I might be trying to achieve and then it has a very large number of slider options for tweaking. And because it supports layers that can also be rearranged you can try various tweaks on various layers, hide or show them, blend them, move them around, etc., until you get exactly what you want. Most of the other filters that have similar preset effects don't support layers, which makes them less efficient IMHO.

And, of course, as the effects are returned to PSP using the script as a separate layer it's at least non-destructive so it doesn't hurt to try Luminar and see if it can at least add some more variety and/or efficiency to your workflow.

Still, I find the ability to use PSP as a main tool with all of these other tools basically available as "plugins" through the scripting to be liberating. It means that I no longer have to switch from tool to tool, exiting one to run another one. It is very, very nice and I expect it will change the way I process images.

I certainly agree with you about that!

EDIT: I should add that if you are going to experiment with the script and .tif saves with Luminar and/or Aurora HDR you have to edit the temp file name. It presently uses the 3 character extension .tif. However, both Luminar and Aurora, when saving tif files, use the 4 character extension .tiff so the script has to save the temp file with that latter extension or it will just return the original, non-processed copy of the image from Documents.

[JoeB]

@MikeFromMesa,

I decided to take a few bracketed shots myself this morning to see if my suggestion in my earlier post for being able to use the Aurora HDR script to do bracketing images would work. I'm glad to report that it does.

Basically, first edited the script to return a new image rather than a layer on the open image. Then I opened an image completely unrelated to my bracketed images in PSP and ran the script. Aurora opened with that single image and I unchecked Tone Mapping and just let it create the HDR which only took a few seconds. Then - without saving or doing anything with the first image - I just browsed to where my three bracketed images were and opened them in Aurora, which showed me all three images it was going to merge. They were hand held so I chose both the Alignment and Ghosting options. I left the reference image at the default chosen (the overall underexposed image) because I wanted the portion of that image that actually looked properly exposed - and which had blown highlights in the EV 0.0 image - to be like that in the final HDR.

Then I let it create the HDR. Then Export, changed the format to TIFF, browsed to my Documents folder, clicked on the Aurora_temp.tiff file and clicked Save, letting it overwrite the existing image. Back in Aurora I still had to click Export again which popped up the overwrite warning again (but didn't make me go back to a Save window, which is only necessary the first time to make sure it defaults to Documents AND the properly named Auroro_temp.tiff image and not the image's original folder or image names), said Yes and it exported. Closed Aurora and the HDR image appeared as a new image in PSP.

In my case I used a handheld smart phone in Portrait mode, which shows up properly in PSP and even in Aurora. However, when it returned the image to PSP it was rotated to Landscape orientation. No big issue to rotate it upright but I guess there must be some flag from the phone's camera that only affected the tiff output but not the way those images otherwise display.

Anyway, now you know it works with the caveat that you have to start with some single image. It could easily be one of the bracketed images open in PSP but I used an unrelated image to make sure that the first image opened in Aurora didn't influence how the subsequent bracketed images were being treated.