From the course: Learning Aurora HDR 2018

Improving presence with the HDR Radiance filter - Aurora HDR Tutorial

From the course: Learning Aurora HDR 2018

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Improving presence with the HDR Radiance filter

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- The concept of presence is a little bit more esoteric. Essentially what's happening here is we are manipulating the aesthetics by adjusting the overall feeling the image has. This is done with the Radiance filter. Let's go down to Image Radiance, which is below Denoise, and you'll see a couple of controls here. First up, I'll begin by taking the Amount all the way over, and you see what it does is creates a bit of a mood, essentially adding rich shadows and depth. However, as we do this, there are controls that manipulate it. For example, if I drag Brightness to the right, the image gets significantly brighter, to the left, with a negative Brightness, and it gets darker. So in a way, this is a exposure adjustment, but it has a tendency to richen the colors as well. Now, you'll notice that the Shadows have a separate slider here. So this means that I could actually take the brightness down to darken the skies a little bit but brighten up the shadows. Think of this is almost a shadow highlights adjustment that happens after the fact, but the ability to still keep the colors nice and rich. As we make this change to the brighter and shadowy areas, I can also smooth that out. A higher Smoothness value takes it and makes it seem a little less detailed. If we go with a negative value there, you see a little bit more of an edge, and this is sort of the stereotypical over-the-top HDR look. I find that a little bit of Smoothness goes a long way to making this look natural. If I toggle that on and off, I really like what this is doing. It's enriching the colors and making it look more photographic, softening some of those HDR details that are a telltale sign of too much detail. Additionally, we have control here over Vividness and Warmth. Think of Vividness as the overall presence of color. This can be useful if you want to back the image down, making it seem a little less intense in color, and that's often a useful adjustment because sometimes the colors will also get too boosted. And a Warmth slider, allowing us to cool the shot or warm the shot. Now, you don't have to add either of those presence if you like the color temperature of the shot that you developed, but this can be quite useful to get a slightly warmer tone if you're trying to evoke a sunrise or a sunset or a cooler tone for later in the evening. Now, let's back down that Amount slider so this isn't too much. And if done right, the Image Radiance adjustment should be pretty subtle. What I like about this here is it just takes the clouds, and it softened those out. And if you look at some of the foreground elements here, I just like how there's not quite as much separation now between the vegetation and the grass. The image has, in many ways, been brought back to a warmer, gentler feeling, which is a nice touch for an HDR image.

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