Aurora HDR Pro Is Photo Editing Software Designed By Photographer Trey Ratcliff

If you’re a fan of photographer Trey Ratcliff, then you know how enthusiastic he is about HDR photography. Now, he’s doubling down and has created his own HDR photography software to create a look similar to the HDR “glow” found in his images.

Aurora HDR Pro is a full-on HDR editing app designed in conjunction with software maker Macphun. It’s a standalone piece of software, not a plugin, so you don’t need to have Lightroom or Photoshop to make it work.

Once you dig into the interface, it’s clear that there are a ton of different tools available in Aurora for tweaking HDR images. There are some pre-set starting points specific to certain shooting situations, but from there you can make very granular tweaks to things like tone and structure. It gives you a fair bit of control over just how much HDR look you really want in your photo. There are even layers and local adjustments so you can spread the HDR around at your own discretion.

It obviously works to combine bracketed images in a typical HDR setup, but you can also apply the adjustments to single images.

The software is available now for pre-order for $89, so if you’re an occasional HDR user (or you’re just not a huge fan of the HDR look like me), it might be overkill. But, if HDR is your thing, this seems like a pretty great tool for making images look exactly as you want them.