#HDR EFEX PRO LIGHTROOM 4 UPDATE#

#HDR EFEX PRO LIGHTROOM 4 UPDATE#

Previous versions offered around 30 preset HDR вЂlooks, and the Nik Collection 2 update adds ten new вЂњEn VogueвЂќ looks to this list, and they offer a good range of effects and вЂlooksвЂ™. Once your exposures are merged or your file opened, youвЂ™re presented with a full image preview in the centre of the screen, an array of preset effects arranged in categories in a vertical panel on the left, and manual HDR tools stacked in a panel on the right.

HDR Efex Pro 2 does a good job of merging different exposures, removing chromatic aberration and controlling ghosting artefacts pretty well. This is the route youвЂ™ll need to follow if the brightness range in the scene is too great for a single exposure, even with the extra dynamic range headroom of a RAW file. There are two ways to create an HDR image with HDR Efex Pro 2 вЂ“ you can load a single image (ideally a RAW file, which you can now do via the Nik Collection 2 and DxO PhotoLab) and use the softwareвЂ™s tone-mapping and HDR tools to pull out the shadows and pull back the highlights, or you can follow the more technically correct route and merge a series of different exposures. ItвЂ™s part of the DxO Nik Collection, which you can get from the DxO website. This is the same process used by Aurora HDR, LightroomвЂ™s HDR Merge tool and other HDR programs. HDR Efex Pro is a tool for merging bracketed HDR exposures and then apply tone mapping and HDR effects to the merged image. It still wraps it up in a bit too much jargon (some of it specific to this particular software), but it does produce a good variety of ready-made HDR presets so that you donвЂ™t have to get caught up in the manual adjustments if you donвЂ™t want to. HDR Efex Pro 2 manages to make HDR relatively easy, and it produces вЂgoodвЂ™ HDR which is dynamic, rich and exciting rather than overprocessed and cheesy.

Hdr efex pro lightroom 4