# AuroraHDR Pro Plugins Not Working It Seems



## smcf

Hi,
I'm just curious if anyone else has got the AuroraHDR Plugins to actually work properly or even install properly. Of course I contacted Macphun for support but the response I got was less than helpful and amounted to repeating what the documentation stated on how to install; even though I had indicated to them that I had installed/uninstalled/reinstalled several times before contacting them). AuroraHDR officially launched today so I downloaded and installed it. Upon first launch it asked if I'd like to install various plugins available. I selected the Lr plugin. The product confirmed back with a status of installed. I then went into Lr and was not able to find anything that related to Aurora anywhere (including in the Plugin Mgr). The product documentation states that once installed you should be able to right click on an image in Lib or Dev modules and export to Aurora but there was no option available so I went back into Aurora, uninstalled the plugin and reinstalled it. After relaunching Lr still no visible sign of Aurora plugin anywhere. I tried it on two separate machines I have with same result all running OS 10.11.1 and Lr 6.2.1. (later I upgraded to 6.3 but no progress). 

1) Issue one is that the Aurora automatic install doesn't seem to actually work. I searched around and finally found the AuroraHDR plugin located here:
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules     (not sure if that's the most appropriate place for it but then went into the Plugin Mgr and added the plugin based on its location)​
2) Once enabled in Lr the plugin seems to work but I noticed that when you right-click and export to Aurora it seems to take the base image and ignore any adjustments made to the image. I tested this several times and it always ignored the develop adjustments.

Just curious of any other people's experiences and whether they are similar to mine.
​


----------



## Johan Elzenga

/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules is the correct place for plugins.

AuroraHDR is an HDR plugin. Doesn't that mean you have to select several images, so the plugin can create the HDR first? It could also explain why it takes the unadjusted base image when you only select one image: it's all about tone mapping, so you shouldn't adjust in Lightroom first and then tone map.


----------



## Johan Elzenga

I just read elsewhere that the plugin does indeed not take Lightroom adjustments (possibly to make sure it gets the full dynamic range). So it seems the plugin is working as expected for you.


----------



## smcf

Come on obviously I know selecting more than one image is best for HDR (but not required in Aurora's case). But not applying adjustment seems to go against some of the recorded video available which state that you can do adjustments in Lr first (e.g. leveraging Adobe's chromatic aberration adjustments instead of Aurora's) before taking into Aurora. Given that the plugin is designed as an export I'd expect it to leverage the adjustments before exporting to Aurora. I'd speculate that this is a bug.


----------



## Johan Elzenga

I just installed it to try it out. The plugin is installed in the Modules folder at the root Library/Application support level rather than the user level, but it works fine. It seems to me that the plugin loads the raw file, which would explain why you don't see any Lightroom adjustments. Those adjustments are specific for Lightroom, Aurora can't use them. The reason why I think it loads the raw file is because I tried to load an HDR DNG from Lightroom, and got a message saying that this type of DNG is not supported. If the plugin would work like most plugins (getting a tiff with adjustments) it wouldn't even know that the original is a DNG.


----------



## Johan Elzenga

P.S. The reason why you had problems with the plugin not working is probably because you didn't restart Lightroom after the installation of the plugin. If a plugin is installed by an external application or installer, you have to restart Lightroom in order to load it.


----------



## smcf

Johan, thanks but your contribution is not actually helping. In my first post you'll see that Lr wasn't running when I installed Aurora and its plugin. Nor was Lr running during the many times I installed, uninstalled, reinstalled the plugin before discovery where it was being deposited. 

But tell me since you tried installing it and given that you confirmed that the plugin install routine in Aurora put the plug in the root (not user's home folder based) location, when you launched Lr did it see the plugin automatically or like me did you have to manually add the plugin via Lr's plugin manager?


----------



## Johan Elzenga

Not helping? So did you find out that the plugin uses raw files yourself? 

Lightroom detected the plugin automatically (as it should have).


----------



## smcf

Did I know Aurora supported RAW? Well like many people I try to be an educated consumer and do my homework beforehand I buy. There are reasons I purchased the pro version: 1) Raw support, 2) Lr plugin.

In your profile data it says that you're using CC version of Lr. I'm not. So that might (possibly) account for the difference where by default it worked for you. With 6.2.1 and 6.3 desktop product if the aurora plugin is installed in

/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules 

when I launch Lr it does not recognize the plugin nor does Plugin Mgr show it listed. I had to click "Add" in Plugin Mgr to tell Lr the plugin was in the Modules folder.    But, if after installing the plugin I move it to 

../<user>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules    

then when I launch Lr it automatically sees the plugin.


----------



## Johan Elzenga

Fine, your plugin is working, so let's move on.

I didn't suggest you didn't know that Aurora can handle raw, but you obviously didn't know that *the plugin sends raw files from Lightroom*. If you knew that, you would not have made a comment about Lightroom adjustments not being applied, or would you? 

So I think I helped you answer that question. End of story.


----------



## smcf

Ok if you think you helped pat yourself on the back. But buddy ... on this end ... you provided next to zero value. Well done.


----------



## Jim Wilde

smcf said:


> Ok if you think you helped pat yourself on the back. But buddy ... on this end ... you provided next to zero value. Well done.



Please remember that the contributors on this forum are all unpaid volunteers who willing give up their time and expertise in trying to help those users who come here with problems. We don't always get the right answer, but that's no reason to be dismissive of the efforts. Thanks for your cooperation.


----------



## smcf

Jim
Believe me I'm sensitive to that but when someone starts "providing" answers based on a set of assumptions and hasn't even used the product in question ... that gets me going. I clearly started out by asking for people that had already had experience with Aurora to provide input. This guy weighed in but clearly hadn't used the product.

The first response suggested I wasn't using the product appropriately ... "Doesn't that mean you have to select several images ..." and "it's all about tone  mapping". Then another response of some unreferenced post about the capability of the application, then the response of "seems to me  the plugin loads the raw file" .... really? Does he really think I didn't have that already sorted before posting here? Then the claim that the reason the plugin didn't work for me properly from the get-go is because I didn't restart Lr. Really? Come on!


----------



## Johan Elzenga

OK, I apologize for making some assumptions at first and for not reading your initial question carefully enough. I didn't see that you mentioned already that you restarted Lightroom after the installation. It just occurred to me that this might be the explanation, so I wrote that without checking. Sorry for that.

However, it seems to me that you also didn't read my answer carefully enough, perhaps because you were annoyed. In my first reply, I confirmed that '/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules' is the correct place for plugins. I don't need to install this particular plugin to confirm that, so that was the reason that I gave my first answer before I actually used the product myself. The other things I wrote were kind of philosophical questions, not meant as a definite answer but to get the thought process going about why this plugin would not apply Lightroom adjustments. Guess that wasn't clear.

Then I did try the product and found the answer to your second question. The fact that this plugin sends raw files to Aurora explains why Lightroom adjustments aren't applied. They can't be. But by that time you weren't interested anymore, and it seems you still haven't really thought about what it implies. 

Guess we both need to take a step back and breath normally again.


----------



## Jim Wilde

@smcf,

I'm not going to get into a "who said what debate". You asked for help, and Johan stepped up to the plate and despite not being a user he took the trouble to download and install the plug-in on his own system to try to help figure out what should happen, for which he appears not to have got any credit. Like all of us here, we often have no idea of the level of competence of the user who's looking for help so it's usually sensible to assume that it's less than it might be. Don't be offended by that, trust me it's a safer route than assuming the user is more knowledge than is the case, that can be rather dangerous. 

While typing this I see that Johan has already apologised for those assumptions, so I hope you'll be able to respond appropriately to that.


----------



## smcf

For anyone else that was initially disappointed with the Aurora plugin not carrying along edits when exporting to Aurora, Kevin La Rue from Macphun created a great workaround using Aurora HDR Pro as an external editor (avoiding the plugin I'd imagine). I tested it and it worked for me. Here is the workaround steps he provided:

Go to LR Preferences, External Editors and choose Aurora HDR. You'll have the option of exporting as TIFF - keep it there for quality
Highlight a bracketed set in the Library and then click on Develop
Make some gross, easily seen changes
Go back to Library to make sure the changes were made in all 3 images
While the 3 are still selected, right click on one of the images and say "Edit In Aurora HDR"

Big thanks to Kevin.

Here are some screen caps I took to show it working. I took a single image and created two copies then over and under exposed them to simulate a bracketed set of images (I simulated a bracketed set simply because on my test laptop where I'm currently doing this I don't have a proper exposure bracketed set of images). Good enough for testing as it shows the edits are carried over.

Three test images:







3 files selected for Edit In:






Result ... 3 files in Aurora with the edits






S.


----------



## Victoria Bampton

smcf, can you show an example of how that gives a better result than doing the tone mapping edits to a bracketed set of images directly in Lightroom?


----------



## smcf

Victoria,

If I understand your post correctly you're asking for a comparison of the performance of Aurora vs Lr's built in HDR capability. For that I'd simply refer you to this link as it may address your interest better than I could :

http://photofocus.com/2015/11/19/aurora-hdr-professional-review-trey-and-friends-bring-the-fun/


----------



## Victoria Bampton

Thanks smcf


----------



## smcf

Macphun released v1.0.1 of Aurora HDR yesterday. It addressed a number of issues and in my case it resolved the issue of where the plugin gets written to. 

I tried this many many times and at v1.0 the plugin was written to:

/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules/

In my case v1.0.1 now is writing the plugin to:

../<user>/Lbrary/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules/

As a result of the update, Macphun updated their FAQ to remove a workaround for the plugin placement issue. No news on a solution to the second issue I identified so the workaround is still relevant for now. I'm told a solution is being worked on.


----------



## rob211

I demo'd Aurora HDR. Macphun has several other plugins, and they have over others in that they do what Nik does not: they transfer RAW to the Macphun applications so that you can use Macphun's RAW conversion and the benefits of editing directly off RAW. If you don't want to use Macphun's RAW conversion, the "edit in..." preset is dead simple to create, and then use TIFF as described (that's how most of the Nik plugins work, except for the HDR one, which uses an export preset). For some reason Aurora doesn't create this preset upon installation; Macphun did create "edit in..." presets for all my other Macphun applications. So you have a choice of RAW or TIFF.

Right now there are only two Lr-compatible editors that allow you to make image editing adjustments that Lr will recognize, hence letting you essentially edit RAW in two different applications: DxO Optics Pro (it transfers (the word Lr uses to distinguish RAW transfer from the edit in... route, I think) to DxO, and DxO sends back a RAW DNG to Lr, so that you can do further RAW editing on it). Mylio can also receive and pass RAW parametric adjustments back and forth to Lr (limited to most basics, like contrast, WB, cropping, B&W, etc).

And note the the Adobe hdr.dng is rather a different beast, and I haven't found anything anything else that can work on those.

While I love Macphun's applications, I found Aurora to be duplicative of what I already had. You can use layers in their applications, and that allows some of the adjustments you might do in Aurora. And Aurora is rather nice if you do a lot of HDRs, since it too has layers and masking and other adjustments. And of course if you have the CC version of Lr/Ps you could do that all in Ps anyway, and not have to worry about RAW adjustments from Lr.


----------



## Johan Elzenga

Just a small correction: the DNG that is sent back from DxO to Lightroom is not a raw DNG. It's a linear RGB DNG.


----------



## rob211

JohanElzenga said:


> Just a small correction: the DNG that is sent back from DxO to Lightroom is not a raw DNG. It's a linear RGB DNG.


Oops; yes it is different. A half-baked raw? rare raw? :mrgreen:


----------



## Johan Elzenga

Sunny side up raw?


----------



## Skeeter

smcf said:


> Macphun released v1.0.1 of Aurora HDR yesterday. It addressed a number of issues and in my case it resolved the issue of where the plugin gets written to.
> 
> I tried this many many times and at v1.0 the plugin was written to:
> 
> /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules/
> 
> In my case v1.0.1 now is writing the plugin to:
> 
> ../<user>/Lbrary/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules/
> 
> As a result of the update, Macphun updated their FAQ to remove a workaround for the plugin placement issue. No news on a solution to the second issue I identified so the workaround is still relevant for now. I'm told a solution is being worked on.


thanks smcf


----------



## smcf

Hi,
I'm just curious if anyone else has got the AuroraHDR Plugins to actually work properly or even install properly. Of course I contacted Macphun for support but the response I got was less than helpful and amounted to repeating what the documentation stated on how to install; even though I had indicated to them that I had installed/uninstalled/reinstalled several times before contacting them). AuroraHDR officially launched today so I downloaded and installed it. Upon first launch it asked if I'd like to install various plugins available. I selected the Lr plugin. The product confirmed back with a status of installed. I then went into Lr and was not able to find anything that related to Aurora anywhere (including in the Plugin Mgr). The product documentation states that once installed you should be able to right click on an image in Lib or Dev modules and export to Aurora but there was no option available so I went back into Aurora, uninstalled the plugin and reinstalled it. After relaunching Lr still no visible sign of Aurora plugin anywhere. I tried it on two separate machines I have with same result all running OS 10.11.1 and Lr 6.2.1. (later I upgraded to 6.3 but no progress). 

1) Issue one is that the Aurora automatic install doesn't seem to actually work. I searched around and finally found the AuroraHDR plugin located here:
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules     (not sure if that's the most appropriate place for it but then went into the Plugin Mgr and added the plugin based on its location)​
2) Once enabled in Lr the plugin seems to work but I noticed that when you right-click and export to Aurora it seems to take the base image and ignore any adjustments made to the image. I tested this several times and it always ignored the develop adjustments.

Just curious of any other people's experiences and whether they are similar to mine.
​


----------



## smcf

Though I haven't actually tested the fix Aurora says that 1.1.0 release that's currently available fixes the issue of not applying Lr adjustments before export (see item #4). I'd say the two issues I opened this thread with have been resolved.


----------



## Skeeter

Hi smcf,
How are you getting on with Aurora HDR are you liking what it turns out ???


----------



## smcf

Hi Skeeter,
Truth be told, what with the usual year-end hijinx at work, Christmas shopping, etc, etc I've not been devoting much time to Aurora beyond some simple testing and ensuring that it works properly within Lr. Generally it's a nice app with some nice features. Is it any better than what you get with Lr out of the box? I'm not sure. Perhaps it depends on what you want from your HDR images. Basically I bought it just to have it in my toolbox if/when I need it.
From some quick testing I found its default result is slightly more HDRish compared to Lr's default result. Will need to test some more. Curious if anyone else is using it and what their opinions are. 
Cheers,
S.


----------



## Skeeter

smcf said:


> Hi Skeeter,
> Truth be told, what with the usual year-end hijinx at work, Christmas shopping, etc, etc I've not been devoting much time to Aurora beyond some simple testing and ensuring that it works properly within Lr. Generally it's a nice app with some nice features. Is it any better than what you get with Lr out of the box? I'm not sure. Perhaps it depends on what you want from your HDR images. Basically I bought it just to have it in my toolbox if/when I need it.
> From some quick testing I found its default result is slightly more HDRish compared to Lr's default result. Will need to test some more. Curious if anyone else is using it and what their opinions are.
> Cheers,
> S.


thanks for the update, I'am thinking the same way, something for the toolbox. when I get more free time I will hook into it
Marry Christmas
Dave


----------



## mcasan

Just purchased and installed Aurora HDR plus the Creative Kit.    No problem on my rMBP.    So far, some of the best plugin apps I have seen.   If you purchase either Aurora or Creative Kit, you get an extra discount on the other purchase.  You can get both plus lots of extras for less than $200.


----------

