• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Offers
  • How tos
  • Listicles
  • Explainers
  • A-Z
  • Downloads
    • Adobe
    • DxO software
    • Capture One
    • Exposure X
    • ON1 software
    • Skylum
  • About

Life after Photoshop

  • Lightroom
  • Capture One
  • DxO PhotoLab
  • Nik Collection
  • Exposure X
  • ON1 Photo RAW
  • Aurora HDR

HDR Efex Pro 2 review

June 16, 2019 by Rod Lawton

Verdict: 4 stars

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

HDR Efex Pro 2 manages to make HDR relatively easy, and it produces ‘good’ HDR which is dynamic, rich and exciting rather than overprocessed and cheesy. 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 don’t have to get caught up in the manual adjustments if you don’t want to.

  • DxO Nik Collection review
  • More Nik Collection news and tutorials
  • How to get the Nik Collection

What is it?

HDR Efex Pro is a tool for merging bracketed HDR exposures and then apply tone mapping and HDR effects to the merged image. This is the same process used by Aurora HDR, Lightroom’s HDR Merge tool and other HDR programs. It’s part of the DxO Nik Collection, which you can get from the DxO website.

How it works

There are two ways to create an HDR image with HDR Efex Pro 2 – 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 software’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. This is the route you’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.

HDR Efex Pro 2 does a good job of merging different exposures, removing chromatic aberration and controlling ghosting artefacts pretty well.

Once your exposures are merged or your file opened, you’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.

Previous versions offered around 30 preset HDR ‘looks, and the Nik Collection 2 update adds ten new “En Vogue” looks to this list, and they offer a good range of effects and ‘looks’. HDR Efex Pro use the open image to display ‘live’ previews for each preset, so it won’t take you look to find a look that’s close to the one you want.

This is where you switch to the manual tools on the right for any fine-tuning, and these are organised into collapsible Tone Compression, Tonality, Colour, Selective Adjustments and Finishing panels.

The sliders in the Tonality and Colour panels are pretty obvious, but the Tone Compression sliders less so. Tone Compression presumably controls the extent to which highlights and shadows are equalised, with the Method Strength slider controls the combined effect of the HDR Method options below.

These consist of Depth Detail and Drama settings. These aren’t sliders as such because they have click-stopped positions corresponding to specific ‘methods’ which vary by type rather than by degree. For example, the Drama control offers Flat, Natural, Deep, Dingy, Sharp and Grainy settings which sound descriptive enough but give you no clue as to their purpose or technical basis.

HDR Efex Pro isn’t quite the best HDR tool you can get, but it’s still up there in the first division, with rich, natural-looking HDR processing on both bracketed HDR images and single RAW files (via DxO PhotoLab and the Nik Collection 2).

Is it any good?

HDR Efex Pro 2 is a good deal better than most HDR tools out there on the market, with a wide variety of interesting and effective ‘looks’ and the ability to create HDR images that cover the creative spectrum from subtle-and-natural through to over-the-top. The new “En Vogue” presets in the Nik Collection 2 are a worthwhile addition, too.

Its results aren’t quite as clean and artefact free as Skylum’s Aurora HDR, but that’s a more expensive and more specialised tool. HDR Efex Pro’s controls and jargon aren’t always helpful, though, which is perhaps a bigger problem, as you end up rolling the dice with three HDR Method controls whose functions aren’t clear and whose interactions and permutations are almost endless.

However, it’s not hard to find an HDR ‘look’ you like with HDR Efex Pro 2, and it deserves proper credit for that given that many HDR tools are just too complex and difficult (and often ineffective). And remember this is just one plug-in in a bigger collection, so it’s great value too.

Read more:

  • Using HDR Efex Pro for everyday enhancement

DxO HDR Efex Pro 2

Life after Photoshop

Features
Usability
Results

Summary

HDR Efex Pro 2 manages to make HDR relatively easy, and it produces ‘good’ HDR which is dynamic, rich and exciting rather than overprocessed and cheesy. 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 don’t have to get caught up in the manual adjustments if you don’t want to.

4

Related

Filed Under: Nik Collection, ReviewsTagged With: Aurora HDR (Skylum), HDR

Life after Photoshop is owned and run by photographer and journalist Rod Lawton. Rod has been a photography journalist for nearly 40 years, starting out in film (obviously) but then migrating to digital. He has worked as a freelance journalist, technique editor and channel editor, and is now Group Reviews Editor on Digital Camera World. Life after Photoshop is a personal project started in 2013.

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe to this site

Enter your email address to subscribe to Life after Photoshop and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Adobe Lightroom: what is it, where do you get it, what does it cost?

Adobe Lightroom is not one program but three. You could … [Read More...] about Adobe Lightroom: what is it, where do you get it, what does it cost?

The best photo editing software for organizing, editing, RAW and effects

Choosing the best image editing software used to be easy. … [Read More...] about The best photo editing software for organizing, editing, RAW and effects

Layers explained

Layers explained: what they do and how to use them

Layers are a central part of many photo editing processes, … [Read More...] about Layers explained: what they do and how to use them

BAN adjustments… Basic And Necessary image corrections to do first

Photo editing software does two quite different jobs. It can … [Read More...] about BAN adjustments… Basic And Necessary image corrections to do first

More Posts from this Category

Mission statement

Life after Photoshop is not anti-Photoshop or anti-subscriptions. It exists to showcase the many Photoshop alternatives that do more, go further, or offer more creative inspiration to photographers.

Affiliate links

Life after Photoshop is funded by affiliate links and may be paid a commission for downloads. This does not affect the price you pay, the ratings in reviews or the software selected for review.

Contact

Email lifeafterphotoshop@gmail.com

Copyright © 2023 Life after Photoshop · News Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in