When we think of HDR and architecture we tend to think of real estate photography, we also tend to think of it in color.

Here are a few ways you can use Skylumā€™s Aurora HDR to edit your architectural shots in black and white.Ā 

For this image, I decided to start with an Architecture preset in Aurora. I used the Bright Exterior Look to start. What I discovered is that I had to zero out the saturation first, then apply preset and then zero out the saturation again. If I clicked on the preset first and then moved saturation to zero it left some of the yellow and blue in the image. That was it for this one.

In this next image, I went to the Experimental Combined category. There are four black & white Looks in that group. I chose the Black & White Somber Look and made some adjustments from there. First I increased the contrast to +33, decreased the small details from 100 to 45, increased the whites to 100 and then increased the HDR Denoise from 34 to 90.

The header image was also created using Aurora HDR, this time no presets. I decreased saturation to zero, increased contrast, exposure, whites and decreased blacks a little. That’s it.

This is all personal preference. I’m not a fan of HDR looks but that doesn’t mean I can’t use the Aurora to create the look I want.

All images were imported into Lightroom straightened, and spot removal and then used Aurora HDR as a plug-in and clicked on Chromatic Aberration Reduction before creating HDR.