HDR Darkroom is another relative newcomer to the HDR software scene. I say relative newcomer because it came to market after many of the well known apps like Photomatix, Dynamic Photo HDR and FDRTools. I only became aware of it in the last couple months and decided to add it to the growing list of software apps in this series.
I should state upfront that after sending some questions to the folks who produce HDR Darkroom, they’ve provided me with a full version (sans watermark) and in return, I’m going to provide them with some samples to use on their web gallery at no cost.
Unlike many of the other applications coming out on the market, HDRDR is ‘just’ an HDR application. It’s not trying to be all things to all people, which is a plus in my book. They’re concentrating on one thing with HDRDR and concentrating on doing it well. 32 bit files can be saved either as Radiance (.hdr) or OpenEXR (.exr). When saving JPEG files, there are no quality options. The file is saved at full size and full quality. Personally, I prefer this.
On opening the program, the GUI is clean and simple with a menu bar at the top and menu icons down the left. This allows you to use whatever method you’re comfortable with to work. Positioning your mouse over an icon brings up a description of what it is so you’re not working blind if you use the icons.
HDRDR GUI (click for larger version)
There are no preferences available to be set so you can simply start working. There is a batch function (thumbs up) but no colour management implementation (thumbs down). Under the Process menu is an interesting item labeled ‘Export to Photoshop’. Upon further inspection, it’s not quite as interesting as first thought as it only will export a BMP version of the file you’re working on. If it could be reprogrammed to export a JPEG or TIFF, that’d be cool. As it is, the standard workflow of tonemapping, saving the tonemapped image out as a JPEG or TIFF then opening that file in PS for any further work is the way to go. There is no deghosting function so that won’t be tested.
How’s it all work? Opening an existing 32 bit file is pretty quick. The program goes through an initial ‘tonemapping’ step in order to display the image on screen for a first visual representation. If you like what you see, you can save out the file from here. Additional work is probably going to be needed. A screen capture of the intial preview of our default existing image is below.
HDRDR Initial Screen Preview (click for larger image)
It’s actually not too bad, but it does need more work. Into the tonemapping functions we go. Going into the tonemapping functions opens up a new screen, but it’s not a double screen so you can’t flip back and forth – there’s no need to really so it doesn’t matter than you can’t. In the tonemap screen, the tonemapping controls are on the right side of the screen and the image in the middle. You can adjust the size of the preview between Small, Medium and Large. The default is Medium. Even selecting Large, the entire image fits in screen so you can see everything that’s happeningn with the tonemapping. There is no multiple monitor support so you can’t pull the tonemapping bar to a second screen and get a bigger image on the primary. Unless you’re working with a very small screen this should be alright because the tonemap bar doesn’t take up a lot of screen real estate and the workspace is clean otherwise so there’s nothing else to keep you from getting a good idea of what’s happening as you adjust the tonemapping operators. Multiple monitor support is always a nice thing, but in this case – unlike with some of the other apps we’ve looked at – it’s not vital.
There are three tonemapping operators: Local Tone Balancer (LTB); Local Tone Enhancer (LTE); and Fast Tone Compressor (FTC). The first two are local tonemappers, the last is a global operator. Based on what I’ve experienced in using the software, LTE is going to be the operator of choice in most cases. It has the most flexibility and produces the best results on a consistent basis. Unless noted otherwise, LTE is the one I’m using in this commentary. There is also the ability to save tonemapping presets via the dropdown menu at the top. A screen shot of the tonemapping GUI is below.
HDRDR Tonemap GUI (click for larger version)
The sliders don’t offer a live preview but the update speed is quick. Switching from one tonemapping operator to another, then back brings you back to the last settings you used in that operator – nice. Keeping the Strength setting in the range under 50 is generally where you’re going to want to be for a more naturalistic/realistic look. Fill Light is one that’ll be used sparingly in most cases. It does do a good job though of working on the darker/shadow areas yet not brightening the lighter/highlight areas. The Brightness slider does a nice job of making adjustments to the overall exposure and helping retain/regain shadow/highlight contrast. Below the Tonemapping Parameters is a section for Post Processing tools. There are two tabs – Color Balance and B/W Point Clipping. The Color Balance sliders act like the colour balance tool in Photoshop and can be useful for adjusting the white balance in the image. The B/W Point Clipping sliders on the second tab are where you’re going to set your white and black points. Both work well and the B/W sliders provide enough fine control that you can get the overall contrast where you want it. Eyedroppers for setting white balance as well as white/black points would be nice additions to make adjusting those settings slightly quicker. Once done, click OK to apply the settings and you’re taken back to the original screen after the settings are applied which is pretty quick. Tonemapped files can be saved as 8 bit JPEGs, 8 bit TIFFs or 16 bit TIFFs (noted in the dropdown as 48 bit – 16 per channel). It can also save as PNG and BMP but these will be less useful for photographers. The realistic version of our default existing file is below.
HDRDR Existing Realistic (click for larger version)
This is pretty darn good as it stands right now. The blue in the water is a little too intense but that’s easily fixed after tonemapping. Without question this is on par with the best apps out there for generating a realistic result on this particular image. Getting to this result took very little time and required not a lot of playing with the sliders. There are Undo and Redo icons on the left side of the screen.
An interesting part of the way HDRDR works is that after you tonemap and go back to the main screen, you see the results of the tonemapping on screen but your 32 bit image is still there in the background. When you save the file out as a JPEG or TIFF, it saves a copy so what you see on screen is still the 32 bit image. If you then go back into the tonemapping operators, it opens the original 32 bit image back up with the previous tonemapping settings applied but clicking Reset takes you back to the original. This is a nice workflow process if you want to try different tonemapping adjustments.
Now let’s look at the other end of the tonemapping spectrum. Two files are below. The first is a surreal/grunge look with the LTE operator, the second is a surreal/grunge look with the LTB operator. They’re different. In both cases the Strength slider is pushed well up past 50, which is where you’re going to want to go if you’re working for the less realistic look and in the LTB version, the Local Lighting slider is also pushed up toward the top end. My only quibble with the LTB version is what it’s done to the waterfall pools.
HDRDR Grunge LTE (click for larger version)
HDRDR Grunge LTB (click for larger version)
HDRDR can swim in both ends of the tonemapping pool. Getting from a realistic result to a less realistic is as simple as moving the Strength slider. You’ll likely want to tweak some of the other settings as well but the Strength slider really does control a lot in this software. Simple is good. And the speed is very good througout. As fast or faster than the other applications tested thus far. Another important thing to note is that the program has handled the full drange of this scene very well. Recall from the introductory article that I chose this particular scene because of the range of brightness it contained. There are no presets other than the default settings but creating your own is easily done and with the simplicity of making adjustments to create different looks/versions, creating different presets takes little time.
We’ll move on to see how HDRDR does merging and tonemapping a set of files. The screen for setting up the merge is very simple. You can choose to align or not and you can choose to have the exposure information taken from the EXIF data or by guessing. If you were using film scans or other images that didn’t have exposure information in the EXIF, you could use Guess as a starting point. Once you choose your images and set the software to work the loading, aligning, merging and initial preview tonemapping happens in a pretty snappy fashion. Perhaps not quite as fast in this case as Photomatix or CS5 HDR Pro but still quite quickly and faster than many of the other apps. tested thus far.
Once again, the intial preview is a very good starting point as seen in the image below.
HDRDR Merge Preview (click for larger version)
The colour in the windows on the right is good. The brightness in the windows on the left is well controlled. Not quite the best we’ve seen so far but still very good. Colours throughout are accurate, if a tad cool which is easily addressed.
Making the tonemapping adjustments and applying the tonemapping settings was a slightly slower with this 32 bit file than the existing one from above. I’m not sure why that might be. It could simply be a combination of the settings needed to get the result required more time to process than previously. The Strength slider for this was a bit higher than on the first image so which would mean more processing behind the scenes so that could explain the slight time difference. The difference was small enough that it could also have been due to other processes going on in my system at the same time. More testing would be needed to know for sure. Either way, it’s still quite quick. Below is the natural/realistic version.
HDRDR Merge Realisitic (click for larger version)
Here again, the colour in the windows on the right is good. Brightness in the windows on the left is better than in the preview version. Good shadow/highlight detail is retained throughout. The colour from the dirt in the left windows shows up well. It’s a very nice result and one that I’d only have to do a little extra tweaking to after the fact via a Curves/Levels type adjustment and/or perhaps a slight Shadow/Highlight adjustment.
The grunge/surrealistic version is below.
HDRDR Merge Grunge
As with the realistic version, colour is good, detail is good in the highlights. What’s interesting about this version compared to surrealistic versions from the other applications is the way HDRDR has rendered the highlight areas in the room itself. The highlights areound the ticket windows, the old newsstand on the left and on the large pillar in the back corner add enhanced visual interest to this version that the others haven’t had to the same extent. The mapping of the light in HDRDR, in this case anyway, has created a very appealing result. As with the other images, the Strength slider is the one that largely controls the realistic or surrealistic look and in this case it was all the way at 100%. In some other apps., moving the equivalent of the HDRDR Strength slider to 100% would cause the windows to become completely blown out but highlights are still well controlled here at the same time an interesting ‘grunge’ result has been generated.
After getting the fully unlocked version, I have to admit that I cheated and used it for more than just this review. I wanted to see how it would handle some night scenes with wildly varying light levels and light colours. I used it to shoot a timelapse segment in Toronto. The last 5 seconds of this clip are images merged and tonemapped in HDRDR. Tried the same files in Photomatix and liked the HDRDR results better so used them.
Support for HDRDR is decent. There are no Help files installed with the program. There are some video tutorials on the HDR Darkroom website as well as some FAQ sections. I emailed some questions to their general support email address and got responses within a business day. The HDRDR offices are in Europe and I’m in North America so considering the time difference, that response turnaround is very good. The responses I got were helpful. My understanding from trading emails with them is that they’re working on revamping the website and I expect it’ll have enhanced information on it when the new site is brought onstream.
I did run into a few bugs when working with the software. Two are minor and not worth going into detail on. The third involves a difference in tonemapping when working in Batch mode vs. doing individual merge/tonemap operations. Again, based on emails I’ve traded with their support group, they have a handle on the problem and expect to have a fix in the near future.
To discuss the Batch mode a bit more for a second, like everything else with HDRDR, the interface is simple and the process is quick. Running the same set of files through both HDRDR and Photomatix, HDRDR completed the batch process slightly faster than PM. You can choose to save either the 32 bit file, a tonemapped JPEG file or both. The 32 bit file is saved in the Radiance format. Since the software can save individually merged files in both Radiance and OpenEXR formats, giving that flexibility in Batch mode would be preferable. Being able to save the tonemapped file as either an 8 or 16 bit TIFF file would also be preferable to just offering JPEG. You have access to the same tonemapping operators in Batch as in standard mode. You cannot; however, invoke a preset in Batch mode. If you test out a merge to get your tonemap settings figured out, you’ll have to write down the settings and input them manually in Batch. Being able to use presets here would also be a good enhancement. You can merge up to 10 images in Batch mode which should be enough. Nikon offers the widest bracketing at up to 9 in some of its models so unless you’re doing manual bracketing at 1/3 or 1/2 stops and capturing huge numbers of images per sequence (which really isn’t necessary), the ability to merge up to 10 images should suffice.
There is a noise reduction feature in the software which I didn’t try.
All in all, HDRDR is a very nice piece of software that does one thing and does it quite well. The software is on sale right now for $79. There are both Mac and Windows versions. At that price it’s definitely a good deal. Even at the full price of $99 it’s the same price as Photomatix Pro and in terms of the quality of the software and support, it’s pretty much on par with PM.
As with previous reviews, if you see any errors please let me know and I’ll work to make the corrections. Thanks for reading and I’m happy to recieve your feedback.
The latest beta of PM 4, b2, came out a few days ago. It’s got some new features and a few tweaks so I’m going to give a bit of a preview-review of some of the new functionality. The folks at HDRSoft know I’m doing this and are fine with it. They’ve asked me not to show any screen shots of the GUI and I won’t. That’s unfortunate though because some of the biggest changes involve the GUI. I will try to describe some of them as best I can.
Part II of this review series discussed the current version of Photomatix. As I noted there, it’s a terrific piece of software and, until PS CS5 HDR Pro was introduced, has been arguably the ‘gold standard’ of HDR software apps. With the introduction of the new features in CS5 HDR Pro, there’s (arguably) a bit of a tussle for that title of ‘gold standard’. Does any of that change with what’s coming in the new version of Photomatix? Let’s take a look.
There are quite a few changes in the works for the new version vs. v3.x. Some of the key ones are:
- semi-manual deghosting feature by drawing around area to be deghosted
- showing thumbnails for tonemapping presets at the bottom of the screen when in tonemapping mode
- combined panel for tonemapping and exposure fusion (no need to select one or the other when loading images, no multiple tabs for Details Enhancer & Tone Compressor)
- ability to zoom via the mouse scroll wheel when the cursor is inside the image in tonemapping mode
- improved multi-threading support for RAW demosaicing and fusion/adjustment
- ability to adjust tonemapping sliders with the mouse scroll wheel
- transfer of image metadata to merged/tonemapped image
- improved functionality of alignment based on ‘matching features’
These aren’t all of the proposed changes. There may be new ones added, some may be discarded as the beta process moves forward to a final release of v4. Many of the changes are cosmetic. Some deal with background processing which should improve results and improve speed.
The new preview thumbnails for tonemapping presets show up in a sort of film strip type of panel at the bottom of the screen. This strip can be moved around but it always seems to be ‘in the way’. In order to have the image on screen large enough to get a sense of what’s happening with the tonemapping, this preset strip blocks part of the image. The thumbnails are ‘live’ in that clicking on one will invoke that preset on the main image. There’s a tab for Built In presets and a tab for My Presets so if you have any favourite tonemapping settings saved, these will be available as well. The thumbnails are small. You can get a bit of a sense of what the result will be not a really good sense. You can also close this strip. It’ll re-open the next time you open an image for tonemapping. You can drag it to a second monitor but it’ll come back to the main monitor next time. I can see how this would be positive for some users. It strikes me as a less useful feature addition. Other aspects of the GUI can be turned on or off in Preferences (e.g., Workflow Shortcuts). This should also be able to be turned on or off as the user wishes.
Perhaps the biggest change to the front end is the addition of the semi-manual deghosting feature. When loading a set of bracketed files, the Processing Options give you two choices for removing ghosts, the old, fully automated method or the new semi-manual method. Choosing semi-manual then brings up another screen called Ghosting Selection where you determine the area to be deghosted. The instructions indicate to drag your mouse over the area to be deghosted. Almost sounds like it creates a box or selection automatically, right? It doesn’t though. It’s like the Lasso tool in Photoshop. You drag your mouse around the area you want selected. You don’t have to join the ends. If you only go part way around, the ends will be joined automatically. Next you right-click in the area and have the option to select for deghosting or remove selection. Remove selection is greyed out if you haven’t got the selection finalised yet. You can make multiple selections using this process. Once the areas are selected you can click on Preview Deghosting or simply click OK. There’s a slider at the bottom of the Ghosting Selection screen that has no description. This adjusts the brightness inside the image to help seeing ghosted areas. Right-clicking also allows you to select a different image from the bracketed set to use for making the selection. Choosing the 0, or +1 probably makes the most sense from the standpoint of ability to view areas within the image in most cases. Make your selection based on your own image sets. Click OK and wait. Wait a long time. It took so long, I wondered whether the program had frozen. This semi-manual deghosting feature is very slow. Significantly slower than the fully automated deghosting process. How well does it work? See the image below for a comparison of the new semi-manual method, the PM fully automated method from the current version and HDR Pro.
Deghosting Comparison (click for larger version)
It works pretty well. There’s a small bit at the edge of the left side that didn’t get taken care of but that did in the automated process of the current version. Other than that, it’s about on par with the old method. Given the time it takes to process using this new method I’d suggest that there’s not much of a benefit to it.
The ability to adjust the sliders with the mouse scroll wheel is a nice feature. Click on the adjustment point of any of the tonemapping operators then scroll with the mouse and the adjustment is effected. There’s a downside though. With all of the tonemapping operators open, the tonemapping panel is longer than my screen is high. My screen is 1050 pixels. I’m guessing the tonemapping panel when fully open is about 1200 pixels or a bit less. Activating a tonemapping adjustment doesn’t decouple the scroll wheel from the tonemapping panel so as you’re adjusting a particular tonemapping operator you’re also scrolling in the panel and can’t see what you’re adjusting because the operators keep moving up and down. I’m hoping this is merely a bug and gets fixed before the final version.
I’ve not done a comparison of the change to the alignment based on matching features between the current version and the new version. I’ve not found the current alignment process to be lacking. In terms of speed, the converting of RAW files is much quicker than in the current version. Excluding the semi-manual deghosting, other aspects of the application – loading a 32 bit image, alignment, saving images, tonemapping adjustments, are also quicker. The tonemapping adjustment sliders are live in the new version where they aren’t in the current version. Increasing speed is a positive.
I also took a look at the tonemapping to see if there were any differences between the current version and the new version. There’s one difference in the Default tonemapping settings in Details Enhancer. The White Point is at .175% in the current version and .25% in the new version. Adjusting the WP back to .175% shows no difference in the two images after processing the tonemapping settings.
That’s a quick overview of some of the new features and comparison with the current version. Will it be worth the cost to upgrade? That’s a decision each user will have to make on their own. For me, as it sits right now, probably not. Many of the enhancements are cosmetic. The functional changes that matter to me are an uptick in speed but that speed increase isn’t significant enough in itself to justify the upgrade. The new semi-manual deghosting isn’t something I could find myself using given the slowness and that there’s no benefit over the automated approach – at least in the one image set I used. Even if there were a better result in other images, the slowness is still a factor.
Based on this beta, I’d have to say that HDRSoft hasn’t definitively regained it’s spot as the ‘gold standard’ in HDR software.
EDIT: In the 3rd beta of v4, the option was included to close the tonemapping preview thumbnails panel. Definitely a welcome change.
UPDATE: August 9, 2010 – SNS-HDR continues to be improved. The latest (v1.2) has improved speed over previous versions. While still not quite as fast as some others, it’s now fast enough that speed isn’t a concern. Also, something I had overlooked previously is that at the bottom of the tonemapping panel, to the right of the colour profile dropdown is a small monitor icon. Clicking on this brings up a dialogue box to select the appropriate display profile. This is only necessary in WinXP due to limitations on colour management support in that OS. Later versions of Windows don’t need to do this.
SNS-HDR is a relative newcomer to the game. Since writing the introductory piece for this review series, checking the search stats for my site, SNS has been the single most searched for term that brought people to my blog. It’s obviously getting a fair bit of attention. Based on what I can see tracking a few IP addresses, most of the attention is coming from Europe but it’s likely that the buzz will move across the pond in due course. The website is in Polish but there’s a Google Translate dropdown in the upper right that will convert to English (or other languages).
I should state upfront that, after writing an email to Sebastian Nibisz with a question, he looked at my blog, saw the review series and sent me a license key to unlock a few features that aren’t availabe in the demo version. Those features are full access to the batch processing mode and the ability to save files at full size and bit depth.
There are 3 versions of the software: Pro; Home; and Lite. Pro is the full featured version. Home has the GUI of Pro but without the batch function. Lite has no GUI or other editing functions and you drag and drop files onto the icon to activate the merging/tonemapping functions which are fully automated.
I became aware of SNS via a board posting on The Luminous Landscape forums. Downloaded it, checked it out and decided to add it to the review series.
SNS works differently from other applications. It’s more automated for one. It’s not true HDR in that it doesn’t create a 32 bit file; but rather is an exposure fusion tool. It loads a set of images, merges then goes through an automated step called tonemapping. It’s a process to blend and distribute brightness for an optimal result. There’s no menu bar at the top of the screen either, which takes a bit of getting used to. The GUI is simple and clean, as the screen shot below shows.
SNS-HDR Pro GUI (click for larger version)
While it doesn’t create 32 bit files in it’s exposure merging process, it can read and tonemap 32 bit HDR and EXR files. Once the program is open, all your options are contained in the panel on the right of the screen. This is fixed in place and the program doesn’t support multiple monitors. The three icons at the left of the Image panel allow you to open a single or multiple files, save an image or open batch processing. Below that you have a histogram. Next you get into your tonemapping adjustment operators. There are 4 presets – Dramatic, Natural, Night and Portrait. We’ll get into these a little later. Below that you have some of the usual suspects for tonemapping operators. In addition to the Brightness slider which is a global adjustment, you can adjust the brightness of any individual colour by clicking on the line in the color swatch and dragging upward or downward. Each click creates a control point which can be dragged. To delete a control point, simply right-click on it. Next are Contrast, Highlights, Highlight Details, Shadows, Midtone Contrast and Microcontrast. Below this is the Color panel with Saturation and Hue controls. Like with Brightness, there are global sliders as well as colour boxes that allow you to more finely adjust individual colours. Click and drag to adjust. Right-click to delete a control point. Next is Warmth, which is a white balance adjustment. At the very bottom is a dropdown menu for Profiles. This allows you to tag your file with one of 4 colour profiles – sRGB, AdobeRGB, ProPhotoRGB or Wide Gamut RGB. SNS is colour managed. Big thumbs up! Personally, I’d like to see this higher up in the hierarchy of options because it may get missed at the bottom. But having it anywhere is much better than not having it at all.
On most screens, this adjustment panel is longer than the screen is high. You can scroll up and down in the panel with your mouse. Be careful though because positioning the mouse on or near any of the adjustment sliders will cause that slider to be affected by the scrolling of the mouse wheel. If you want to scroll the adjustment bar up and down, make sure your mouse is positioned on the scroll bar at the right. In the very bottom, lower right of the screen is a small button with a menu triangle. This allows you to switch the language between English and Polish. Just to the left of that is a small envelope icon. This is an email link to the program’s creator, Sebastian Nibisz, to enable users to easily send an email with questions. Nice touch.
To make and adjustment, you can click and move the slider, position your mouse over the slider and use the scroll wheel or input a number into the box. There is a reset button at the right of each adjustment. Right-clicking on the slider will also reset it to its default position. There is no ‘Undo’ to take you back one step at a time. The sliders are live. Moving the sliders with the mouse is a bit choppy; however, and getting it to move in fine, 1 point increments can be difficult. Improving the slider function would be beneficial.
To load a set of images for merging, click on the Open Image icon and select the multiple images. You can only have one image open at a time. If you try to open a second or new set, you’ll be asked if you want to save the current image. Loading a set of images brings up a dialogue for Size Reduction for onscreen viewing (leaving it at 1X is fine, you can always zoom in and out later if needed) and a checkbox for Auto Alignment. The program does support RAW files using dcraw which is a well known RAW conversion utility used by other software applications. Loading/converting of the RAW files and even alignment if checked doesn’t take an inordinate amount of time. It’s a bit slower than other applications but not by a significant amount. Where SNS-HDR has issues is with the initial tonemapping. This process is quite slow. This is an automated process that can’t be bypassed. The change history on the SNS website indicates that speed has been improved a number of times over various version iterations. I’d suggest that this may be the single most important thing to be addressed in future versions. Even with the batch processing option, the tonemapping stage is slow enough that it renders the software basically not usable in a setting where time and turnaround are important. Which is really a shame because the results are pretty darned good.
The image below is straight out of the merge/tonemap process with no additional adjustments. Excellent starting point.
SNS-HDR Pro Merge Default (click for larger image)
The key things to note are the windows. There is extremely good detail in the windows, particularly on the left. The histogram shows that there are zero blown pixels. Colour is excellent. The blue in the windows on the right is exactly what it should be. This is the same set of images that have been used for all the other apps tested to see how well they handle a very wide brightness range. I decided to throw another set of somewhat difficult images at SNS to see how it handled those. This set doesn’t have a hugely wide d-range but it does have some strong, specular highlights on metal which can be difficult for some software to deal with.
SNS D-Range Test (click for larger image)
According to the histogram there are no blown pixels. Placing the picker over the specular highlights shows they’re well below blown at about a 228 value. Again this is the default image with no additional adjustments. Once again, a very good starting point.
Let’s get into the guts and see how SNS works when we use the available editing tools. As usual, we’ll start with an exisiting HDR image. Opening the image and the program working through its automated tonemapping process is also a slow undertaking. Below is the default upon opening this image in SNS.
Existing HDR SNS Default (click for larger version)
It’s quite washed out, lacking in colour saturation but not lacking in contrast. Overall it’s on the dark side. It’s not quite as good a starting point as what you get from merging a bracketed set of files right in SNS. But we can work with it. Once the file is open in SNS, positioning the mouse cursor inside the image and using the scroll wheel will zoom the image in and out. Right-clicking inside the image will show the ‘untonemapped’ version so you can get a sense of the difference if you want. One thing to note about this existing image is the colour balance. It’s very good and very neutral. Photomatix and other HDR applications tend to exaggerate some colours and can introduce colour casts. In the case of this particular image, the water can be very cool/blue. Not here. No colour cast, no cool hue. Very neutral. This makes the editing easier.
Working with the adjustment tools available in SNS from the Default tonemapping we can generate a pretty good, realistic result as shown below.
SNS Exisiting Realistic (click for larger image)
It’s got good contrast, much better colour. There are a few pixels on the verge of full saturation (blown out) in the waterfall pools, but that’s OK. The reds/oranges are still a little weak but that can be adjusted with further editing in PS. This is a very usable result.
How does SNS do at moving into the more surreal end of the scale? For this approach, I started with the Dramatic preset and worked from there. This result almost has a bit of a post-apocalyptic look. It’s kind of cool and different from the less realistic images other applications generate. Strong colour saturation in some colours, less in others. Strong contrast. And we’ve introduced that cool, blue hue to the water. Overall a bit dark but that can be adjusted if desired.
SNS Existing Surreal (click for larger version)
Anytime you make a change from a preset the preset dropdown menu changes to +Custom. Clicking on the + sign allows you to save those settings as a custom preset.
Let’s work on the image from the bracketed set merged in SNS. The result below is the ‘realistic’ image.
SNS Merged Realistic (click for larger version)
The colours are very good and very accurate. Other HDR apps tend to either make the scene too cool or too warm. SNS keeps it very neutral. As with the earlier images it may be overall a bit dark but that’s easily fixed. Very good detail and colour is retained in the windows even after adjustment. Again, a very usable image. Getting to this point didn’t take a lot of work. It would take a bit less work if the action of the sliders and colour bars were a bit smoother in the fine adjustment.
At the other end of the spectrum, the image below shows the more surreal result out of SNS.
SNS Merged Surreal (click for larger version)
It’s a bit more extreme than the realistic version but definitely not the wild result you can get with other HDR applications. That kind of wild result may not be achievable with SNS. And that’s OK. There’s nothing wrong with an application that keeps things in the more conservative end of the pool since there are plenty of folks who don’t want to go near the wild end.
Loading TIFF files rather than RAW does speed the process up somewhat. There’s no RAW conversion so that step is bypassed. The alignment step is no quicker. The merging step appears to be faster. The tonemapping stage is no quicker. So a bit of time can be saved by loading TIFF files but not a significant amount. Loading TIFFs vs RAW images seems to make no difference to the merged result.
As noted above, there are 4 tonemapping adjustment presets – Natural, Dramatic, Night and Portrait. The set of images below show each of the presets and the default setting for comparison.
SNS Preset Comparison (click for larger image)
The Default setting is going to be a good, general purpose starting point. Natural increases colour saturation and contrast slightly. Dramatic increases overal brightness, contrast and detail and would be a good starting point for moving into the more surreal look. Night increases brightness, contrast and detail a bit more than Dramatic and would also be a good starting point for a more surreal approach. Portait is the softest of the presets. As the name suggests it’s best use is likely for images where people play a strong role in the composition and in images where a softer look is desired. I can’t see using this one much.
Invoking the Batch mode in SNS brings up a simple dialogue box that allows you to point to the source folder, choose how many images in each set to merge (from 1 to 12 or All), whether you want to apply alignment. Below that in the Destination you choose your saving location and file type. The options are JPEG with quality settings, 8 bit TIFF, 16 bit TIFF and 16 bit TIFF+SNS. This last one is interesting. It allows you to save the tonemapping parameters into the image file so that you can re-open the file in SNS without having to make any recalcuations. This would speed the process up. Click on Run to start the batch. The Batch icon will turn green and a Batch progress bar appears at the bottom of the screen. Click the Batch icon again and you have the option to Stop the batch process. I didn’t actually test the batch process but expect the same speed issues would be present. If you want to use it and are processing a large number of bracketed sets, running it overnight is probably advisable.
SNS Batch Mode Dialogue (click for larger version)
There’s no deghosting function in SNS so that can’t be tested.
At this point there’s no Help menu within SNS and no user manual or other documentation on the website. Sebastian told me that is in the works. Hopefully it’ll be ready soon. Sebastian did respond very quickly to the couple of emails I sent him with questions. And very quickly particularly considering the time difference. His answers were complete and helpful. As more people learn about SNS and start using it, I think it’ll be important for that documentation to be available otherwise he may end up being flooded with questions via email Perhaps a user forum or wiki would help in that regard as well.
Overall, SNS-HDR Pro is a very good piece of software. As I’ve noted, the only real downfall I’ve found thus far is the speed. At $85 Euros for the full version (Home is $30 Euros, Lite is free) which is about $105 USD at the time of writing it’s in the ballpark with the other applications available. Given how well it works at exposure fusion, if the speed could be addressed, I’d definitely consider buying it and using it in my work. The quality of the exposure fusion is excellent. It’s better than the Exposure Fusion function in Photomatix and better than Enfuse which are two others I’ve used. From a personal standpoint, I’d love to see this exposure fusion technology implemented into Kolor’s AutoPano software. HDR or blended panoramics has become pretty popular and having this kind of exposure fusion technology built into a pretty decent pano app like AutoPano would be great combination. While not truly HDR since there’s no 32 bit file created, SNS would fit into what JP Caponigro calls XDR (Xtended Dynamic Range).
As usual, if you note any glaring (or non-glaring) errors or I’ve missed something, let me know and I’ll make the necessary correction.
After three weeks without a proper monitor courtesy of Dell and their poor customer/warranty service, I’m finally back up and running, caught up on the work that got behind and ready to dive back into the HDR app. review series. In this instalment Artizen HDR from Supporting Computers. One note before continuing: In the introductory post to this series, I commented on my dislike of the practice some of these app developers have of watermarking finished images. Well, Artizen does that but goes one step further. If you’re working with a trial, you’ll get screen that pops up on a regular basis asking if you’re ready to buy the software now. This is incredibly annoying and were I in the market for an HDR app would completely turn me off buying it.
I first became aware of Artizen a few years ago. At the time, the concept was interesting. An HDR application but also a fairly fully featured photo editing suite. Checked it out back then and while it was interesting, it really wasn’t ready for prime time. The HDR part of the software wasn’t as good as other options available and in terms of an editing package, Photoshop Elements or Paint Shop Pro were superior.
Fast forward a few years and not a lot has changed, unfortunately. Downloaded the latest trial of the software and the GUI looks basically the same as it did back then. The GUI looks deceptively appealing – nice dark grey backgrounds, colour swatch on the right, various editing icons on the left but once you delve into it, it’s not as attractive as it first appears.
Artizen Main Screen (click for larger image)
There aren’t many Preferences available to be set in Artizen. You’ll find the two there are (scratch disk location and memory usage) under the File menu. On the upside, Artizen does have a batch function. You can have it tonemap or not and can save the 32 bit HDR files or not. In this regard, the feature set is much the same as what you’ll find in the batch function of Photomatix. The software doesn’t support multiple monitors. It is also a Windows-only application. The recommended system configuration indicates a dual core processor but I could find nothing to indicate that it’s a multi-threaded app.
We’ll come back to talk more about the GUI as we work through the software’s features. Let’s start to have a look at how well it works. Opening an existing HDR file is reasonably quick. It’d be quicker if you didn’t have to click out of the ‘Buy Now?’ dialogue. Obviously that will go away if you’re working with a fully licensed version rather than a trial. Like some other applications, Artizen works with a series of nested screens. Can you drag the main screen to a second monitor and the nested screen back to your main monitor? Nope. Below is a screen capture of the nested screens with an open HDR file and as you can see, it’s already got a lovely, large watermark across it. On the right hand side of the screen, you’ll panels for a histogram, colour swatches, metadata and layers. Each of these can be opened and closed with the small triangle on the left of the panel bar. If all are open, they won’t all fit on screen. There’s also no way to scroll down with the mouse to view all of the information. You have to open and close panels as you might need them. This can be a bit tedious and inconvenient. At the bottom left you’ll see an explorer window. The reason for this, I guess, is to make the workflow faster by giving you a thumbnail of images in a particular folder. It takes a very long time to load the thumbnails which actually slows down the workflow. This explorer bar also takes up valuable screen real estate. Personally, I’d click the triangle in the centre of the screen and close this bar or deselect the Image Browser Bar in the Panels menu.
Artizen Nested Screens (click for larger version)
You can get into the tonemapping functions either from the HDR’s>Tonemapping menu or by clicking the HDR TM button at the top of the screen. The tonemapping function opens in yet another screen.
Artizen Tonemapping Screen (click for larger version)
The usual suspects in a set of tonemapping operators are here. You have your global and local controls. In a nice touch, the local controls have actually been labeled as such so there’s no confusion for someone newer to HDR. Oddly, some of the sliders offer a live preview but most do not. The individual colour sliders do, as does the Temp slider. The global saturation slider doesn’t. Nor do any of the others. With those you have to release the mouse button to apply the adjustment. There is an Undo button in the top left of the screen and you can set the number of ‘Undos’ in the Preferences up to 1000 (who’d ever need THAT many?).
There are a few presets available – Display, Dramatic and Natural. Dramatic is where you’d start if you’re going for the more surreal or grunge look. Display is a decent general starting option. Natural isn’t as natural as you might think, it actually tends a bit toward the surreal side of the tonemapping spectrum. There are all only starting points; however, and you can adjust from there. These are decent starting points and can provide a nice basis for going down a particular tonemapping path. The default tonemapping preset is Display. On the downside, the settings are not ‘sticky’. That’s to say that if you switch from one preset after making adjustments then go back to it, you have to start over again. There are two ways to select a preset. On the upper left of the tonemapping operators you can choose from one of the three in the dropdown menu. Also, in the main panel of the tonemapping screen in the upper section there is a dropdown menu with the three presets. Duplicating this way seems a bit unnecessary. It would be nice if the presets were available in the upper left of the tonemapping operators and stayed at the default settings but in the upper part of the main screen if you switch back and forth, any adjustments away from the default were retained with the most recent changes. The tonemapping adjustments aren’t ‘sticky’ from image to image either. If you want to apply the same settings to a new image, you’re forced to save the settings as a preset. It would be preferable if, as with Photomatix, the last used settings were retained from image to image. It’s simple enough to override by selecting preset defaults from the upper dropdown menu.
What do the default presets look like? Check them out below. Artizen is not a colour managed application. Tonemapped files saved out of Artizen will not be tagged with a colour space. Artizen also appears to strip any profile from an image opened and saved in the program. I tried opening and saving a TIFF that had been tagged with ProPhotoRGB, making no adjustments, and when I re-opened the saved file in PS, the missing profile dialogue box appeared. This essentially makes Artizen unuseable for any serious work.
Artizen 'Display' Default (click for larger version)
Artizen 'Dramatic' Default (click for larger version)
Artizen 'Natural' Default (click for larger version)
None of these look overly appealing to my eye. That said, any may prove a reasonable starting point for further adjustment. As noted above, opening an existing HDR file doesn’t take much time. Clicking on the HDR TM button brings up the tonemapping screen fairly quickly as well on my system. Once you’re in the tonemapping screen, the actual image doesn’t take up a lot of the screen real estate. The default Preview setting is Balanced. This is supposed to be a balance between fast updates and accurate updates. The downside is the on screen image is small. If you want the on screen image to be larger, you need to up the zoom or select Slow & Detailed from the Preview dropdown. I’d advise against this. The ‘slow’ part is bang on. Balanced or Fast is the way to go. Selecting ‘Fast’ zooms the image to over 200% in my case which causes a loss of detail. You can click on the 100 icon which brings it back the same size image as the Balanced default. If you switch from one tonemapping preset to another, the preview quality defaults back to Balanced as well and you have to change it again manually. These steps to ‘correct’ for the software do take time and shouldn’t be needed. Adjustment updates in this setting are much quicker. Selecting ‘Very Fast & Low Detail’ causes the preview image to shrink to the point of not being overly useful. The supposed 100% preview is oddly quite small and, for me, too small to be overly useful. More on why this is in a bit. One really good thing about the tonemapping screen is the histogram at the bottom. This isn’t just a histogram but also a Levels control. Like the Levels control you’d see in PS you can move the white point, black point and midpoint sliders to adjust the image contrast. There are also white and black eyedroppers that you can use in the image to select your white and black points. This is a REALLY nice tough and something that other HDR apps should consider implementing. I’d even go so far as to say that it’s more useful here than in PS. Here’s where we come back to the size of the preview image. Because even at 100% it’s so small on screen (this will be affected to some extent by the resolution of the monitor) it may be difficult to select just the right white or black point with the eyedroppers. Yes you can increase the zoom level but that results in a loss of detail. Having the preview image at 100% fill more of the screen would be very helpful. Stuck down at the very bottom of the tonemapping screen in Additional Options are two radio buttons for Output – one for 8 bit and one for 16 bit. The default is 8 bit. Be sure to check these and get the output bit depth you want, particularly if you want 16 bit. Really, these should be in a set of global preferences that you can set up once and not have to worry about again rather than having to set it for every image processed. In discussions with Supporting Computers, they acknowledge that the GUI needs some work but it’s needed work for about 3 years now so no telling when they may get to it. Make all of your tonemapping adjustments then click on Apply at the top of the screen… and wait. Applying the tonemapping settings and rendering a finished output file does take a bit of time. More than one might like. There appears to be no difference between the preview and the final image even using the Fast preview setting. This is someting that the folks at HDRSoft would do well to correct in their Details Enhancer tonemapper.
What’s the final result look like? See below. This image was resized in Artizen and saved at 70% JPEG quality. The tonemapping is alright. Not much in the way of quibble there. This was effected working from the Display default and adjusting from there. If you click through to the 100% image, there is some very evident JPEG artifacting that isn’t at all appealing. By comparison, the second image in this set was saved at 100% size and quality in Artizen as a JPEG then resized in PS and saved at quality level of 8 (roughly 75%). There is none of the artifacting present. There are several compression methods available in Artizen. I chose a different method from the default which is supposed to give smoother results and the artifacting was really not much better. I’d surmise then that the resizing algorithms in Artizen aren’t overly good. The software can create a good ‘realistic’ image from an existing HDR file. I’d have to do some more work on this either in LR or PS to get it to where I wanted it as a final version but this is a pretty good starting point for final tweaking.
Artizen Natural Tonemapping (click for larger version)
Artizen Natural Tonemapping Resized in PS (click for larger version)
Moving to the surreal side of things, selecting the Dramatic preset as a starting point starts taking the result in that direction. It also changes some of the tonemapping operators available. The folks at Supporting Computers have tried to customise the tonemapping operators for each preset which is a nice touch. Using ‘Fast’ as the preview option will result in the final output being significantly different from the preview. Using ‘Balanced’ as the preview option corrects this. The result is a bit slower but more accurate preview. In this regard, it seems Artizen is in muc the same place as PM and would do well to try to improve the preview accuracy with the preview speed.
The result of pushing the tonemapping more into the surreal end of the pool is below. Clearly, with this image, Artizen can do both pretty well. Not my style and not a result I’d work toward with tonemapping but a lot of people like it so Artizen can do that for them too.
Artizen Surreal Resized in PS (click for larger version)
We’ll move on now to see how Artizen does merging and tonemapping a set of image files from scratch. The file loading dialogue provides a number of options. There is a manual alignment feature which can be bypassed if desired. The automatic alignment offers three possibilities. The one labeled ‘Use Slow Method’ makes one wonder whether the other options are faster but not as good. The images I’ve used were shot on a tripod with a cable release so there should be no alignment issues and as such I’ve selected ‘Use Region for Auto Alignment’. This, to me, would be similar to the ‘matching features’ option in Photomatix. In the Merging Options the one to choose will be, pretty obviously, Create HDR File. The second option ‘Luminosity Precision for 3D IBL’ is for 3D graphics. When choosing ‘Use Region for Auto Alignment’, you have the option to select an area of the image in the small preview window in the lower right which the software will use for the alignment process. You can also simply click Apply and let the software do what it will with the alignment. Reduce Micro Noise and Attempt to Reduce Ghosting are the two final selections in the Merge Options. We’ll take a look at how the deghosting works later but I’ve left both of these unchecked for this set of images.
The file merging and alignment process is not fast. I didn’t try the Use Slow Method and given how long the ‘faster’ method took, I wouldn’t want to. It’s quite slow to merge and align. Easily the slowest of all the applications reviewed thus far. Selecting a smaller region within the full image to use for alignment doesn’t make the process go any faster. While DPHDR had problems aligning the same source images, Artizen didn’t. And it shouldn’t given the way they were shot. As odd as it may seem, selecting ‘Create HDR File’ in the Merge Options is NOT what you want to do. Even with this box unchecked, the program will still merge the files into a 32 bit HDR file. With it checked; however, after the alignment stage but before the merging stage, you’ll be presented with a dialogue to name and save the 32 bit file. You CANNOT cancel out of this. If you click Cancel, the dialogue will simply re-open. You’re forced to save the file at this stage whether you want to or not. Leaving this box unchecked will allow you to create the 32 bit file and save it later if you want to. Seems counterintuitive not to check a box to create a 32 bit file when that’s actually what you want to do, but leaving it unchecked is perhaps the better way to go.
I chose the images for this portion of the test on purpose. I selected this set of images because there was a very broad dynamic range and I wanted to see how well each application could crunch the brightness range to give a useful result. As can be seen below, Artizen didn’t do so well in either a realistic interpretation or a more surreal interpretation.
In the realistic version, I tried all three presets as a starting point. In the end, I settled on Natural and worked from there. This is the best I could get and it’s not that good. The windows are still very blown out and the colour is far off. For the surrealistic image I started with the Dramatic preset. The colour of the floor and brick of the walls is a bit better but the windows are still blown out. Neither of these is a result that could be used for anything.
Artizen Merge - Realistic (click for larger image)
Artizen Merge - Surreal (click for larger image)
There should be no reason to believe that the result would be any different if the source images had been merged in another app. then tonemapped in Artizen. Artizen doesn’t appear to be able to handle a very wide dynamic range as well as other applications. To test this theory, I created an HDR file in Photomatix of the same 9 source images to tonemap it in Artizen. The results are below, a realistic version first and a more surreal version second. For the realistic version I used the Display preset as a starting point and for the surreal version the Dramatic preset was the jumping off point.
PM Merged/Artizen Tonemapped - Realistic (click for larger image)
PM Merged/Artizen Tonemapped - Surrealistic (click for larger image)
Surprised? I know I was. My initial thought was that it was the tonemapping operators of Artizen that had difficulty with the wide dynamic range. Given these results, both of which could be used with a little further tweaking, it appears that it’s actually the merging of the source images in Artizen that appears to have some problems. Colour still isn’t quite as good as with the other applications tested thus far but the detail in the windows is very good in both cases. The colour could be addressed in post-tonemap editing.
To try to see if this is a general issue with Artizen or a particular issue with this set of images, I decided to try another set. These also have a fairly wide dynamic range. The first is the result from merging and tonemapping in Artizen. The second was merged in Photomatix and tonemapped in Artizen (ignore the reflection of the idiot in the front fender).
Artizen Merged & Tonemapped (click for larger image)
Photomatix Merged/Artizen Tonemapped (click for larger image)
There is definitely more detail retained in the highlight areas of the version that was merged in Photomatix. The colour is also better. The merging of source images in Artizen does appear to be less effective than other applications.
Artizen does have a deghosting option that can be turned on during the HDR merge. There is no user input, it’s fully automated. How well does it work? Not too badly at all, in fact. The original and deghosted images are below for comparison.
Original Ghosting Test Image (click for larger image)
Artizen Deghosting (click for larger image)
Once again, you can see comparing the original image to the merged image from Artizen that colours are off. Pretty far off in this case. But the deghosting process has worked pretty well.
In terms of support, I sent a couple questions to the general Artizen support group about the software; and I have to admit to sandbagging a little when asking the questions, to see how quickly they would respond and how good the responses were. They responded very quickly in both cases. The quality of the response was less positive. Not all of my questions were answered and the ones that were answered weren’t necessarily answered as well as I might have liked. They also seemed more eager to offer me a discount code that readers of the blog could use to buy the software than in answering my questions accurately. There are a number of tutorials on their website which is good but the screen shots of some of the tutorials appear to be out of sync with the latest version of the software.
At $46, Artizen is one of the less costly applications out there. Even at that price, despite some of its positives, there are too many negatives to be able to recommend it for use. The speed is a big issue. The apparent problems with merging source images is another. As noted in the opening, it doesn’t really appear that a lot has changed with the program in the few years since I first had a look at it. Good idea at the time but not executed as well as it could be and there are now other, better options that do as much and more. Artizen is a Windows-only application and is not built to take advantage of a 64 bit system. Next up, Ariea HDRMax.
As with the previous pieces in the series, if you see any glaring errors, please let me know and I’ll re-evaluate and correct as necessary. Happy to read your feedback.
Dynamic Photo HDR is from a company called Mediachance. It has a number of photo/video/graphics related applications available but DPHDR is probably the most well known. DPHDR was the first HDR application I purchased. When I bought it, I was trying out a few different alternatives and found that DPHDR had a really interesting manual alignment function. In my case, I used it for manual ‘mis’alignment and to blend multiple image layers into a single impressionistic photo result. The first eight images in my Impressionism II Gallery were made using this method.
For this review, I’m using a trial version of their latest iteration of the software (v4.7). Since I’ve primarily used Photomatix up to now for HDR work, my last paid version of DPHDR is v3.x. Dynamic Photo HDR is available for both Windows and Mac but the editing add-on Photo-Bee is Windows only (more below on this).
I’ll say upfront that speed has never been a strong suit of DPHDR. Loading an existing .hdr file takes much longer than with either of the previous two applications in this review series. Loading a set of RAW files and providing a preview is a bit quicker. But the speed to merge the files from the preview is slow. More on speed later.
DPHDR does not employ colour management at any stage in the process. You can’t have it tag your input RAW files with a colour space during conversion and you can’t tag the saved output with a colour space. If you load tagged TIFFs as your input images, the saved output will not have a colour profile embedded. DPHDR doesn’t even honour embedded profiles. The net result is that what you see when you’re tonemapping the image may be quite different from what you see when you open it for further editing and have to assign a profile. Not allowing the ability to tag input files is one thing but not providing the option to tag output and stripping profiles from tagged input files is something entirely different and not different in a good way. This is a significant negative, in my opinion, in comparison to the previous two applications.
The DPHDR GUI is a bit hackneyed. There are panels within the main screen and while these panels can be moved to a second monitor, the setting is not ‘sticky’. That is, when you close and re-open the program, the panels are back on the main monitor and have to be moved again. So there is some multi-monitor support but it’s not complete. Intuitvely you might think the small pushpin icon at the top of each panel would allow you to ‘pin’ the panel to a particular monitor. Not so. What this does is determine whether the panel is expanded all the time or contracted and expands when you move your mouse over it. Each step you go through in the process in DPHDR brings up a new sub-screen. No work is actually done in the main screen and all these sub-screens are much smaller which means getting a good look at what you’re doing is more difficult. The three images below show some of the screens at different stages.
Main DPHDR Screen. (click for larger version)
DPHDR Image Alignment Screen. (click for larger version)
DPHDR Tonemapping Screen. (click for larger version)
There are no user-adjustable preferences for image processing. You take what Mediachance has decided to give you.
So now let’s take a look at the program in action. Opening our existing HDR file is, as noted above, a fairly slow process. Once it’s open on screen, you have a 100% view in the middle of the screen and a small preview in left panel. There’s no way to adjust the zoom level of the preview in the main screen to fit the whole thing in view without actually reszing the file. If you go to Image>Resize HDR, the options there will actually rez down the image file. If you do this, there’s no ‘Undo’. You’ve rezzed down the file and you’re cooked. You can rez it back up but we know what problems that causes. The only way to get back to your original is to go to File>Reload Current File.
Once we go into the tonemapping screen, there are several options. Tonemapping operators are grouped into Local and Global. Local is going to get you more easily to the surreal/grunge look whereas Global is intended to provide a more realistic output. There are labels for the tonemapping operators such as Eye Catching, Halo Matix, Photographic, Human Eye, etc. The idea is to give you a sense of what the particular tonemapper is going to generate in terms of a result. In general, while you can get a ‘realistic’ result using the Local tonemappers, you’re going to want to try the Global options first. These should give a more realistic output. If you’re not getting a result you’re pleased with, try the Local operators. Getting a photorealistic result with DPHDR isn’t a simple process.
New in v4 of the program is that the tonemapping adjustment sliders now offer a live view of the adjustment. This is a positive. Less hit and miss. There’s still a small delay; however, after the slider is released for the adjustment to be applied. On the right side of the tonemapping screen are some other controls. There’s a Gamma slider and a Curve adjustment. Both can be useful in getting a good result. Neither of these are live; however. You make the adjustment and only after releasing it do you get the result on screen. Above these is a Filter Color button. Clicking this opens (yet) another screen where you can apply a variety of effects to the image from B&W to Orton to Vignette. Generally I’d ignore this and if I wanted to do any of these types of things, I’d do them later in a more fulsome editing application. Below the Curve adjustment are Color Equalizer and Hue Shift adjustments. Color Equalizer is basically a saturation adjustment. You click on the line and drag down to reduce saturation of a particular colour and up to increase it. Placing a single control point will cause a curved saturation line to be created. If you want to isolate a particular colour more, you need to place additional control points on the line and drag those back in the other direction. You can toggle the result off and on with the checkbox. Clicking the x1 icon will toggle between x1 and x2 and x2 is a more intense application of the adjustment. The Hue Shift adjustment, as you’d expect, adjusts the hue of a particular colour. It works the same way as the Color Equalizer. Click and drag on the line to change the hue of a colour or colour group. Place more control points and drag to affect a particular colour more or less. The .. icon allows you to invoke a number of presets but there are no indications of what the presets are till you keep clicking the button. This really seems a useless option to me. Along the bottom of the tonemap preview are clickable icons for further adjustments. Kelvin is a colour temperature (White Balance) adjustment. Opening it will show you a variety of options to select from. To cancel a change, click on Kelvin and select Default. The eyedropper allows you to click inside the image to adjust the white balance. Match Color opens a screen that lets you match the colour balance in your current image with another image. There are a number of presets to choose from (useless) but you can also load another image of your own to match to. This could be useful if you have a number of images from the same location and easily want to match the colour balance of all of them. It may be a decent starting point from which you can tweak further. In the lower right you have several checkboxes, the only two of which that are useful are the Add Clarity and Dehaze options. Both add a touch of contrast/sharpness (not a lot) and can give the image a bit more punch and remove some of the flatness that can be imparted by crunching a ton of brightness into a small space. NR is a noise reduction feature. Don’t use it. It works by adding blur and you’ll end up with an overly soft image. In addition, when you invoke it, the ability to move around the image is done via X and Y sliders which don’t give you a great deal of visual control because of the zoom level. There are better noise reduction options elsewhere.
As you can see, there are a lot of options and possibilities built into DPHDR. How do all those options work in practice? The image below is the ‘realistic’ version of the existing HDR file.
DPHDR Tonemapped Realistic. (click for larger version)
It’s not bad. The contrast is pretty flat which can be adjusted later. The blues in the water are a little strong which can also be adjusted. I didn’t use the Color Equalizer tool during tonemapping to try to correct the blue in the water but I could have. Because the working image is so small, it’s a bit difficult to see what you’re getting in smaller areas so I left any of that kind of editing for later. Is this result as good as what was obtained in either Photomatix or CS5 HDR Pro? To my eye not quite but after all of the applications have been reviewed, I’ll provide a summary with all of the images side by side. This is certainly a result that could be worked with to optimise further. Getting to this result took more time than in either of the other applications. I had to work with different tonemappers to find a result that gave me something I was reasonably happy with. Getting a photorealistic result in DPHDR is a bit more work than in the other two apps. reviewed so far.
What about a more extreme result? Yep, DPHDR can definitely do that and this is probably the strength of this piece of software. Below is a fairly grunge-look result on the existing HDR file. This took all of about 10 seconds to achieve. But it took over a minute to process and save out the 8 bit JPEG file. So again, we see that speed isn’t a strength of this application.
DPHDR Tonemapped Grunge. (click for larger version)
When it comes to saving the tonemapped file, there are two options. Clicking on the small triangle beside Process & Save will allow you to select a second option which is Process & Edit. Selecting Process & Edit will open the tonemapped image in another application called Photo-Bee. This is a new feature that’s been added in v4 and my guess is it’s an attempt to create an ‘all-in-one’ application where you can create and tonemap your HDR file then continue editing it all in the same family of software applications. Don’t bother. While Photo-Bee has some of the usual editing tools, implementation of those tools isn’t good. Hue/Saturation, for example, is a global function. You can’t select individual colours to adjust. The Curves function is a global up or down (i.e., no S-curve). When saving a file edited in Photo-Bee, there are still no colour management options. Photo-Bee is basically a waste of time. Stick with Process & Save then do any additional editing in a proper editing application.
DPHDR can handle existing HDR files reasonably well. It’s slow and getting a realistic result is more difficult and takes more time/trial and error. Generating a more extreme result is very easy and, as noted above, this is probably the strength of the software.
Let’s move on to look at how it works with a merge from scratch. There are several options available when loading the files to be merged. If you load RAW files, in the bottom left of the preview screen you can select from Auto Developer, Zero Processing or Camera Curves. This will determine how the RAW files are interpreted before merging together. You can select each of the different options and see how it impacts the preview. If you want to change the EV setting you can do this by selecting the individual file and adjusting the EV. For auto-bracketed sequences this shouldn’t be necessary. Sometimes for manually bracketed sequences it may be. The HDRI Simulator on the right gives you a preview of how the tonemapped image will look based on the default settings of either the Eye Catching or Auto Adaptive tonemappers. I wouldn’t pay a lot of attention to this. In the very lower left of this screen is a checkbox for Align Files in Next Step. You do want to have this checked. The auto-alignment functionality of DPHDR isn’t overly good. Even images taken on a tripod with a cable release will often not be aligned properly in the automatic setting. This is a pretty major downfall of the program and development time would be better spent in this area than in something less worthwhile like Photo-Bee. Click OK and the merge begins. Be prepared to wait. And wait. Loading TIFFs as the input files makes the preview quicker because DP isn’t processing the RAW files but none of the rest of the workflow is any faster. When the alignment screen comes up you can choose to align for Movement, Rotation or both. Movement should generally be sufficient. You can move the image around to get an area where determining alignment is easier (i.e., high contrast areas). On the right side of the screen you see a set of image pairs. The application chooses a base image and compares alignment of that base image to all others in sets of two. There is a very good chance that you will have to do some manual alignment. Click on an image pair to select it then click Align View which is supposed to automatically align the pair of images. It works most of the time but if it doesn’t, you’ll have to align manually. You can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move the second image of the pair around. You can also use the sliders on screen. If there’s rotational movement, you’ll have to use the sliders. If you end up having to do manual alignment, you can click on the Diff button. This will change the contrast of the two images and show a number in the upper left corner of the screen. The smaller this number is, the better the alignment. It won’t be zero. Adjust the image pair till the number hits the smallest value in all directions. It can be tedious. Believe it or not, sometimes the number will keep getting smaller and visually you can see the alignment getting worse. Suffice it to say that the alignment functionality of DPHDR really is a major weakness. Clicking OK will apply the movement corrections to each image pair then finalise processing the merged result for tonemapping. Be prepared to wait. And wait. If the image opens and it still doesn’t appear to be aligned properly, you can go back to the alignment step by clicking the back arrow icon in the upper left of the screen or by choosing Image>Back to Align from the top menus. The ‘unalignment’ will take time. In the alignment screen, there is a button for Advanced Options. Clicking this will open another screen where you can refine how the images will blend together. The left is an exposure weighting function which determines how the various exposures are merged together. Given the alignment issues that can crop up, the default of Smoother probably makes sense. Choosing Custom and adjusting the shape of the distribution curve probably isn’t a good idea since the preview you get is small and you can’t tell how the change will impact the entire image. On the right are some selections for tonal response. If you’re loading RAW files, selecting the second option, Ideal Camera, makes some sense since RAW files are supposed to have linear response curves. Normal Camera is the default and probably works for using JPEGs as input files. It will assume a response curve based on whatever has been programmed into the software. There’s a Custom option here as well. If you loaded TIFFs as your input images, if those TIFFs were processed in ACR or Lightroom and you knew the tone curve that ACR applies you could input that tone curve in the Custom option. While these may be interesting options to include, they’re likely far more than the average user is going to want or need. An argument could be made that the user shouldn’t be adjusting tone curves of the input images either because the merging and tonemapping functions are supposed to make allowance for the less than perfect tone response of cameras and that making adjustments in a 32 bit environment is preferable to doing it on lower bit depth input images.
The image below is the realistic version with the source files merged in DPHDR. In the essense of full disclosure, I had to work through this three separate times to come up with something reasonable and this is the third of the three.
DPHDR Merged Realistic. (click for larger version)
Even though I’ve given DP more attempts than the previous two applications, the result isn’t as good. It cruched the brightness range well, no question. The overall contrast is very flat and the colours are extremely muted. The blue in the large window on the right that I was able to retain in both PM and HDR Pro is gone here. In order to keep that blue in the windows, too many other sacrifices would have been necessary. This image would require a fair bit of additional work to be useable. And due to misalignment problems it may not be useable at all.
The less than realistic result is a different story and again we see that this may be where the strengths of this program are. On a full size version, zooming in reveals some alignment issues.
DPHDR Merged Surreal. (click for larger version)
There is a deghosting option in DP. Unlike PM and HDR Pro, it’s not automatic. The user needs to manually mask out areas where ghosting appears. You do this on one image pair and can apply the mask to all other image pairs but depending on the type of movement, this may work or it may not. Suffice it to say this can be an incredibly tedious task. Building in an automated anti-ghosting algorithm wouldn’t be easy by any stretch. But the manual option in DP doesn’t work overly well and because it’s there people are going to be tempted to use it and be very frustrated with the tedium and the less than satisfactory result. The image below shows the artifacting that remains from attempting to manually mask out some of the ghosting in the windblown branches. Having no deghosting option would be better than having one that doesn’t work very well, as the one here doesn’t.
DPHDR Deghosting. (click for larger version)
The last item in the review is support/documentation. The user manual that comes with the program and that can be called up via Help>Tutorial is quite extensive and walks the user through the process of creating and tonemapping HDR files with Dynamic Photo HDR and does a good job of explaining all the various features and options. The website has some video tutorials and other good information on using the program. If you want tech support via email or telephone, forget it. It doesn’t exist. Any questions you can’t find answers to on the website or from other users are going to go unanswered. There is a user forum and the link to it is on the Mediachance website. The forum isn’t hugely active but you may be able to get some answers there.
Dynamic Photo HDR is a complex piece of software. If offers the user a plethora of options and functions to choose from. Probably more than most users need. The look and feel of the software is of a piece of software that was written by a programmer with programmers in mind as the end user. Development time has been spent on things like Photo-Bee and allowing the user to adjust the exposure weighting and tone response curves that could likely have been better spent improving things like image file alignment and an automated deghosting algorithm. At $55 it isn’t overly expensive ($25 to upgrade from a previous version) but I’m not sure the performance is up to the price even at that level. It’s very slow relative to others tested so far. Getting a photorealstic result is more difficult with it than the others tested so far. And there are basic functionality problems (e.g., alignment). Several years ago when HDR software was first becoming widely available to the masses and the applications were in the infancy stage, DPHDR was a very good choice. Its primary competition from the early days, Photomatix, has been improved more than DP. Adobe has upped its game in HDR with CS5 HDR Pro. And there are other, newer, competitors on the market that, arguably, work better in many respects than DP. Unlike Photomatix, there is no Lightroom plugin to export files from LR to DP. The website indicates that speed has been improved in v4 and that the GUI has been enhanced. I’m not really seeing a pick up in speed and the GUI doesn’t look much different from previous versions. There’s a tonemapping paintbrush that’s been included that lets the user paint away tonemapping in specific areas to varying degrees. This is really a gimick and not of much practical use. There’s also a feature to help remove halos that can result from overly aggressive tonemapping. It’s primarily designed for skies. Since neither of the test images had skies I couldn’t give it much of a go. There’s also a setting for skin but HDR images of people generally aren’t all that appealing anyway (unless you’re Luke Kaven) so I’m not sure why this was included.
Thanks for reading. As with the others, if you see any glaring (or non-glaring) errors, let me know.
Instalment two in this series is to look at Photomatix Pro from HDRSoft. Photomatix is probably the most used HDR application out there. It’s been continually improved over time and integration with other applications has been added (more later).
Photomatix has always been reasonably fast in terms of loading and processing a bracketed sequence, applying tonemapping adjustments and rendering out the tonemapped LDR file. Until HDR Pro in CS5, it was certainly the fastest I’ve used but now it seems that CS5 has moved to the top step in terms of speed.
When creating a merged HDR file, Photomatix works best with TIFF files. You can load RAW files into it and it will interpret the RAW files but it works faster if you load it with TIFFs even though the TIFF files are much larger. The Lightroom plugin for Photomatix uses LR to convert the RAW files to TIFF before loading to PM. Using this route, your speed will be limited by how fast Lightroom converts the files. For users of LR this is a convenient workflow though.
PM is a colour managed application. You can tag your HDR files with a colour space so that everything stays in a colour managed loop from start to finish. If you load RAW files into PM directly, you can choose what colour space to assign to the primary input files. Your choices are sRGB, AdobeRGB and ProPhotoRGB. If you’re using the LR plugin to load files into PM, it’s a bit wonky to get the files tagged with a profile. There are two routes in LR to export the files. You can go to File>Plugin Extras>Export to Photomatix Pro but using this, what might seem the logical route, doesn’t give you the option to tag the input files. If you then open the tonemapped file for further editing you’ll be presented with the Missing Profile warning. In order to get the files properly tagged, you need to go to File>Export, choose Photomatix Pro on the left and you’ll be presented with the option to select file type (using the File>Export>Plugin Extras>Export to Photomatix Pro, the file type is automatically TIFF and 16 bit, no choices), bit depth and colour space. It would be nice if the folks at HDRSoft would incorporate these choices into their own export dialogue.
The Photomatix GUI is pretty utilitarian. But it works. It does not fully support multiple monitors which means that you can’t get a nice big, full screen version of the image to tonemap because some of the screen real estate is taken up with the tonemapping panel. Interestingly, when you’re in tonemapping mode, you can move the histogram to a second screen. Multiple monitor support would be a postive since a growing number of photographers do use multiple monitors. Below are two screen captures showing the interface when the program is launced and when a file is open for tonemapping.
PM GUI. (click for larger version)
PM Tonemapping GUI. (click for larger version)
In the program preferences (View>Preferences) you can set up some default working conditions. In the General tab, you can set up, among other things, how many cores the program uses to process. In my situation, with a dual core processor it defaults to 2. Multi-core support only comes into play with tonemapping. It doesn’t impact the merging of the source files (including alignment) or the Exposure Fusion option (more on that later). I believe HDRSoft have plans to enhance multi-core support for the merging/alignment functions in the future. In the RAW tab you can set up defaults for white balance and colour space when importing RAW files into PM directly.
Let’s get into how the program works with an existing 32 bit file. In the previous instalment on CS5 HDR Pro, I used an HDR file that had been merged in PM. It would kind of defeat the purpose to use that same file for testing PM so I’m going to use a file that was merged in HDR Pro. It’s the same image and the same input files were used for consistency.
There are two options for tonemapping in PM. The main one, with the most controls and options is the Details Enhancer. This is the one most will be familiar with (and the one I’ve used here) and it has all of the options you’d expect to see. You can adjust the light smoothing, luminance, strength of the operators, saturation, white point, black point, microcontrast and more. This is the PM equivalent of the Local Adaptation tonemapper in CS5 HDR Pro. Light smoothing can be approached in two ways. By choosing Light Mode (clicking the checkbox) you can then select from 5 preset smoothing options. Unchecking Light Mode takes you to a smoothing slider which gives you more control. Using the presets in Light Mode is generally the route to go if you want to work to a less than completely photorealistic result or a completely unrealistic result. The finer control offered by the smoothing slider generally allows for a more realistic result; although a realistic rsult can be achieved in Light Mode as well.
Preview of any of the adjustments in tonemapping is not instantaneous. You have to make the adjustment then there’s a slight delay (not long) before seeing the image update with the effect of the change. This can make tonemapping a bit of a hit and miss affair but the delay isn’t very long so overall the tonemapping stage can still be accomplished reasonably quickly. Once you’ve applied your tonemapping adjustments and click Process at the bottom of the panel, there is a delay while the tonemapping adjustments are fully applied to the image. Probably the single biggest issue with PM is that there can be a significant difference between the preview and the processed output. You can think you have a nice looking result in preview only to find it doesn’t look like what you thought once the file is processed. This only happens using the Details Enhancer option and the difference between preview and final image tends to be greater when you’re on the edge of (or beyond) the completely photorealistic result. The folks at HDRSoft are aware of the problem but to date haven’t implemented a solution. The net result is that you can, sometimes, have to go back and re-tonemap the image again which is time spent on duplication of work. It would be very beneficial if HDRSoft could find a solution to this so that the preview and processed image were the same. They indicate that it’s an issue with the preview image being a smaller version and that the preview, as a result, isn’t entirely accurate.
The image below is the ‘realistic’ result from PM using the Details Enhancer tonemapper. This is the ‘exisiting’ HDR file which, as noted above, was merged in CS5 HDR Pro and saved as a .hdr file then opened and tonemapped in PM.
Photomatix Tonemapped Realistic. (click for larger version)
Contrast is quite flat (not a bad thing). From here I’d do some further editing to adjust colour levels, contrast and sharpen to create a final output. Getting this result wasn’t difficult. Knowing that the final image can be a bit more extreme than the preview, I purposely kept the tonemapping quite tame so that the final processed image would still be useable without having to go back and do the work again.
Achieving a more ‘surreal’ result with PM is also quite easy. You can apply the tonemapping operators multiple times to enhance the effects as you want. The image below is the less than realistic result. It’s pretty ugly (to me). It’s got virtually no shadow contrast, blown highlights and the colour is whacked but a lot of people like this effect and it can be done with PM, no question. This was tonemapped a single time.
Photomatix Tonemapped Surreal. (click for larger version)
Now let’s turn to the file that’s both merged and tonemapped in PM. Same input files as were used in the CS5 HDR Pro review previously. The image below is the realistic version. As in HDR Pro, the window on the left is pretty muc devoid of detail (no surprise). Comparing the two images, there is slightly more colour from the dirt on the window visible in the PM version than the PS version. The difference between the two isn’t significant enough to say PM is superior to HDR Pro or that PM can crunch more dynamic range than HDR Pro.
Photomatix Merge/Tonemap Realistic. (click for larger version)
The colour balance between this and the HDR Pro version isn’t markedly different. The HDR Pro version has slightly more saturated colour but that can be addressed in final editing with the PM version. The HDR Pro version shows more fine detail (i.e., sharper) but, again, that can be addressed with sharpening of the PM image in final editing. The biggest difference between the two is in the granite of the floor. The detail and colour in the HDR Pro version is a bit better and more accurate. It would take some extra work in final editing with some masked adjustment layers to get the PM version to the same point but I’m confident it could be done.
Getting to the ‘surreal’ result both merging and tonemapping in PM isn’t difficult. The image below is the less than realistic result.
Photomatix Tonemapped Surreal. (click for larger version)
This one isn’t that extreme. It’s got more of an illustration/graphic look and in some situations could be useable depending on the desired look. Below is a more extreme version that was tonemapped twice.
Photomatix Tonemapped Twice. (click for larger version)
As you can see, going from mild to wild is certainly possible with Photomatix.
We’ll take a quick look at the Tone Compressor tonemap option of Photomatix as well. There aren’t as many options here. The goal of this tonemapper, really, is just to crunch as much dynamic range as possible into a visible space. It works reasonably well. It will generate more realistic results and it seems to tend to sacrifice highlights in some cases. There aren’t the same preview/processed differences with the Tone Compressor as there are with the Details Enhancer. If you’re looking for a realistic result and don’t have extreme highlights to deail with (or are willing to fix those later) then the Tone Compressor may work for you. The image below was processed using the Tone Compressor option.
Photomatix Tone Compressor. (click for larger version)
Once again, the contrast is a bit flat and colours are muted. Both of these can be addressed in final editing. The waterfall pool didn’t blow out and the result is photorealistic. The Tone Compressor option works quickly and the time to process the preview image is quite short.
Photomatix also has an image blending option. Not true HDR since it doesn’t create a 32 bit file, it’s an automated exposure blending tool. Exposure Fusion, as it’s called, can be launched via the Lightroom plugin just as the merge to HDR option. There are several possibilities with Exposure Fusion in terms of how it blends the images from fully automated to blending based on user input. It can use just two files or multiple files. You can load multiple files in and then select which two to use if you wish. It’s not overly fast, either to preview adjustments in the more interactive modes nor to process the blended image. It doesn’t crunch as much brightness range as the actual HDR process, nor as much as other automated blending applications like, for example, Enfuse. Generally the Exposure Fusion functionality is going to be of more limited use but the end result is definitely a realistic (as opposed to surrealistic) look.
Photomatix has a very good batch function. If you’ve got a large number of images to merge into several HDR files, using the batch function can make pretty quick work of the process. You point the program to the folder that holds the input images, tell it how many to use in each merge and it goes to work. You can have it batch tonemap as well. To do this you set up a tonemapping preset and tell the batch routine what preset to use. Alternatively, when you select the tonemapping option in batch processing, you’re presented with the tonemap panel and can set the various parameters to be used. There’s no preview though so you have no idea what the final result will look like. The better choice, if you want tonemapping applied automatically, is to merge one set of files, tonemap those, save the settings as a preset and invoke that preset. You can set the batch function to work overnight and come back to the computer in the morning with a folder of fully mergd (and tonemapped if desired) files ready to work on. It’s a nice feature and it works well.
Photomatix does have an anti-ghosting function which can be used to reduce ghosting due to movement in source images. There are two options – Background Movements and Moving Objects/People. The Moving Objects/People option is the more robust and can be set to two levels of detection – Normal and High. For the deghosting of the tree branches in the test image, I selected Moving Objects/People and set the detection level to High because I wanted to compare the most robust deghosting routine in PM to CS5 HDR Pro. It works reptty well. Not as well as HDR Pro, but still pretty well. There is a bit more remaining, visible movement and a few more ghosting artifacts than in HDR Pro but overall it’s still good. The detail crop below shows the result.
Photomatix Deghost. (click for larger version)
One problem that does crop up with Photomatix is memory use. Even now, with a 64 bit OS installed and the 64 bit version of PM installed, I have had the program crash due to insufficient memory. It’s only happened once, but it has happened. It happened more often in a 32 bit operating environment. HDRSoft are aware that users do have issues with memory; particularly in a 32 bit environment where more limited access to RAM exists. The standard workaround is to use the batch function, which does work. In the 32 bit version, the programmers at HDRSoft did make a change to the program to enable it to take advantage of the /3 gig switch which can be turned on in the boot.ini menu (more on this in a bit). This did most definitely help resolve some of the insufficient memory issues but didn’t eliminate them entirely.
Overall, Photomatix is a terrific program. Up to now it’s been my main HDR processing application. Whether HDR Pro in CS5 takes over that slot is still to be determined. It can produce excellent results, up to HDR Pro it was the fastest HDR application I’d used and use support is terrific.
The folks at HDRSoft truly do understand the concept of user support. They respond very quickly to email inquiries (often the same day or at most the next day). There is a very good FAQ section on their website as well as an extensive set of HDR-related links. They may even change the program code if it will help a user. This is where I’ll come back to the /3 gig switch item noted above. I had been having problems with PM and insufficient memory. In trading emails with their support group I mentioned I had this option turned on in the boot.ini menu. At the time, PM was not set up to use this option. Based on their discussion with me, they did some research into it, determined how to implement it in Photomatix and included it in their next release version of the program. That’s damn good support! There’s no manual alignment option but the alignment function in PM is good enough that it shouldn’t be needed.
PM Pro is available for both Windows and Mac systems, in both 32 and 64 bit versions. It includes the Lightroom plugin. Cost is $99 and upgrades are free for ‘at least’ a year according to their website. I’ve been using the program for a couple of years now at least and have yet to have to pay for an upgrade which includes a migration from v2.x to v3.x. A version which includes a Photoshop (or Aperture) tonemapping plugin is available for $119. In my opinion, it’s well worth the price.
As with the previous instalment on HDR Pro, if you see any glaring (or non-glaring) errors, let me know. Happy to read your comments.
Over the next few posts on the blog, I’m going to do reviews of some of the many HDR software applications out there on the market. These aren’t going to be highly technical or get into the nitty gritty of what each individual slider or control does. What I’m looking at is results. Results on real world images. How easy and intuitive is the software to use? How easily can you generate a ‘realistic’ result? How well can it generate the ‘grunge’ HDR look? How fast is it (i.e., can it be used in a workflow when turnaround time is important)? What’s the look and feel of the software? These are the kinds of things I’m going to be looking at. I’ll also look at what kind of documentation/support is available for each application. In all cases, once the HDR file has been tonemapped into a 16 bit space, no further editing will be done. The goal is to show only what the HDR applications in isolation can do.
‘Who the hell are you?’ you may be asking as you read this. Well, I’m no Jack Howard, author of “Practical HDRI” or Trey Ratcliff of Stuck in Customs fame. Not on their worst days and on my best days. I’m just you’re averge schmuck photographer who (a) likes HDR and what it can do, (b) has tried a fair number of different HDR apps and (c) uses HDR in some of my photography. I’ve written a few previous commentaries on HDR here in the blog as well. I’m not sponsored by any company and I don’t get freebies so the thoughts and opinions expressed during these tests will be genuine and without the filter of having to try to keep someone happy in order to keep the swag train running.
The process is going to be fairly simple. Each app. will be put through two tests. The first test will be with an existing, already merged Radiance (.hdr) file from my archives that would have been merged in Photomatix. I’ll open that file in each of the applications and tonemap it. I’ll try to get a realistic result and a more surreal result. The second test will be to load a set of bracketed exposures into each app. to see how it handles that part of the process – how long it takes to load the files, how well it aligns the various image layers and then how the tonemapping works out; and there could be some different results from a merge done in the software vs. using an existing .hdr file merged in another app.
Each app. will be scored on several criteria on a scale of 0-10. I’ll weight each criterion (based on my own perception of importance) and then come up with a weighted average score for each application.
The apps that will be included in the review are the following:
SNS-HDR Pro (this is a new one I’ve recently become aware of, use the Google language dropdown in the upper right corner of the homepage to change the language, unless you’re fluent in Polish).
Once all the tests are done, I’ll do one final comparison and include price to come up with a pseudo-value for money score. PS CS5 will be left out of this last comparison. It’s so much more expensive than any of the others it wouldn’t be fair to include it on that basis. It also does so much more than the others that it’s difficult to separate out just the cost component of the HDR functionality.
Some of the apps, I’ve paid for and are fully licensed. Some are trial versions. A quick note to software vendors before going on: If you’re going to make a trial version of the software do two things – (a) make it fully functioning so people who want to try it can get a true sense of what it can do and (b) don’t cripple it in some fashion such as not allowing trial users to save full bit depth files or put a big-ass, ugly watermark across the image. Time limit to whatever period (30 days, 60 days, whatever) and let people have at it. Stepping down off the soap box now.
My concept of speed may be very different from yours. My computing environment is as follows: Asus M2N-E motherboard, AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ @ 2GHx, 4GB DDR2 Dual Channel PC6400 RAM @ 800MHz, Windows 7 64 bit OS, 160GB Seagate Barracuda SATA with OS/applications, 1TB WD Caviar SATA for scratch disk. Not a speed demon by today’s standards but not quite snail slow either.
So there you have it. Those are the basics of the review. I hope to have each new review up within a couple days of each other. I’m not going to spend weeks and months playing with these applications. This is meant to be a real world test and not many of us can spend the amount of time that people who review gear and software for a living can spend with a particular application. I’ve already spent a fair bit of time with several of these applications and the only ones that are really new are PS CS5 and SNS-HDR.
I wrote a post a while back called The Great HDR Debate. That was almost a year ago. It seems that the debate over HDR, its validity as a photo editing tool, the results generated and the concept in total remain every bit as controversial and perhaps even moreso than at that time. It seems as though the anti-HDR camp is becoming increasingly zealous in their opposition to HDR in any form.
I was recently on a photo forum where a member had asked a question about how to do HDR. He’d seen some, thought it was interesting and wanted to try it out but didn’t know how to get started. Through more than a page of responses there were a raft of people telling him ‘don’t bother’ or ‘HDR sucks’, or ‘go ahead and check it out but NEVER use it on real photos’. Probably a dozen or more responses telling him how bad HDR was but not one person answering his actual question. Is this what it’s come to? If so, why?
I’ve said in the past that I’m not a big fan of the hyper-processed, way over the top, comic book looking HDR effects. It just doesn’t appeal to me. But I know it does to some. So be it. It’s part of the subjective nature of the appreciation of art. It continues to surprise me (although maybe it shouldn’t) that there is still, in this day and age, such a closed-minded, intolerant, ignorant presence in the art community.
HDR is a terrific tool for photographers to have in their arsenal. I spent some time recently in an old, unused, train station in Buffalo. The Buffalo Central Terminal is a terrific example of Art Deco architecture. It was built at a time when Buffalo was the 2nd busiest rail hub in the U.S. after Chicago. Closed for over 30 years and falling into disrepair, a private, not-for-profit group has bought the building and is beginning to restore it. If they’re successful in raising the money to complete the restoration, it’ll be a beautiful building again.
The building has very large windows that allow a lot of natural light in but there are also very dark areas that make getting a single, correct exposure difficult. Below is a single exposure at the ‘correct’ meter reading. It’s pretty blah. The light streaming in the large window to camera left shining on the granite floor makes getting the floor and the space under the To Train Concourse entrance difficult. The Shadow/Highlight tool helps but that can also do a lot of damage to an image. What it does illustrate is just how good today’s DSLRs are at capturing a pretty wide brightness range. This was shot with a Nikon D700 at 200 ISO and 1/3s @ f8 with a 28-70 f2.8 at 45mm. As a documentary or record shot, it’s not bad. As an artistic photo, it’s not overly good.
Buffalo Central Terminal, Single Image
My plan going in was to shoot for HDR. I knew it would help with the brightness range and also knew it would help generate a more ‘artistic’ result depending on how I tonemapped it. The image below is a 9 shot (+/-4) bracket processed through Photomatix from TIFF files exported out of Lightroom. The tonemapped HDR was then opened in Photoshop for final editing. I purposely took a little beyond a strict ‘photorealistic’ look. I wanted to try and evoke a bit of a 30s Art Deco coloured graphic look to complement the architecture. I also wanted to enhance the ‘grittiness’ of the environment.
Buffalo Central Terminal, Photomatix HDR Tonemapped
Could I have got a more photorealistic look? Sure. Absolutely. The image below is a 7 image merge in Enfuse using Timothy Armes’ Lightroom Plugin.
Buffalo Central Terminal, Enfuse blend
To my eye, this blended image looks much better than the single shot. It’s got better colour, better overall dynamic range and contrast yet it’s still photorealistic and at the same time has a better artistic look than the single image.
But that’s not HDR, you say? You’re right, it’s technically not. It’s a blended exposure and it stayed in the 16 bit space throughout the processing. But it’s still possible to get a ‘realistic’ look using HDR too. I could have tonemapped the Photomatix image differently and achieved the look of a ‘real’ photo. The image below a 7 shot bracket processed through HDR PhotoStudio via its Lightroom plugin. HDR PS is a terrific program. It works differently from other HDR applications but the results it generates are quite striking. Jack Howard wrote a piece on the app. on the Adorama Tech Tock Blog.
Buffalo Central Terminal, HDR PhotoStudio
A more ‘real’ photo look. Better colour, better dynamic range and still a more ‘artistic’ look too.
Neither the Enfuse or HDRPS merges had any additional work done to them. With a little time in either Lightroom or PS to ‘polish’ them off, the results could be even better. Much better than a single shot could give.
HDR can be a very useful tool for photographers. The people who continue to play ostrich are missing out on an opportunity to improve their imagery when the situation suits/requires. HDR has a number of potential applications in commercial photography – real estate and architecture in particular. It’s a wonderful tool with plenty of potential and those who refuse to use or learn it are going to be left behind and miss out on business opportuntites to those who do make good use of it.
I recently decided to try using HDR for some, what might be considered, less conventional applications. I was doing some shooting for a local café before Christmas. In one session, I was actually working in the café while it was open. This was kind of cool; customers could see what was going on, people were asking questions and it was a nice interactive environment. In the other session I was shooting in the kitchen in the back of the shop. In both cases space was quite limited and bringing in accessory lighting wasn’t on. What do I do? How do I work around this? How do I get more control of the lighting? HDR? Maybe. I also thought the detail enhancing aspects of HDR would be beneficial too.
I decided to try shooting the project using HDR. My rationale was that by shooting in HDR and tonemapping with a very light hand I could generate fairly flat, low contrast starting point images that would then allow me to have a bit more control of shadows and light/dark contrast via the digital darkroom.
The bracketed sequences were 7 shots at 1 stop intervals for a -3 to +3 bracket. RAW files were imported into Lightroom. I use Photomatix and the Lightroom plugin for most of my HDR work. I like most of what PM offers and how it works. One thing I’d like to see the folks at HDRSoft do is add the ability to tag multi-shot, tonemapped HDRs with a colour space. (They allow it for single-shot, pseudo-HDR conversions but not multi-shot. Depending on how you have your preferences set up in Lightroom/Photoshop you may end up with your tonemapped TIFFs tagged with a colour space you don’t want.) Photomatix works faster if you create your 32 bit files from TIFFs rather than RAW files. The conversion to RAW, particularly out of the LR plugin just takes a little longer. So after importing my RAW files, the only thing I might adjust is the white balance – nothing else. The RAW files then get batch exported to 16 bit TIFF files and these TIFF files are what get exported to Photomatix. You can also use the PM batch function to import the files and process them to 32 bit files or to fully tonemapped LDR files. Since we’re discussing an HDR workflow I’m not going to go into a discussion of backing up your RAW files right after loading them onto your computer. But you do back up your RAW files right after loading them onto your computer, right? Don’t you? 30 lashes with a wet noodle if you don’t.
[Some HDR applications work better/faster with RAW files. HDR PhotoStudio is one of those. So if you're using something other than PM, find out what file types work best and adjust your workflow accordingly.]
Once the tonemapping is done, the files get imported back into LR where additional work is done as needed. If more complex work is needed such as perspective correction, I’ll right-click and choose the Edit In>Photoshop, Edit a Copy and Render using LR to open the image in PS for additional editing that can’t be done in LR. This way I still have my original TIFF file if I want to go back to it for some reason. This approach does chew up hard drive space but storage is pretty inexpensive these days so leaving that added flexibility is, I think, a positive. Once the work in PS is done, the file gets saved and LR updates the image automatically.
Once all the editing is done, I’ll output for specific purposes. In most cases this is going to be smaller JPEG files for web use or full rez JPEG files for printing.
How’d the HDR experiment work out? Well, not badly I think. The owner of the café is happy with the results, which is the most important thing.
Now, I’m no food stylist (yeah, I know, some would say I’m no photographer either) but I think the end results weren’t too bad. These small JPEGs don’t show the full detail that is captured in the full size files, unfortunately. Higher quality versions can be seen on my Facebook Page or my Flickr portfolio.
OK, maybe great is stretching it a little. It’s no Thrilla in Manilla nor Rumble in the Jungle; but the discussion going on in photographic circles around HDR, the use of HDR, whether HDR generated images are photographs and even the legitimacy of HDR as a technique for “traditional” photographers gets pretty heated at times and I admit, I’ve engaged in some of the debate myself. It’s somewhat reminiscent of the arguments that used to go on between ‘traditional’ skiers and snowboarders when snowboarding first started to make an appearance on the hills.
HDR is, for all intents and purposes, an extension of a technique photographers have been using for many years called Blended Exposures – that is, taking two or more shots of the same scene at different exposure settings then manually blending them after the fact. There are software applications that automate the process now, like LR Enfuse, a Lightroom plugin. John Paul Caponigro has written extensively in his DPP magazine columns about what he describes as XDR – (E)xtended Dynamic Range, including the use of HDR as a tool in XDR and shown how effective a tool it can be.
As far as whether it’s even a legitimate tool, at this point anyone thinking it’s not is really not in the here and the now and are clinging to old, outmoded thought processes. Part of the problem is there are hardcore HDR enthusiasts who are trying to ram HDR down people’s throats, who think if you’re not doing HDR you’re a buffoon and who won’t accept any kind of critical feedback on their efforts. The arrogance these people display is little different from the arrogance of the early snowboarders who had no use for traditional skiers who, they felt, didn’t ‘get it’ when it came to snowboarding. Most of these people are producing the really whacked out, comic book colour type effects by simply moving sliders or clicking radio buttons seemingly without really knowing what they’re doing till they get something that looks ‘cool’ rather than something that looks even remotely like a photograph and still looks cool – both are possible.
Another problem is that a lot of the people who have embraced HDR are using it to try and create something out of nothing. They don’t have a basic understanding of photographic constructs like composition and framing and they’re just running bad snapshots through 18 different software apps. trying to create something that has a cool look but really has little merit as art. Michael Reichmann of The Luminous Landscape was very prescient in 2005 when he first wrote about HDR and said he expected to see a lot of ugly results in the future. Oh how right he was! The old adage still holds true: GIGO – Garbage In, Garbage Out.
There are some folks who really know what they’re doing with HDR and are good photographers to boot. Jack Howard, author of Practical HDRI; Christian Bloch, owner of the HDRLabs.com website and author of The HDRI Handbook are a couple. Trey Ratcliff at stuckincustoms.com is showing people how to make great use of HDR and has a wealth of information on his site.
There are some great uses for HDR. It’s a fantastic tool for shooting interiors and being able to balance the light so you don’t end up with window light that’s completely blown out or corners of rooms that are just chasms of inky blackness. Because of how HDR works, the photographer no longer has to haul around heavy, expensive lighting equipment to perform that light balance act and the idea of having to shoot early in the morning or wait till later in the day so that the interior and exterior light levels were balanced – thereby affording only a small working window in a day – is a thing of the past too. With a good handle on tonemapping, a skilled photographer can generate a very photorealistic look that would look at home on the pages of any high end architectural magazine.
I make no claims to being an HDR master, but I couldn’t have got these kinds of shots without HDR and the amount of masking and tedious work that would have been required to do them as blended exposures would have been extreme. I took the tonemapping with these slightly beyond photorealism because I thought it fit with the opulence of the surroundings and the camera I angles I decided to use to present the setting. These were taken inside Notre Dame Basilica in Ottawa, ON, Canada, merged and tonemapped in Photomatix Pro then back into Lightroom for some final adjustments and sharpening.
That’s another key element that a lot of people doing HDR don’t seem to consider and, I think, a reason why a lot of other people say they don’t like HDR. HDR isn’t, in my view, an ending point; but rather a starting point. It seems a good number of people doing HDR think that the tonemapped HDR file is the ending point (aside from the ones who then run it through countless other software packages and generate even more odd looking results); when really it’s a starting point. That flat, no contrast, uninteresting tonemapped HDR is ugly there’s no doubt about it. But think about what that file gives you. You’ve now got an image file that doesn’t have any compromises. You’ve got a full breadth of brightness scale. No sacrificed highlights for shadow detail and no blocked up shadows traded off against highlight detail. You’ve got an image file that you can then work with using ‘normal’ digital darkroom tools and have full control of how much you want to push the highlights and how much you want to drop the shadows. Think of it as the ultimate RAW file. Sometimes just a small Curves adjustment, a small Saturation or Lightness adjustment can make all the difference in the world and take that flat image and make it really pop. Think of the HDR file and the tonemapped LDR file as a starting point, not an end point and the net result is likely to be a lot more pleasing. And I think a lot more people will start to like and appreciate HDR for what it can do for them.
The ‘great debate’ surrounding HDR will likely continue for some time. The really extreme, gaudy, comic-booky stuff will still get produced and the people who are producing it will still claim it’s great and try to stick it up everyone else’s ….. But those who really know what they’re doing, like the ones mentioned earlier in this piece and others, will be the ones who continue to advance the craft and be the ones who continue to get the attention once the novelty factor of the other stuff wears off.
Addendum: Darwin Wiggett, a terrific photographer (and fellow Canadian) wrote a piece recently on his view of HDR. He’s got some superb examples of well done HDR in there. And I’d have to say I agree wholeheartedly with his assessment of the state of HDR and the possibilities it offers.
Addendum: HDR photography that includes people doesn’t typically appeal. The tonemapping usually makes the people in the photos look otherworldly almost. Luke Kaven; however, has done some excellent HDR photography with people. I wish I were a 10th that good. How many notice what’s happening in the first shot?
