RF-Photography

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. HDR Darkroom Review, con't >

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 HDR Review, con't >

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. DPHDR Review, con't >

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. Photomatix Pro Review, con't >

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. HDR Software Review Intro, con't >