RF-Photography

….. if that is the question then the answer is: Bracket.  At least if you want the best of what HDR can give you.

There’s still a belief in some circles that taking a single image, making multiple copies of it with adjusted exposure settings and tossing those ‘fake brackets’ into the HDR cooker will produce different and better results than just tonemapping a single image. Some also think it’s as good as shooting an in camera bracket. Let’s dispell an HDR myth, shall we? To Bracket or Not to Bracket, con't >>

The folks at HDRSoft released a new version of their HDR software recently. As a beta tester for the software I got to see some of the new features during development and there’s some really good stuff in this update.

The first thing that’s evident is the speed. The speed increase was introduced with v4.0 a few months ago. PM has never been sluggish but the uptick in the new version is certainly welcomed. Photomatix 4.1 Overview, con't >

After completing the review series on various HDR software programs and talking about how well each could create realistic and grunge/surrealistic results, I figured it might be appropriate to put together a more in depth tutorial on how the results were obtained as well as some of my own, personal, approaches to shooting and editing for HDR.

The tutorial will concentrate on using Photomatix from HDRSoft but the techniques discussed for using PM apply to other HDR software programs as well. The names of the individual tonemapping operators may be different but the functionalities are much the same. HDR Tutorial, con't >

Another new entrant into the HDR software field has been introduced by Nik Software. HDR Efex Pro is the newest in a series of plugins from Nik. The software installs the tonemapping plugin as well as a merge script so you can do both the merging and tonemapping. Nik’s 32 bit flavour is EXR (as opposed to Radiance HDR).

I’ll state upfront that I don’t own any Nik products (I’m using the trial version for this review). I, personally, feel the products are overpriced for what you get and I’m not a fan of ‘canned’ or ‘recipe’ based solutions. I know you can make adjustments after choosing a preset, but I still prefer a more DIY approach. I also know that Nik has a lot of users and a lot of fans and that’s fine. I’m just stating my viewpoint.

To start merging a set of files the command path is File>Automate>Merge to HDR Efex Pro. Very similar to the path for merging to Photoshop’s HDR Pro so there’s some familiarity here for those already using HDR Pro. A dialogue box opens where you choose your source files, choose whether you want to use alignment and deghosting. There are two types of deghosting and three possible strengths for each type. According to Nik, the Adaptive deghosting is best used for things like leaves/branches and the Global deghosting is best used for larger elements that move more through the scene like people or cars. We’ll see how these work later.  You can also choose to open the resulting file as a Smart Object. Nik HDR Efex Pro Review, con't >

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 >

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. Photomatix Pro 4 Preview, con't >