Photomatix first look
My final version
After reading Mark Graf’s post on HDR and then downloading Photomatix, I got up yesterday morning with the mind to give it a try. Unfortunately, we’d been having severely clear days and I had hoped to have a bit of drama in the sky this morning, well my wish was granted.
I got up about 5:30 AM, score another victory for “Go”, peeked out of the window to have a look at the sky. Partly cloudy. That’s good! I went to the other side of the neighborhood, sat up my tripod, waited and hoped. I was not disappointed. Mind you, the pictures that I captured were not stunning or anything original, but they were nearly perfect for trying out HDR. There was a lot of contrast in the scene and lots of drama in the sky.
I took a number of pictures, taking 3 shots per image: one normal, one at -2 EV, and finally, + 2 EV. When I got home, I started playing with Photomatix to see what I would get. I’m no stranger to blending exposures in Photoshop, in fact I prefer it over using graduated ND filters; however, Photomatix makes things so easy as it does everything for you and offers a number of fine tuning controls so that you can get the range and feel that you are looking for.
The above image is the result after using Photomatix to blend the exposure, then tweaking a bit with the controls to get the overall look that I wanted. Finally, after getting the range, I brought the resulting file into Photoshop and enhanced it a bit to get the drama.
Out of the box
As you can see, the trial version of the program puts watermarks all over it. There were 3, but I cloned two of them out so that you could see the picture a bit better. I left one. After all, I am using the trial version! 
The cost of the tool is $99 for the stand-alone application, $119 for the stand-alone + plugin, and $69 for the (CS2/CS3) plug-in only; however, after reading the specifications, the plugin is not nearly as powerful as the stand-alone application. I’ll have to experiment with it a bit more and will probably end up purchasing a license for it. I’ve found that once I find out about these types of things and come to like them, then suddenly the ‘need’ for it tends to pop up in my photography. Another tool in the tool box.
Paul, there is a new kid on the block, called EssentialHDR. They are currently in beta testing, but as far as I have seen from their examples, they have a very different approach to tone mapping, that may be more pleasing in some situations. Is there a reason to wait? Maybe, maybe not.
I seem to always simply accept the default mapping in Photomatix, maybe increase light smoothing to max, and then do the rest in Photoshop. I suspect that I would not do much different in EssentialHDR, thus for me there is probably no big difference. You may consider the question before your purchase though. Gordon McGregor should be able to tell you more about EssentialHDR, I had only a cursory look into it, but he seems to have done more.
Looks like a good first try Paul. I would play around with some of the blending settings in Photomatix to try to remove the halos that you have over the trees. Have fun!! Sorry to have cost you $100.
@Andreas: I’ll have a look. I have no immediate plans for purchase. As soon as I get back on someone’s payroll, then I can start buying stuff again.
I was joking with my wife and said that it’s been too long since UPS has dropped anything off. It’s been months! I need a ‘fix’!!!
@Mark: Thanks, Mark. I am going to play with the controls a bit more. I just accepted the defaults and didn’t play much. I need to tweak the sliders here and there to find out what effect they have. As for the $100, oh well, just one of the hazards of blogging and learning new things!
The $100 doesn’t bother me so much, it’s the playing on ‘the dark side’ that’s getting to me!
Ugh, photomatix for 100 dollars? thats way too much
I bought and love Dynamic HDR. Its probably the best I’ve used. You can use any RAW and process it fully with. You can do that or use as many different exposed raw’s or jpegs.
The align feature is great, the options are great, its…its just the best. The results are also amazing too.
You can even add a little drama to flat jpegs by a process called PseudoHDR.
Google Dynamic HDR and try it. You’ll love it.
See, this is what I love about blogging. I learn so many things. Here, in this post alone, I’ve learned about two new HDR programs, EssentialHDR and Dynamic HDR, so I can check them out and see how they compare, resulting in possibly, another post!
Hm, usually I really hate HDRs. They tend to look artifical and simply overcooked. But recently, I’ve come across more and more subtle applications in which the technique was really applied to good use. Maybe I should also get interested…
I agree with you, Thomas. To me, they generally look like cartoon images or something that you might find in the pages of a comic book, but I’m starting to believe that, with careful post processing, you can bring out a picture that has that certain glow, is not overdone, and has an exceptional dynamic range. I’m going to continue to experiment with it.
If you are interested in free, you might want to check out qtpfsgui:
http://qtpfsgui.sourceforge.net/
or enfuse:
http://wiki.panotools.org/Enfuse
–Eric
This table may be of interest:
http://wiki.panotools.org/HDR_Software_overview
Wow, Eric, that’s fantastic. The examples for enfuse look gorgeous. I’ll try it tonight