After all, who wouldn’t like their images to show more detail in the shadows without blowing out the highlights? Like most photographers, I find the idea of expanding the dynamic range displayed in certain images to be very compelling. I’ve spent the past few weeks reading literally hundreds of blog posts about different HDR shooting and processing techniques and reviewing the software available from various vendors. At the end of all this research I still wasn’t sure how HDR processing would fit into my Lightroom workflow until I saw a note on HDRSoft’s web site about a beta version of Photomatix Pro 3.1 and their new Lightroom 2 plug-in. So I took the plunge, bought a license and installed everything in just a matter of minutes. Here’s my first test using an image with a moderate dynamic range (mostly dark shadow areas and fairly bright highlights). The image on the left was processed entirely in Lightroom while the image on the right was merged from three “bracketed” raw (.dng) exposures, tone-mapped in Photomatx Pro 3.1 (beta) and then cleaned up in Lightroom. Shots taken with a Canon 40D tripod mounted, 17-40mm f/4 L at 19mm, f/8, 1/125th, 1/350th and 1/1000th of a second at ISO 200 on SanDisk digital film. Post processed using Photomatix Pro and Lightroom 2’s Develop module. Click on the image above on the right for a larger version. I’m very impressed with the results using the default settings in Photomatix Pro 3.1 beta. The detail in the shadow areas under the trees looks very natural and the noise level is acceptable. My only issue is with some of the halo artifacts that show up where the sky meets the tree tops. Other than that, it’s a fairly decent exposure.Ĭlick on the image on the right to see a more detailed version.London Tower Bridge – a 5 shot HDR photo processed with Photomatix Pro 5 beta 4 and then mixed with a long exposure image for the fountain and the clouds. The Long exposure I made using my 10 stop ND filter from B+W. I did use a final filter High Key from Topaz Adjust to get the more pseuchedelic look. Some of you might have noticed that a new version of Photomatix Pro 5 is on its way. The official beta 4 is now available and I have had a quick glance at it. After having played around with for a awhile I am a bit disappointed, but there are a few goodies too. The wording – that is the usability – has changed in general to the better. Photomatix pro 5.0 beta software#īy using the right words you can do a lot for the ease of use of a software program. For instance instead of calling a feature ‘Align source image – by correcting vertical and horizontal shifts’ it gets a lot easier to understand from the new wording: ‘Align source images – Taken on tripod’. I’m a great fan of usability and this is great usability in it’s essence. Straight talk for normal human beings to understand, not engineer talk that only a small group of people can understand. There are a couple of others of these wordings that has changed for the better. The Button “Process” has been changed to “Apply and Finish”. The algorithm for aligning images should be improved, but that is fairly hard to test. I have never really had any problem with the one from Photomatix 4 – but improvements of course is good. The deghosting as been changed too and is better.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |