If you have ever photographed a high contrast scene, you know that even the best exposure will typically have blown out highlights and flat shadows. Photomatix offers two ways to solve this problem:
› Exposure Blending: Merge differently exposed photographs into one image with increased dynamic range.
› Tone Mapping: Reveal highlight and shadow details in an HDR image created from multiple exposures. The tone mapped image is ready for printing while showing the complete dynamic range captured.
› Saving on lighting equipment
Given that most digital cameras can auto-bracket at different exposures, you do not need to acquire expensive lighting equipment -and carry it- when shooting high contrast scenes. Just enable Auto Exposure Bracketing, and let Photomatix merge your photos into an image with extended dynamic range.
Chagelog:
Updated in v2.5
- Six new settings for tone mapping method Details Enhancer: Color Temperature, Saturation Highlights, Saturation Shadows, Highlights Smoothing, Shadows Smoothing and Shadows Clipping. Additionally, the setting Light Smoothing has been changed from a slider to radio buttons (in order to make it clear it can not take intermediate values) and the setting Microcontrast varies differently: the maximum value of +2 in previous versions is now the same as a value of 0 in version 2.5.
- Two new settings for tone mapping method Tone Compressor: Color Temperature and Color Saturation.
- Information such as Camera model, DateTime original, Aperture, ISO and focal length passed through to resulting images saved as JPEG. Additionally, the information is also passed through to tone mapped images coming from an HDR image file in Radiance (.hdr) format that has been created with Photomatix Pro version 2.4.1 or higher.
- Camera model and DateTime Original added to the information passed through to resulting images saved as TIFF.
- Resize function available for 32-bit HDR images.
- Updated RAW conversion code to support recent camera model such as the 1D MKIII.
- Faster processing time and less memory usage for tone mapping method Tone Compressor.
- Tone Mapping preview now refreshes when the "360 image" option is selected.
- Tone mapping method Tone Compressor can now be used with "Large File Processing".
- Ability to batch tone map hdr image files using the Tone Compressor method with Single File Conversion.
- Added -wb argument option to the command line version to specify temperature for white balance adjustments when converting RAW files to create an HDR image using PhotomatixCL.exe. Example of use is: -wb 7500
- Bug fixed: HDR images created from RAW files and saved as Radiance (.hdr) should now open correctly in Photoshop CS2/CS3.
- Bug fixed: TIFF files produced by Photomatix should now open fine in Paint Shop Pro, Picture Windows and Qimage.
- Bug fixed: Batch Processing should not stop on the 36th set anymore when processing RAW files.
- Bug fixed: Processing RAW files from the D1X should not crash the application anymore.
- Bug fixed: Conversion from Olympus E-400 RAW files should not produce incorrect pattern anymore.
- Bug fixed: Processing copies of the same RAW files should now work as expected.
