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April 10, 2008
[ DOWN TO THE ESSENTIALS ]
DPEXPERT IS A SUCKER for every new applet that pops up on the Internet promising to make the digital photographer’s life easier and smarter. So, over time – and a short time at that – the hard drive clogs up with stuff we use once and then forget what it’s name even means.
So, here we are dealing with the post trauma cleanup of the Great Vista Reinstall of ’08 and wondering what we really can’t do without. And it is surprising how little must go back onto the drive.
It goes without saying that Adobe Photoshop in one of its forms is indispensable, but after that, what? Adobe Camera RAW goes on. Irfanview, of course – you can’t live without a fast image viewer for all formats. The Nikon and Canon RAW codecs for Vista that are needed to view thumbnails of NEF and CR2 files.
Then come two applications we have found we can’t live without – Photomatix Pro and Lumapix Fotofusion.
Photomatix Pro is for processing images with a high dynamic range without losing detail in blitzed out highlights or inky dark shadows. The process begins with a set of three or more exposures of a scene, usually taken with the camera’s auto bracketing set to one or two EV intervals. In other words one correct exposure, one under and one over exposed. The under exposed shot has the highlights restrained and detail preserved and the over exposed shot keeps the shadows open. Photomatix Pro exists to merge the three images into one and to provide a high degree of user control over how the contrast and colour balance are managed.
Photomatix Pro was released in version 3, after a 16 beta gestation, just as we were reloading the hard drive. It’s not cheap for an application that does only one thing (US $99, downloaded from www.hdrsoft.com -- PC and Mac) but we have tried all the alternatives, including that built into Photoshop CS3, and nothing does the job as well.
HDR processing is getting a bad name in some quarters because some of the output looks more like a hyper-realistic illustration than a photograph. We do almost all our processing in the Details Enhancer panel which produces realistic final images. The Tone Compressor panel is for the fantastic result.
You will have guessed that the success of the merge depends on starting with identical photos, except for exposure. So this is strictly tripod stuff, and with a remote release is even better. It’s worth the trouble because the results are magical.
There is a free trial version of Photomatix which produces watermarked images. And there is a brief tutorial on the HDRSoft web site. There is a better, more comprehensive tutorial at www.nwpphotoforum.com (click on Articles and scroll down to HDR Blend tutorial).
There are cheaper HDR processors, including the free Picturenaut, but the key to HDR processing quality is the ability to handle RAW files and to align them perfectly. Photomatix can even align images that are not quite identical – although we’re talking small margins here, not three shots taken from a moving car.
One word of warning. Once you start playing with Photomatix it is addictive. You can easily fritter away a good part of your life taking and processing high dynamic range photos, and what’s more the results will astonish your pals.
Next week: Essential application number two – Lumapix Fotofusion. Start saving!
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Posted by terry at April 10, 2008 05:54 AM
Worth Checking Out
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