McGillveray Studios

The previous post I did the pictures  with Essential HDR and this is an older picture done with Photomatix 3. The image alignment is much improved in Photomatix 3 over version 2 and works very well. This was done in Exposure Blending mode, which is a lot like Fast Tone Balancer in Essential HDR. Photomatix has more sliders and options for tonemapping, but Essential HDR is simple. Essential HDR claims it produces less artifacts in smooth and out of focus areas. I know that this a bit unfair as this pic is vertical and the others are horizontal, but I like this older pic. I have other small HDR Photomatix pics in a previous post. Then there are Essential HDR examples in this post. Which is better? I really don’t know. What do you think?

This photo was taken with a Cannon 5D 70-200L IS UCM with -2, 0, +2 f/stops on a tripod.

A new HDR tone mapping program just has been released. This program called Essential HDR is very quick and easy to use. It will align and process RAW files right out of the camera and get the colour balance right. There is 2 tone-mapping algorithms, one called Fast Tone Balancer and one called Detail Reveler. This program has only a few sliders for tone mapping, but they work, making creating HDR images very easy. You also get the usual colour balance, brightness and contrast sliders. I gave a little sharpening and a little contrast boost to these quick examples in Lightroom after exporting the images as a .tiff files. There is a 30% discount for the first 1000 buyers and of this writing the discount is still good, but it has been selling since I think the July 18, so hurry. That makes the price only $49 USD.

See also this post about comparing Essential HDR and Photomatix, with a Photomatix example.

This image was created using 3 files -2, 0, +2  f/stops using the Fast Tone Balancer.

This image was created using 3 files -2, 0, +2  f/stops using the Detail Reveler.

This image was created using 3 files -2, 0, +2  f/stops using the Fast Tone Balancer.

This image was created using 3 files -2, 0, +2  f/stops using the Detail Reveler.

All these pictures were taken hand held with a Cannon 40D, 6 frames/sec. You can see this program can align the images properly. I recommend this program. Get it before the price goes up!

Here is the LINK