HDR Soft Photomatix Pro 3.1 review

Scenes with high contrast, such as sunsets, are notoriously difficult to photograph.

Usually, you have to set the exposure for a particular part of the scene and accept the fact that you will lose detail in either the shadow or the highlights. Either way, your photo won't reproduce the full dynamic range.

With Photomatix Pro 3.1, you can use your digital camera's exposure bracketing mode to combine several shots of a scene and retain all that detail. This technique is known as high dynamic range (HDR).

Photomatix uses three or more bracketed shots (preferably RAW files, but JPEGs are fine), blending their exposures and applying tone mapping to bring out detail in shadows and highlights. The results are usually spectacular, although you should use a tripod to make sure your images are identical. Creating HDR images of moving subjects generally isn't possible, but even with only one RAW file, the software can generate a pseudo-HDR image, often with impressive results.

You have several options when generating your HDR image. Photomatix can try to align your shots based on features in the image or horizontal and vertical shift. It also reduces noise, ghosting (from rippling water or moving leaves) and, new in this version, chromatic aberrations. You may have noticed the latter as brightly coloured fringing on the edge of objects, such as a silhouetted building against a brightly lit sky.

Once the shots are blended, you have control over the tone mapping. There are two methods: details enhancer and tone compression. We prefer the former, as it does a better job of bringing out the detail in shadow and mid-tones than Photoshop's HDR tool. We also love the ethereal quality of the processed images, which really makes them stand out. Images can be saved in TIF or JPEG formats.

Photomatix Pro produces the best HDR images we've seen and saves hours compared with trying to do the job manually in a photo editor. It's also ideal for panoramic images, which often have a wide dynamic range, as it can batch-process sets of bracketed shots. It isn't cheap, especially as you won't use it all the time, but combine it with Photoshop Elements and you can create stunning HDR images for around £135 - far less than Photoshop CS4 costs.

To see some examples, head to www.hdrsoft.com and you'll quickly see why Photomatix Pro is an essential tool for photo enthusiasts.

Author: Jim Martin