Photomatix Pro

I love this program for creating HDR Images. It's easy to use and my pictures look great every time. Let me give you a quick tutorial, show you some of the images I've created and then I'll tell you where you can get the program.

Step 1. You will need a bracketed photo. Generally one that is properly exposed and then the same image +2 stops and again -2 stops. The result will be something that looks like this.

Step 2: Open Photomatix Pro and drag the 3 bracketed images into the open program. It will give you a dialog box that looks like this.

Choose Merge for HDR Processing and hit ok. This will give you a new dialog box where you can choose additional image if you need to.

You can just click ok unless there are other images you need to select. You will then get a third dialog box that looks like this.

I choose to Align images by matching features. You can choose other options as you wish. When you click ok on this screen it will bring you into the program. Here is an example of what you will see.

 

Step 3: On the left side of the program you will see a tool bar with various sliders. Use those to tweak your image. If you need someplace to start there are preset thumbnails at the bottom that you can click on and adjust from there. When you have your image looking how you want click, Process in the lower left corner.

Step 4: Click File>Save As and save you image with the file name and extension you wish.

Here is the final bench image with the 3 bracketed images across the top for effect.

HDR image are beautifully brilliant. I love the results and using Photomatix Pro makes the process simple. You can create HDR images in Photoshop. I may even do a blog post on it at some point, but I just love Photomatix Pro. Here are some other images I've created using this program.

If your sold and absolutely have to own this program you can buy it today at amazon.com. There are also many books on HDR techniques on Amazon. You can see a list of them here.