Shutter(-) Negative A Photographers Journey, With Complimentary Sarcasm

Quick View: Photomatix Pro 3.1

For quite some time, I have had a love/hate relationship with HDR photography. I love the look of the photos, and especially tone mapped images where it adds a certain artistic quality that not even film could muster. But I have always hated the free programs I've had at my disposale, or the alternative; hand making HDR images through tedious work in photoshop, which sadly is the option I have been going with for quite some time (and might give a tutorial over given the inspiration). I have known about Photomatix Pro since i first saw a tone mapped image. But alas, I am a poor broke SOB, so getting my hands on it for the longest time seemed unlikely.

Well through some gratuitous begging, and some favors cashed in, I now have a copy of Photomatix Pro. This little article will follow me my first time through the program. A full write up of using the program, along with more then likely my first video tutorial should come shortly once I get more time with it.

A Forward On HDR

Before I get more into the program, I wanted to go over HDR real quick for anyone who does not know what this strange little abreviation is, or just to update those who do. Here is a quick snippet from the life eating blackhole that is Wikipedia:

In image processing, computer graphics, and photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminances between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods. This wider dynamic range allows HDR images to represent more accurately the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to faint starlight. ^{[Wiki Entry]}

Simply put HDR allows you to show the same kind of range of light levels like your eye can see. Camera sensors can only see in a very shallow range of exposures, for example; when we look at a sunset, we can see both the sky and the ground, and if we try to photograph this either the sky is blown out, or the ground is too dark to make out details. HDR allows for us to take multiple images shot at different exposures and combine them either by hand, or a program, like Photomatix Pro, and output an image that has a wide range of lighting in one shot.

If you want to see some examples of HDR photos, head over to Flickr [click me].

Getting To Know Photomatix

Starting up Photomatix, we get a "Workflow Shortcuts" box on the left to get us started generating an HDR image (seen above). This window gives you quick access and is a nice little touch, especially when you first start using the program. The first option is what most, including myself will probably first play with, "Generate HDR image". Clicking on it brings up a box to select images to use to generate the HDR. I will go over taking photos for HDR when I do the full tutorial for this program. For the sake of this write up I selected 3 images, shot using auto exposure bracketing on my Canon Digital Rebel XTi (EOS 400D to the rest of the world), of a small theater in the downtown area of my hometown. View Originals: Theater EV-2 | Theater EV0 | Theater EV+2

Once you get your images selected,  a dialog box pops up giving us some base options for generating the intial image. The options seem pretty straight forward. The first option will align images that were taken without a tripod, or if the tripod got moved slightly while shooting. The next two deal with reducing noise and chromatic aberrations in the photo, which while nifty I haven't had much luck with so far. The noise reduction isn't very good, there are better programs for that (write up to come).

Next is an option to removing ghosting, which is caused by something moving in the different exposures of the shot. For example, the photo i am working with has a tree in it, and it was a windy night; so in each of the shots the tree and its leaves are in different positions. I'll talk about the results of that with this image later on.

The final option has to do with the tone curve. As far as I know just leave it on the default option, I haven't messed with it and haven't read the help yet to figure out exactly what its useful for. Once the options are set up, we hit ok and Photomatix takes over to generate the HDR image.

After some processing, the image pops up, and wow does it look like crap. Reading the workflow shortcuts box, which is now calling itself the HDR viewer, it says the image is unproccsessed, and I need to now do the tone mapping. This is the part that my hand made HDR's have been missing.

Clicking the "Tone Mapping" button opens new box on the left and instantly the image looks a lot better, but not perfect. There is quite a bit of  settings in this box, a bit too many to go over for this (no longer) quick write up. Not to mention these are all new to me.

Playing with the sliders though can start to yield some nice, as well as interesting results. While i don't doubt learning these sliders can save some time, just playing with them can give you results you didn't know you wanted. Now that its how I like it, i hit "Process". After some time my final HDR pops up.

You can then save the image as either a 8 or 16-bit TIFF file, or as a jpeg. You can view the result of this one down below, first there was a few other buttons to explore on that "Workflow Shortcuts" box.

One More Method; Exposure Blending

No matter how much I played with the silders, I couldn't get a more natural looking HDR image. Then I remembered there was another option in the intial box. Clicking on it brings up the same open window as before, except this time there is an option at the bottom for aligning the images. Once you hit ok, a new window pops up with options kind of like the tone mapping, but this time there are some auto modes instead of having to figure things out.

To make my life easier for now, I went with the auto setting. This produced a fairly nice result, and a much more natural looking HDR.

Conclusions

First impressions are pretty good with this program. It can take some getting used to, especially learning what the silders in the tone mapping and exposure blending windows actually do. But compared to the free options out there, and the method included in Adobe Photoshop CS2 (yea I know, I need to get CS4, or at least 3), this is the better option. Though so far I'm not happy with the results of the "Remove Ghosting" feature. Could just have been the specific photo, or me setting it wrong. Only time will tell.

I would for sure recommend this programs to others. But at US $99 this thing can put a good dent in amatuers like mines pockets. But if you are really into HDR images, either the tone mapped craziness, or the more natural looking images, this is the program to have.

You can view the 2 results of my testing I did for this article below. Also subscribe to the RSS to stay updated for when I post a few tutorial for using photomatix pro in the near future, once I learn this program well enough.

Results

These two photos are the final output of Photomatix pro; the one on the left is done using the "Generate HDR image" method, the one on the right is through "Exposure Blending". Both resized in photoshop, no other edits after processing.

About Corey

My name is Corey Eacret, I have been loving photography since I first picked up a camera 5 years ago, and I continue to love it daily as I find a new reason to pick up my camera all the time. I love to share what I know, and to teach others the love I have for this art.