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Reviews
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Date of last review
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1
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265
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Sat August 9, 2008
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Recommended By
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Average Price
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Average Rating
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100% of reviewers
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£50.00
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9.0
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Description:
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Increase the dynamic range of your photographs.
If you have ever photographed a high contrast scene, you know that even the best exposure will typically have blown out highlights and flat shadows. Photomatix offers two ways to solve this problem.
Photomatix Pro is a stand-alone program that runs on Mac OS X and Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/Vista. The Tone Mapping tool is also available separately as a plugin compatible with Photoshop CS2. The benefits of using Photomatix Pro include:
Exposure Blending: Merge differently exposed photographs into one image with increased dynamic range.
Tone Mapping: Reveal highlight and shadow details in an HDR image created from multiple exposures. The tone mapped image is ready for printing while showing the complete dynamic range captured.
Saving on lighting equipment
Given that most digital cameras can auto-bracket at different exposures, you do not need to acquire expensive lighting equipment -and carry it- when shooting high contrast scenes. Just enable Auto Exposure Bracketing, and let Photomatix merge your photos into an image with extended dynamic range.
Saving time in post-processing
Photomatix Pro is designed for productivity -- automatic blending, unlimited stacking, easy comparison of results and batch processing save hours of masking and layers work in image editing programs.
Taking advantage of your 32-bit images
Have you created a 32-bit HDR image in Photoshop CS2 and could not get a good HDR conversion? The Photomatix Tone Mapping tool may help. See how it compares to Photoshop CS2 HDR conversion.
Great pictures on cloudy days
Shadowless hazy sunlight or an overcast sky usually results in dull-looking photographs. The tone mapping tool of Photomatix Pro can turn them into great-looking images. Check this image as example.
Noise reduction
The Exposure Blending functions of Photomatix Pro merge any number of bracketed photos -- this process is equivalent to image stacking, which tends to reduce noise in the resulting image.
Well exposed panoramas
A panoramic scene is almost always a high contrast scene -- you can't limit your view to areas with the same brightness when shooting a 360° panorama. By taking views under several exposures and processing them in Photomatix Pro, you can create a panorama that will show details in both the dark and bright areas of the scene.
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Keywords:
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HDRsoft Photomatix
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Author
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Charlotte
Loves the place
Registered: December 2006
Location: Romsey, Hampshire
Posts: 6319
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Review Date: Sat August 9, 2008
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: £50.00
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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Excellent results - usually
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Cons:
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A great programme for tone mapping high contrast scenes, with 2 methods to choose from.
One thing to point out is that it works better with some images than others. Now, whether this is the programme or whether it is the image itself is not clear, and how other hdr software handle in this regard I'm not sure. However, as hdr can be tricky, it's best to experiment a lot, play around with settings, and choose images which lend themselves to hdr imagery, i.e. it's not great for portraits 
It takes a bit of getting used to, but it seems to be the most popular programme among the hdr software around today. Their website is also an excellent resource for learning about hdr and how to process the files to best advantage.
I get on well with it, and have no hesitation in recommending this to others 
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