Turn Your Photos Into Striking High-Dynamic-Range Images With EasyHDR Pro - bryantderstly

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

Simple workflow
All-powerful interface

Cons

Some operations cannot be undone

Our Verdict

EasyHDR lets you produce impressive high-active range images with an easy-to-expend, professional interface.

Soaring-dynamic-range imaging is a photography technique that involves taking multiple images at different levels of vulnerability, and then compounding them into a single image containing a greater amount of detail. Photoshop is the usual program for turning photos into HDR images, but IT's not the only option. EasyHDR In favor of (35 Euros, 46 USD on the date this review posted) is a complete application that retails for a fraction of the price and lets you create HDR images using a number of sophisticated options. Despite packing plenty of features, it is easier to use than Photoshop because it is purpose-built for HDR.

EasyHDR Pro screenshot — EasyHDR aligns and combines multiple photos into a unary HDR image, and and then lets you change the color-balance swerve and past parameters to get the precise look you're after.

To begin using EasyHDR Pro, you're going to motive at the least three photographs of the same exact scene, taken at different exposure values. I've proven the application with both JPEG and RAW images, and RAW images produced significantly better output: JPEG compaction produces perceptible artifacts and noise when images are overlaid on top of to each one other.

Ideally, you should use a tripod when winning the images, and use a camera with an auto-exposure bracketing feature article. With AEB, you depress the shutter button just once, and the camera takes three images in rapid succession, each with its personal exposure value. The three resulting images should be identical in composition, and different only in exposure (which affects the details visible in the scene). That way moving objects are a no-no.

Once you have your images, import them into EasyHDR. The application easily handled the CR2 RAW files out of my Canon 350D camera, requiring atomic number 102 conversion. After cargo each three images, EasyHDR displayed a dialog entitled "HDR radiance map generation." As you may have noticed, HDR photography is wedge-full of technical jargon, even more indeed than regular picture taking. Flatbottom if you're not conversant with all of the footing, EasyHDR provides adequate visual feedback (and commonsense default options) to permit you figure things out by run and error. For example, you john leave totally options in this dialog set to nonpayment, and simply click Engender HDR.

EasyHDR then crunches some numbers, and after a short pause, shows a combined image composed of information from each three images. You stern then pee-pee group changes to the HDR image by tweaking its color curve or wiggling individual tone mapping sliders, much as compression, gamma, and saturation.

These options are all rather powerful and intuitive, but uncomparable area where EasyHDR waterfall significantly brief of Photoshop is its lack of Undo functionality. For instance, let's say you interchange the color curvature only then sorrow it and want to go back; pressing Ctrl-Z would not be of much help at this point. You're exit to have to try to think what the curve looked like, and change it back manually, or else save a great deal and reload the former copy pro re nata. This can be real frustrating, especially when performing a complex series of redaction trading operations.

If you're just looking to get into HDR photography and don't possess a Photoshop license, EasyHDR Favoring offers a of import means to get started.

–Erez Zukerman