Photomatix offers two ways to solve this:

• Exposure blending: combining images taken at different exposures into one image with increased dynamic range

• Tone Mapping: processing a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image to compress its tonal range while preserving local contrast.

The result is an image that you can display on standard monitors, while preserving the details of the original scene in highlights and shadows.

Photomatix Pro recovers highlights and shadows details of a high•contrast scene. Using advanced algorithms, Photomatix Pro combines differently exposed shots into one image with increased dynamic range.

Designed for professional photographers and advanced amateurs, Photomatix Pro is a standalone application offering two methods of tone mapping, six methods of exposure blending, an alignment tool for out•of•register images, 16-bit support, and batch processing.


Photomatix Pro features list:
 
Merge of bracketed photos into HDR (High Dynamic Range)

• Option for automatic image alignment of hand•held shots. Two alignment methods are available, the "by matching features" method corrects for translation, rotation, scaling and perspective distortion.

• Selective deghosting tool for effective removal of "ghosts" in dynamic scenes: users can select ghosted regions with a lasso tool, and change the preferred image taken for each selected region. An option for automatic ghost removal is also available..

• Option for automatic reduction of chromatic aberrations.

• Option for automatic reduction of noise.

• Reading of exposure information from Exif data.

• Source images can be either 8 bits/channel or 16 bits/channel images, or RAW/DNG files. In the case of RAW files, White Balance and output color space can be adjusted.
 
 
HDR image adjustments with Tone Mapping and Exposure Fusion

• Two methods for Tone Mapping: Details Enhancer, based on a local operator, and Tone Compressor, based on a global operator.

• Four methods for Exposure Fusion: Highlights & Shadows

• 2 images, Highlights & Shadows • Auto, Highlights & Shadows

• Adjust, and Highlights & Shadows • Intensive

• Tone Mapping methods may be applied to single image.

• Dialog with preview for adjusting the following settings:

Details Enhancer: Strength, Color Saturation, Smoothing, Luminosity, Gamma, Black and White Point, Color Temperature, Saturation Highlights, Saturation Shadows, Microcontrast, Micro•smoothing, Highlights Smoothness, Shadows Smoothness and Shadows Clipping.

Tone Compressor: Brightness, Tonal Range Compression, Contrast Adaptation, Black and White Point, Color Temperature and Color Saturation.

Fusion/Adjust: Accentuation, Blending Point, Shadows, Sharpness, Saturation, Black and White Point, Midtones Adjustments.

Fusion/Intensive: Strength, Radius, Saturation.

• Settings can be saved as Presets for quick access, or saved to and loaded from XMP files

• Preset thumbnails panel: built•in and user presets for tone mapping and fusion show as thumbnails in a panel alongside the preview. Panel can be set in horizontal or vertical orientation.

• Ability to select a region on the Tone Mapping/Fusion preview and replace it with a source photo. Three lasso tools are offered for the selection and "Attach to Edges" button automatically adjusts the selection to follow the nearest edges.

• Loupe to get a crop at 100% resolution.

• Option for different preview ratios and magnification

• Undo and redo buttons for the settings done.

• Luminance and per color channel histogram.

• Output image is in 16 bits/channel mode, with the option to save it as 8 bits/channel jpeg or tiff, if desired

• "360 degree image" option for equirectangular image set to be viewed in a 360 degree panorama viewer.

• Tone Mapping can be undone.
 
 
32 bit HDR image support

• HDR Viewer shows local 32•bit HDR image data at the appropriate exposure

• Display of HDR Histogram (logarithmic)

• Read and Write support for Radiance RGBE (.hdr), OpenEXR (.exr) and Floating Point TIFF. Read support for 32•bit PSD and PSB.

• Ability to batch tone map single HDR files in Radiance or OpenEXR file formats.

• Function to tone map large Radiance files while benefiting from a preview.


Automatic Batch Processing

• Automatically loads and processes images of the specified input location, and saves resulting images to the specified output location

• Works for HDR generation, Tone Mapping and exposure fusion

• Advanced selection options: automatic detection of bracketed photos and ability to process a sub•set of each bracketed set.

• Strip processing option to generate an HDR image from large TIFF files without exceeding available RAM.

• Ability to set the Exposure Value spacing for HDR image generation

• Processes all sets of bracketed images stored under a given folder (number of bracketed images in each set specified by user before running the batch)

• Ability to process all sub•folders of a given folder, combining all image files stored under each sub•folder

• Options for naming the the resulting image files.
 
 
General

• Support of the following image file formats: JPEG (read & write), TIFF 24-bit, 48-bit and Floating Point (read & write), Radiance RGBE (read & write), OpenEXR (read & write), PNG (Mac version: read & write), PSD (read only) RAW files (read only)

• Ability to tag saved image with keyword

• Viewing of tone mapping or fusion settings embedded in processed image.

• Option to customise default filename.

• Basic image operation tools

• Cropping (also works with HDR images)

• Resizing (also works with HDR images)

• Rotating (also works with HDR images)

• Sharpening

• Brightness & Contrast

• Remapping of mirror ball (also works with HDR images)

• Multi•threading support for tone mapping: complete multi•threading for Tone Compressor method and partial for Details Enhancer method. The maximum number of cores used can be adjusted in Preferences.

• Color managed HDR workflow: passing trough of ICC color profile from the source to the processed image, and color managed display.

• Includes Lightroom Export Plugin to Photomatix Pro

• HDR processing settings are selected directly in the Lightroom plug•in

• Option to automatically save the resulting tone mapped or fused image and reimport it into the Lightroom library


WHAT'S NEW
Version 5.0b7:

• New Tone Mapping method named Contrast Optimizer, which is is good at producing realistic-looking results while still enhancing shadows and highlights. Contrast Optimizer can be accessed via the Method combo-box or by selecting the 'Balanced' preset (second on the list).

• New Exposure Fusion method called Fusion/Real-Estate, which is intended for scenes of interiors with a view out of the window on a sunny day. It replaces the Fusion/Realistic method available in batch mode in version 4.2.

• Updates in Batch of Bracketed Photos: Ability to select a Preset directly from the main batch window, option to process with more than one presets or customised settings, and main Preprocessing Options are available from the main batch window.

• Automatic deghosting offers additional options (Deghosting amount in the form of a slider and selection of base photo) that can be adjusted with the help of a preview.

• More buttons added to Workflow Shortcuts panel. In particular, ability to come back in one-click to tone mapping / fusion to redo with other settings.

• Option to enable Exposure Fusion when a single Raw file is opened.

• Option in Preferences to enable "real-time" Preview refreshing (option does not show when the OS is Windows 32-bit).

• Alignment by matching features (renamed into alignment for hand-held shots) made more robust.

• Highlights recovery step added to Raw conversion before tone mapping a single Raw file.

• Contextual help for Preprocessing Options shows in a help frame.

• Option to set the interface in "Unified Window" mode which makes the 'Workflow Shortcuts' panel become an app frame window and group the Setting Adjustments, Preview and Preset Thumbnails in one single window.


Requirements:

• Intel, Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later.

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