Surveying some HDR Programs and Some HDR Education
UPDATE: Trey Ratcliff has updated the eBook I review below. This review will be updated to reflect those latest updates once I go through the new content.
As some of my recent work would indicate, I have been experimenting, to a fairly large degree, with HDR photography. The primary thing I’ve been experimenting with is the different programs that can be used for creating HDR images. I have been using Photomatix Pro since I first started my HDR work, and am generally pleased with the results. I have, however, also been exploring some of the other alternatives. The main other program I’ve used to this point is the new HDR Pro in Adobe Photoshop CS5. Though I liked the anti-ghosting feature in CS5, I found that the way lights are processed in surrealist HDR images does not look as good as the way lights look in Photomatix. Additionally, the new beta of Photomatix 4 that I’ve been using has anti-ghosting features that seem even better than those found in CS5. Though I could go into more technical detail about the differences between the HDR products, I’ll instead point to Trey Ratcliff’s write-up on the topic.
Along with Photomatix and Photoshop, I have done a little bit of experimenting with the new HDR Expose from Unified Color. I had never used Unified Color’s previous HDR products, so their interface was a little alien to me when I first started using it. I found that for “realistic” style HDR images, that the software was quite good. and quite powerful. Unfortunately, I found it difficult to create the surreal looking HDR images that I like to make. I am not sure if this was a limitation of the software or simply a side effect of my unfamiliarity with Unified Color’s interface.
In addition to the HDR products that are currently out, NIk Software has announced their own HDR offering. I apparently missed the webinar that was debuting the software, but there is a short “sneak peak” video on Youtube that gives a very brief explanation of the software. Since I use all of Nik’s products already, I have high expectations for their HDR product. Scott Bourne recently did a write up about his experience viewing the software. The main pull from the write-up for me is that the software “has a bias toward more natural-looking HDR shots.” I do not know what this means for people who want to create surreal-style images. Since Scott made a point to comment on the speed of the software, it makes me wonder whether the end of July release date rumors I’ve been hearing are a little optimistic.
Though new software offerings are one of the primary ways the HDR photography space is evolving, I have also been exploring ways to get a little more HDR related education. Since the starting point for HDR education is Trey Ratcliff’s HDR Tutorial, I decided to try out his latest eBook offering: Top Ten HDR Mistakes. [NOTE: This eBook was recently updated. This review still applies to the original version of the book, however, a new review of the bonus version will be posted shortly ]As you can imagine, the book is filled with some great HDR images to compliment the instruction. Unfortunately, I am a little less excited about the instruction offered by the book. A lot of the solutions that Trey offers seem to indirectly point you back to the HDR tutorial. Maybe I was expecting some kind of “silver bullet” that doesn’t actually exist, but I was hoping for more concrete steps on how to fix some of these HDR problems. Ultimately, the book only costs $10, so it’s not a huge investment, but as a student who pays close attention to how much money I’m spending, I think I would have felt more comfortable paying $6 for the content I received with this book. If I think to myself that I paid $5 for the book, and made $5 as a donation to Trey for all the work that he’s done to help me learn HDR, then I am a little more okay with the amount I spent on the book. Overall, I’d recommend this book is you’re an advanced beginner to intermediate HDR photographer who is a particularly large fan of Trey’s work.
