Autumn Color

I visited Winkworth Arboretum in Surrey on 24th October and took some shots to render in HDR. The shot below was a 5 shot HDR -2, -1, 0, 1, 2 stop range. I quite like the effect of shooting straight into the afternoon sunshine

Winkworth Arboretum, Surrey

Purchased HDR Efex Pro

Having played around with NIK Softwares HDR Efex Pro for a week or so, I decided to go ahead and buy a licence. I have Photomatix Pro 4.1 but found the ease of use of HDR Efex Pro and the photo-realistic results useful. 

The Alignment and de-ghosting features are not perfect, but they can usually be coerced into producing a good render with a little bit of experimentation.

i.e. Sometime the Alignment option is best left off when images are already aligned (e.g. taken on a tripod) and even in NIK's own documentation they make reference to de-ghosting sometimes being better off than on.

Overall I am pleased with HDR Efex Pro and being a frequent user of their other great applications I find the interface powerful and familiar.

NIK HDR Efex Pro Ships

NIK Software have started to ship their HDR software - HDR Efex Pro.  I have completed a quick side by side comparison of HDR Efex Pro and Photomatix Pro and I would say that NIK is comparing very well. 

Out of the box NIK HDR Efex Pro manages very realistic and natural looking HDR renditions. There are a large number of pre-sets available to help the user 'play' with the effects possible. Each Pre-Set could be achieved through the adjustment sliders and clicking on a preset results in the sliders positioning themselves as necessary. This helps the user get to grips with the range of styles achievable quickly... although some of the pre-sets can result in some tacky looking renders :-)

HDR Efex Pro is a little slower than Photomatix on my machine (Mac Pro Quad Core 266 with 8GB RAM) but is usable...

I experimented with the software by re-visiting a recent HDR and attempting to re-render with HDR Efex Pro. The result looked better than my previous post production which was achieved after a significant amount of work in Photomatix. Here are the shots for reference, which do you prefer?

Photomatix Pro

NIK Softwares HDR Efex PRo

Photomatix Pro Vs Nik HDR Efex Pro

High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography is gaining in popularity. I have access to both Photomatix Pro and NIK Softwares's HDR Efex Pro.

I have taken three exposures of a scene, metering one stop over and under to capture detail in both foreground and sky.

The location is Coniston Water in the Lake District. All three shots were taken with the camera mounted on a Tripod to help alignment in the HDR software.

These three shots were exported to Photomatix Pro and an HDR image generated with default settings see below

+1 EV

 

0 EV

-1 EV

Photomatix Pro (default Settings) NIK HDR Efex Pro

NIK Software HDR Efex Pro

NIK software have been working on an HDR plugin for some time now. This application is due to begin shipping on 11th October 2010.

I will post some examples HDR images created with this software in the next couple of weeks and post a like for like comparison with the excellent Photomatix Pro

NIK HDR Efex Pro