Photomatix Pro 4 and HDR Efex Pro Comparisons

HDRSoft have released Photomatix Pro 4 and Upgrade to their excellent HDR software application. The upgrade is free to users who registered their product after March 2007. 

Some features of Version 4 are the ability to swap quickly between tone mapped and 'Fusion' renders of the scene. Fusion is unlike Tone Mapping in that it often results in more realistic looking photos that lack the traditional low contrast HDR look.

Ghosting, the enemy of many HDR fans is well handled with an Automatic and semi-automatic ghost removal option that allows the user to indicate areas of the scene that require attention by drawing a selection around them.. an interesting idea.

It is also amazingly fast. Much faster on my set up that NIK's HDR Efex Pro.

I have generated 3 examples shown below illustrating default results for Photomatix Pro 4 Tone Mapping and Fusion Mapping and HDR Efex Pro.

It is a matter of taste which version you prefer. In my opinion the HDR Efex Pro output needs the least additional work in photoshop to finish the image.

Update on Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 11:44AM by Chris Sargent

Photomatix 4 (Fusion Mapped HDR)

Photomatix 4 (Tone mapped HDR)

HDR Efex Pro (default render)

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