Wow. I mean, really, wow! Did I say Wow? I haven't got this excited over a piece of software for a long time. But, Bryce Mohan gave us a look at one of his secret weapons, Photomatix.
I was going to write a Beginner's tutorial on using the HDR (High Dynamic Range) function in Photoshop CS3.
But based on Bryce's recommendation, I downloaded and installed Photomatix. (Free trial download, then $99.00 to register) I think I like it. Alot. Give me a few days to play with it, then I'll report back.
I'm a registered owner/user of Photoshop CS3. I also own/use Photoshop Elements 5. This might be heresy, but I could see an agent/property photographer getting by with Elements($72.99) plus Photomatix($99.00) instead of Photoshop CS3($629.99)
HDR photos are some of the wildest photos out there... I didn't know the software until you mentioned it...
Here is Flickr's pool for Photomatix. and here is the HDR pool I can spend hours in there looking at these photos. Now this is really going to make me get a Nikon D80 or something like it.
BTW...hi.
It is great to see nice posts like this. Good job, and keep up the good work.
Dwayne West "Your Alpharetta Georgia Real Estate professionals"
Picture the nodding head (it's late and too tired to find a noddy headed gif ;-) - so we'll wait for the thumbs up. Don't forget to include the learning curve for the moderately gifted. Did I ever tell you that you have one of the cutest pictures around? You're a clever one CJ - rock on!
I've been using Photomatix Pro for a few months now. It's a great piece of software for creating stunning HDR's. It's just $85 (instead of $99) if you use coupon code VPG15 (via http://www.visualphotoguide.com/photomatix-coupon-code/). Once you get the controls down, it gets easier to use every time.
Howdy Cheryl
Thank you I will check out Photomatix.
Let know your opinion of it.
Have a good one
Cheryl - I will look forward to your more detailed evaluation.
It looks like this would be an excellent situation to use the auto-bracketing function on many of the D-SLR's that provides 3 exposures for each press of the trigger - your current settings, one step up and one step down on exposure. As I have written about the merits of the Nikon D-40 as an entry level D-SLR, now may be a good time to mention that the auto-bracketing feature is one of the features we gave up for the price point.
Ted - I have been so swamped with stuff-to-do in the offline world, I haven't had a good chance to work with Photomatic yet. From what little time I have spent on it, I see, as George suggested, that a tripod is a very good idea, since the positioning of objects in the images pretty much needs to match up in each image, unless you like ghosts -- like this:
Oops. (You can stop giggling now, Bryce) However, I can see that the tone quality of final result will be quite pleasing. This was done using Combine -> Highlight & Shadows, rather than HDR -> Generate.
Ted -- Yes using photos shot with auto-bracketing makes a lot of sense. Auto-bracketed images were NOT used in my ghostly sample, nor was a tripod, and as you see, I moved around a bit between snapping the shots.
Looks like a great program and I will check it out...
thanks for your efforts
thanks