Photomatix 3.0 and PTGui 7.7

Mediterranean coast under the storm

Yesterday, some new versions of two softwares i often use where published.

Photomatix, probably the most popular HDR software is now in version 3.0 and PTGUi, my favorite stitching tool just reached the version 7.7.

Photomatix 3.0 most important news :

• Color managed display.
  Now we can see correctly the image we are working on !
• Improved graphic interface.
• New and improved exposure blending algorithms with the ability to blend directly from RAW files.
• New alignment algorithm.
• Ability to tonemap one single 48 bits TIF file.
• Evolution in the tonemapping algorithm resulting in images with a more natural looking.

Note : Upgrading from version 2.x to 3.x is free.

PTGui 7.7

In my mind the most important news are about the Pro version of PTGui but the normal version also wins one new small but nice feature : Upgrading is now done without the need to enter a registration key. When you know the lenght and complexity of the PTGui registration key, you understand why it's a nice thing.

The HDR tab of PTGui pro now includes an exposure fusion option.
Exposure fusion is an other way to catch scenes with high dynamic range without creating a real HDR image and avoids the need of tone mapping and often produce a resulting image with a more natural look and with less artifacts.

It's interesting to see that PTGui goes more and more in the HDR way and that Photomatix improves his exposure blending options. Exposure blending (or exposure fusion) is an old digital method to manage scenes with high dynamic range but it becomes more and more poular in the HDR comunity.
Why HDR is important for PTGui : Of course because HDR is more and more popular every day but also because scenes with a very large field of view often have high dynamic range.

The Panotools comunity wiki is full with good resources about stitching but also about HDR and exposure blending. If you're interested in exposure fusion, i can just recommend to read this page and the linked PDF files.