Birth of a new day - HDR version

Birth of a new day, HDR with Photomatix 3.1

This is the same image that the one shown in this post, but for this version, the two exposures where processed with the newest version of Photomatix.

I really don't want to write a review of this new version of the most popular HDR software. I had these images to process, i had just read that a new version of Photomatix was available so i have updated my setup before processing my files.
If you look at the Photomatix website, you will see that the list of updated and new features is long but i was specially interested by this one : Option to reduce chromatic aberrations / color fringing added to "Generate HDR options" dialog. I have to say that i wasn't impressed by this new tool.
My most usual workflow for the HDR job is the following :

• First processing of the raw files with Silkypix.
• HDR generation and tonemapping using Photomatix.
• And sometimes, tweaks on the resulting 48 bit TIF file.

Usually, i use the SilkyPix tool to reduce chromatic aberrations during the raw processing. This time i first tried to process the raw files without doing anything about chromatic aberration and give a test to the new Photomatix tool. I was not very convinced by the results ... So i reprocessed my raw files, asked SilkyPix to reduce chromatic aberrations and processed the resulting files in Photomatix without checking the CA reduction option. I found the new result better than the first one.

PTGui update

Parasol pines panoramic landscape

A new version of PTGui was published during my Corsica trip. I've downloaded it yesterday and did some tests with old images.
I was interested by two points of the evolutions : better memory management and better blending quality. For some years, i think that PTGui's blender makes a wonderful work in most of the cases so it's difficult to say from my test images if the new version is a real improvement. I'll need to try with some more problematic pics.
While i was doing these tests, my main workstation was busy with processing Corsica shots so i tried the new version on an old HP Vectra with PIII and 384 MB RAM. I can say that developpers have done a great work with memeory management and speed because the software was running very fast with this old config :)

PTGui Pro : first impressions

For now more than one month i stitch all my panoramic photos with PTGui Pro.
The software is still in beta state and versions are updated very often so i won't write here a real full review but just give my firsts impressions.

About normal (not HDR) images :

• The control points generator seems to be more accurate.
• Blending is very good in most of the cases but sometimes using smartblend as a plugin can improve the result.
• Speed and memory management are very nice. I could stitch some huge panos on an old HP Vectra with Pentium III and 384 MB of RAM.
• I've noticed a little bug with Vertical lines control points but it's not a real issue and i think it will be corrected in a future update.

The HDR side :

As told in a previous post, i'm not a HDR fan. But HDR management beeing one of the biggest improvement of PTGui Pro, i've tested it with some landscapes in difficult light conditions.
So here is what i can say :

• PTGui makes a very good work to identify and align the different exposures of the same shot.
• I've noticed some kinds of dark halos in some parts of the resulting HDR files. This problem does'nt show when i combine the same source files in Photomatix Pro. In the PTGui versions history i read they fixed this bug but i didn't verify.
• The Tone Mapping tool is too basic in my mind and the preview is too small. I find very hard to obtain results having a natural look.

Conclusion :

For me PTGui Pro was the natural update for PTGui to compete with AutoPano Pro and every panoramic photographer will enjoy its simple interface and the quality of the resulting files. For me there is no doubt that the HDR functions will be improved in the future updates.

PTGui Pro : PTGui's answer to AutoPano Pro

PTGui started its life a few years ago as a GUI (Graphic User Interface) for Panorama Tools.
In the first versions i used, i had to set all control points by hand, and file processing was a little slow.
While taking age, PTGui was realy improved : files processing was greatly increased and the software offers now a few tools for an automatic detection of control points. The last stable version (6.03) is one of the most powerful tools for stiching panoramic images.

Near one year ago, a french developper launched Autopano Pro who's is in my mind the only real competitor of PTGui. AutoPano is easy to use and produces some images of high quality with a big plus for some photographers : it handles HDR.

I'm not an HDR fan but sometimes it can be useful to combine different exposures to avoid highlights clipping and noisy shadows so i was surprised that PTGui didn't seem to do anything in the HDR way.
It's done now, i discovered this morning on the PTGui website that PTGui Pro will be soon released and will support HDR.

If you like panoramic photos, you can check mines on patmo.net.

SilkyPix a nice raw converter

As said in other posts, i always shoot raw to keep all the data my camera can capture. So the raw converter is a big key of my post processing workflow and choising the good software is very important. For more than one year i process all my raw files with SilkyPix.
It can process the raw files from near all digital cameras and if i'm not wrong from some digital backs. I mostly use some Nikon DSLR but i also have some cameras of other brands and it's nice to be able to use always the same tool for raw conversion.
SilkyPix has near all the functions someone can hope from a raw converter and the resulting files are of a very high quality.

White balance can be set to many predefined options or processed by SilkyPix. In all the cases it can be manually tuned in many ways.

Color rendition can also be tuned by editing color curves and/or use some predefined models. Still about colors, the software has a nice tool to make some selective fine tunings.

Same thing for tone and contrast : you can choose some predefined settings and/or edit it by tuning the tone curve or using some sliders to change contrast, gamma and black level.

SilkyPix also have many options for sharpening and noise reduction and it's not so hard to obtain some very clear and detailed photos.

So, what's wrong :
The highlights recovery tool is not of an easy use. It's better you don't overexpose your photos.
I think it's missing an easy tool to push up the shadows like the DLightening tool of Nikon Capture.
I'd like to be able to compare side by side two versions of the same raw file processed with different parameters.