Exterior Architectural Photos: HDR & Photomatix Question

MMeticulous · Sep 29, 2009

Hello Everyone!

Can someone who has experience with HDR and Photomatix please tell me how much time is required to render & finish a single image? Also, are there other software solutions I should consider for HDR, or is photomatix THE BEST HDR solution?

Thanks!

:mrgreen: Jeff

Buckster · Sep 29, 2009

MMeticulous said:
Hello Everyone!

Can someone who has experience with HDR and Photomatix please tell me how much time is required to render & finish a single image? Also, are there other software solutions I should consider for HDR, or is photomatix THE BEST HDR solution?

Thanks!

:mrgreen: Jeff

You can spend a great deal of time fiddling with adjustments, or you can accept some defaults and be done with it, and as you get experience with it, you'll no doubt get faster.

For actual rendering time, that will likely depend on the machine and the size of the image your rendering. For me, it generally takes only a few seconds to render a full frame original size output to a 16 bit TIF for further adjustment work in Photoshop.

Photomatix is certainly the most popular, and I have it and have used it. Still, I tend to like "Dynamic HDR" a little better and have and use that more often when I want to HDR or tone-map a photo. I guess you'd have to try both and see which one you like better. In the end, they'll do the same thing, just the controls are different.

MMeticulous · Oct 3, 2009

I have Photoshop CS3, and I see that it offers an easy HDR merge option. Is there an advantage to using Photomatix or Dynamic HDR over just using Photoshop CS3?

I absolutely don't mind spending the extra $100 for Photomatix, as long as the functionatlity is better than CS3. What would everyone advise?

Thanks!
:mrgreen: Jeff

Buckster · Oct 3, 2009

MMeticulous said:
I have Photoshop CS3, and I see that it offers an easy HDR merge option. Is there an advantage to using Photomatix or Dynamic HDR over just using Photoshop CS3?

I absolutely don't mind spending the extra $100 for Photomatix, as long as the functionatlity is better than CS3. What would everyone advise?

Thanks!
:mrgreen: Jeff

My advice, for what it's worth: You can test drive them for free and find out for yourself which works best for your work flow, your comfort using the programs, options offered, ease of use, abilities, strengths, weaknesses, and so on. I could pick out a car, camera, food and clothes for you as well, but they'd be to my tastes, not yours.

That said, to be honest, I wasn't terribly impressed with CS3 or CS4 HDR. I didn't feel like I had much control over it, compared to the stand alone applications dedicated to it.

Your mileage may vary.