Photomatix Pro 3.2

Photomatix Pro 3.2 is a mighty admirable tool which recovers highlights and shadows details of a high-contrast scene. Using advanced algorithms, Photomatix Pro combines differently exposed shots into one image with increased dynamic range.

Benefits:

• Saving on lighting equipment
• • No need to acquire expensive lighting equipment -and carry it- when you shoot high contrast scenes. Just enable the Auto Exposure Bracketing feature of your camera, and let Photomatix merge your photos into an image with extended dynamic range.
• Great pictures on cloudy days
• • Shadowless hazy sunlight or an overcast sky usually results in dull-looking photographs. The tone mapping tool of Photomatix Pro can turn them into great-looking images.
• Saving time in post-processing
• • Photomatix Pro is designed for productivity -- automatic blending, unlimited stacking, easy comparison of results and batch processing save hours of masking and layers work in image editing programs.
• Well exposed panoramas
• • A panoramic scene is almost always a high contrast scene -- you can't limit your view to areas with the same brightness when shooting a 360° panorama. By taking views under several exposures and processing them in Photomatix Pro, you can create a panorama that will show details in both the dark and bright areas of the scene. Photomatix Pro offers both exposure blending (also knows as exposure fusion) and HDR tone mapping.
    

Major Features:

1. HDR / Tone Mapping
   • Generation of HDR (High Dynamic Range) images from differently exposed images
   • • Option for automatic image alignment. Two alignment methods are available.
     • Option for reducing ghosting artifacts in two different cases: one for ghosting due to moving objects, the other for ghosting artifacts due to background movements.
     • Option for automatic reduction of chromatic aberrations.
     • Option for automatic reduction of noise.
     • Reading of exposure information from Exif data.
     • Source images can be either 8 bits/channel or 16 bits/channel images, or RAW files from several camera models as well as DNG files.
     • In the case of RAW files, White Balance and output color space can be adjusted.
   • Conversion of single RAW file into pseudo-HDR image
   • • Enables to apply the Tone Mapping tool to single RAW file.
     • White Balance can be adjusted in Preferences.
   • Tone Mapping tool for revealing highlights and shadows details in HDR image
   • • Two tone mapping methods available: Details Enhancer, based on a local operator, and Tone Compressor, based on a global operator.
     • Preview enabling to adjust the following settings for Details Enhancer: Strength, Color Saturation, Smoothing, Luminosity, Gamma, Black and White Point, Color Temperature, Saturation Highlights, Saturation Shadows, Microcontrast, Micro-smoothing, Highlights Smoothness, Shadows Smoothness and Shadows Clipping.
     • For Tone Compressor the settings are: Brightness, Tonal Range Compression, Contrast Adaptation, Black and White Point, Color Temperature and Color Saturation.
     • Settings can be saved as Presets for quick access, or saved to and loaded from XMP files
     • Loupe to get a crop at 100% resolution.
     • Option for different preview rations and magnification
     • Undo and redo buttons for the settings done.
     • Output image is in 16 bits/channel mode, with the option to save it as 8 bits/channel jpeg or tiff, if desired
     • Input image can also be a 16 bits/channel image file.
     • Option for output as equirectangular image set to be viewed in a 360 degree panorama viewer in the case of Details Enhancer.
     • Tone Mapping can be undone.
   • HDR Viewer shows local HDR image data at the appropriate exposure
   • Display of HDR Histogram (logarithmic)
   • Ability to batch tone map single HDR images.
   • Function to tone map large HDR image files while benefiting from a preview.
   • Read and Write support for Radiance RGBE (.hdr), OpenEXR (.exr) and Floating Point TIFF
   • Color managed HDR workflow: passing trough of ICC color profiles from the source to the tone mapped images, and color managed display.
2. Exposure Fusion/Blending
   • Four algorithms for Exposure Fusion: Highlights & Shadows - 2 images, Highlights & Shadows - Auto, Highlights & Shadows - Adjust, and Highlights & Shadows - Intensive
   • Automatic alignment option for hand-held images with two alignment methods available
   • Preview and Loupe available for all Exposure Fusion methods.
   • Ability to select the images for method 'H&S - 2 images'
   • • Settings for method H&S - Adjust are: Accentuation, Blending Point, Shadows, Color Saturation, White Clip, Black Clip, Midtones and 360 degree image.
3. Automatic Batch Processing
   • Automatically loads and processes images of the specified input location, and saves resulting images to the specified output location
   • Works for HDR generation, Tone Mapping and exposure fusion
   • Advanced selection options: automatic detection of bracketed photos and ability to process a sub-set of each bracketed set.
   • Strip processing option to generate an HDR image from large TIFF files without exceeding available RAM.
   • Ability to set the Exposure Value spacing for HDR image generation
   • Processes all sets of bracketed images stored under a given folder (number of bracketed images in each set specified by user before running the batch)
   • Ability to process all sub-folders of a given folder, combining all image files stored under each sub-folder
   • Options for naming the the resulting image files.
4. General
   • Support of the following image file formats: JPEG (read & write), TIFF 24-bit, 48-bit and Floating Point (read & write), Radiance RGBE (read & write), OpenEXR (read & write), PNG (Mac version: read & write), PSD (read only) RAW files from several camera models, as well as DNG files (read only)
   • Ability to tag saved image with keyword
   • Basic image operation tools
   • • Cropping (also works with HDR images)
     • Resizing (also works with HDR images)
     • Rotating (also works with HDR images)
     • Sharpening
     • Brightness & Contrast
     • Remapping of mirror ball (also works with HDR images)
   • Multi-threading support for tone mapping: complete multi-threading for Tone Compressor method and partial for Details Enhancer method. The maximum number of cores used can be adjusted in Preferences.
   • Includes Lightroom Export Plugin to Photomatix Pro
   • • HDR processing settings are selected directly in the Lightroom plug-in
     • Option to automatically save the resulting tone mapped or fused image and re-import it into the Lightroom library

Enhancements:

• Multi-threading support for Tone Compressor and parts of Details Enhancer
• Details Enhancer settings improvements: New mode offering finer control for Smoothing setting (i.e. the setting that controls "natural" vs "artificial" look) and improved effect of Highlights Smoothness (i.e. the setting that preserves "clean" skies)
• Ability to tag saved images with keyword
• Built-in presets for Details Enhancer
• More robust alignment for "by matching features" method.
• Batch processing advanced options