Category Archives: HDR Software Reviews
Oloneo PhotoEngine Tutorial, How I Love Thee!
I recently reviewed Oloneo’s PhotoEngine last week. Since then, I have had more opportunities to experience it. I must say, the more I play, the more it amazes me. Oloneo has it all figured out over there and if you haven’t played around with it yet, you should. Download the 30 day trial and give it a taste for yourself. I must say, 150 dollars is a very small price to pay for such a powerful HDR program. My fellow HDRtist’s, welcome to the Photoshop equivalent of HDR software.
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Oloneo PhotoEngine Review
I have tested many HDR programs in the past and until this point none have given Photomatix its run for the title belt until now. Oloneo has created the Oloneo PhotoEngine, a brand spanking new HDR processing software that really takes the cake. As always I went into the download a skeptic, but came out a believer. Oloneo has graciously presented the HDR world with a program worthy of the finest HDRtist’s. I was astounded when I opened the interface, setup 5 Raws for processing, and 23 seconds later I was tonemapping an HDR image.
The Interface:
The Good:
- Insanely fast processing time. Oloneo has it nailed, 5 Raw Exposures ready for tonemapping in 24 seconds? Unheard of!
- The “Natural HDR Mode”. This mode is great for putting nasty saturation spikes at bay.
- Excellent color control. Oloneo has added a white balance color picker which allows you the ability to set your white balance during the tonemapping phase by select an area of true white in your image. They have also given the user complete control over color hues using genuine saturation, luminance and hue slider bars. This may be my favorite feature.
- The ability to adjust curves during the tonemapping phase.
- You can look at the history of what you have done to your image and get a real time preview of what each step did…Sick!
- Oloneo has even added video tutorials for each adjustment box, a killer touch!
- Very simple Batch processing interface.
- Export directly to Photoshop!
The Bad:
- My only complaint: You really have to ensure there was no movement in your HDR exposures. The ghosting features are not as sharp as some of the other HDR programs out there.
The Bottom Line:
- Oloneo has redefined my expectations of future HDR programs. It will take a lot for another program to reach the caliber of Oloneo’s PhotoEngine. Photomatix’ next update will have to bring it’s A game to the title bout with Oloneo. With a little more playing, I could easily be converted. While it is pricey at 150 US clam shells, it is worth it! Well done Oloneo, I cannot wait to see the evolution of your product (as if it could get any better)!
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Photo Enhance Android App Review
A couple of months ago I purchased the Photo Enhance Pro by Mark Wheadon App off of Amazon for 99 cents,$4.99 on the Android Market. It is a simple app that tonemaps your cell phone snaps. While I am not a fan of Pseudo HDR’s I am however a fan of the HDR look and the possibilities of seeing every picture as such. Even simple cell phone pictures hold possibilities for me, I know they are just point and trash pictures but I have to see what they could be in HDR. So, I downloaded Photo Enhance Pro.
The Interface:
Very simple interface. You open the App and it prompts you to select an image from your gallery, pretty simple not much to really show. You can select how much you want to tonemap the image by scrolling through what the App calls “Subtlety“. From there you can also adjust the Saturation, Brightness, Contrast, and Tone of the generated image.
The Effects:
The Good:
- It allows you to get a somewhat HDR effect on your cell phone snapshots for those HDR junkies out there that wouldn’t have there cell snaps any other way.
- Very simple interface to use.
- There is a free version that allows you full use of the App, but will not allow you to save them at high resolution.
- A very nice “High Black” feature for high contrast black and whites.
- You can adjust the essentials as well: Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Tone and Crop.
- It does exactly what it is supposed to, it tonemaps pictures. Unlike the many photo apps out there that have an over saturated amount of crap in them.
- Unlike many other camera apps, it works on full resolution images, it does not minimize them first before you can play, thus destroying the quality. Awesome touch!
The Bad:
- My only reservation with this app is the Maximum Effect that yields the standard muddy HDR images that many poor HDR programs generate. I would never subject any photo to that much tonemapping, but there are people out there that would, but those are the ones that give true HDR a bad name. I really wish the maximum effect were taken out for that reason, but this is simply a personal preference.
The Bottom Line:
While it may not be Photomatix, for 99 cents, I don’t think you can go wrong! It does what it is meant to and very well for a cell phone app. Great job Mark.
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Essential HDR
This week I downloaded the free trial of Essential HDR by Imaging Luminary. I am hoping the results I received are from the fact that regardless of your initial image sizes, the free trial version dumbs your result down to 1 megabyte. While this is a great strategy to keep people from getting a free product, it is a horrible idea for a free trial as you cannot justify spending money on such poor results from the trial version.
The Interface:
I layered the 3 windows for demonstration purposes. In order to access them you have to click on the tabs that are highlighted.
The Good:
- The histogram feature is awesome and something I wish so much that Photomatix would adopt. It really helps the process of tonemapping an image.
- The color balancer is nice too, a three slider control is much better than a single temperature slider.
The Bad:
- Limited sliders make for very similar HDR images.
- The shadows clipped beyond belief. I couldn’t seem to get them right in the tonemapping process. I believe the clipping is due to the poor 1 megabyte quality images produced due to the trial version. As I stated before, this trial version does not entice me to drop the cash on the full product!
- The alignment process was pretty far off in 3 of the 5 images I processed.
- Get rid of the tabs and open that whole space up for all three slider sections, a lot of wasted space on the interface.
The Bottom Line:
Purchase the full version and get back to me. Tell me if the shadow clipping occurs. From my results below, Essential HDR is not essential in my HDR arsenal.
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HDR Photo Pro
Another great program by the makers of last week’s HDR Darkroom, Everimage LTD. These guys nailed it with HDR Photo Pro. It has a pretty self explanatory interface with a lot to offer. You can get any range of HDR styles with the well engineered slider bars found on the right side of the interface. I was impressed with the handling of the images I threw at it, especially after the last few HDR programs I have reviewed. I tested the alignment feature pretty extensively and HDR Photo Pro aligned them all. The image I settled on for the post was a hand held shot of a 3 image exposure set at the San Francisco Zoo. This shot is very old and I am ashamed to say I shot it in .jpeg, but look how well HDR Photo Pro handled the noise in the image comparison at the bottom of the screen.
The Interface:
The Good:
- Very well engineered slider bars, although minimal they create maximum potential for HDR images.
- The folder view on the left. At first I didn’t like it, but now that I think about it, it has serious potential for speed in post processing. You tell HDR Photo Pro what folder you want it to go to and it opens all the images. Great if you set up a folder with just bracketed exposures. You can then work down the line of images saving as you go and re-using the existing settings for the last image. Very well thought out.
- End result is a great image!
- Very fast processing speeds.
- The noise slider bar and curves adjuster are awesome!
The Bad:
- No drag and drop feature for fast processing of bracketed images. A minor flaw after seeing how they managed the folder scroll bar on the left of the interface.
- The vignette slider bar, while I do tend to like vignettes, throwing a slider bar in the program for it throws off the post processing of the image. I feel vignettes are the final step for an image, by throwing that slider bar in the HDR tonemapping process we are going to see a lot less methodically post processed images out there and a shit ton of vignettes!
- The price, 129.99, 30 dollars more than Photomatix and they don’t have a selective deghosting feature
Big downfall in my opinion.
The Bottom Line:
Great program, creates kick ass HDR images and stands very firmly next to Photomatix Pro. HDR Photo Pro, you have earned the title Pro in my opinion, now drop and give me 30 and we got a deal!
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HDR Darkroom!
The search continues for greener HDR pastures. This week I downloaded the free trial for HDR Darkroom by Everimaging LTD. Of the many HDR programs that claim to create great HDR images at lightening speed, I would have to throw my hat off to HDR Darkroom. I am a bit of a skeptic when it comes to express style HDR image programs because many of them fail in the quality category. This is not true for HDR Darkroom. I ran a test on some of my favorite images to see just how HDR Darkroom could hold up.
The Interface:
The Good:
- Ease of operation, the whole experience just seemed really easy.
- The interface was well laid out, and the effects of the slider bars ran extremely fast even at full size.
- The 3 categories for HDR really do a great job of getting you started, before post processing in an outside agency like Photoshop.
- Everimaging LTD made great use of the tonemapping process with very little slider bars.
- It’s only 79.00, and these guys offer a student version for 39.99!
The Bad:
- While it was very easy to use and the slider bars offered great HDR images, they all seemed to be the same, I couldn’t quite get any other HDR styles out of the slider bars.
- Once you have created an HDR image the program does not prompt you to tonemap it. While this may seem nit picky, there are some beginners out there who would not know to tonemap there newly made HDR image.
- The HDR image looked much better in the tonemapping interface than it did after HDR Darkroom tonemapped it.
The Bottom Line:
I would use this program again and again as it is a simple process for making pretty good HDR images. At least they are a great starting point for Photoshop post processing. Good job Everimaging LTD!
