If you have ever photographed a high contrast scene, you know that even the  best exposure will typically have blown out highlights and flat shadows. Photomatix offers two ways to solve this problem:

 › Exposure Blending: Merge differently exposed photographs into one image with increased dynamic range.
› Tone Mapping: Reveal highlight and shadow details in an HDR image created from multiple exposures. The tone mapped image is ready for printing while showing the complete dynamic range captured.

Photomatix Pro is a stand-alone program that runs on Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/Vista. 32bit and also 64bit OSes . The Tone Mapping tool is also available separately as a plugin compatible with Photoshop CS2. In retail ,One license for Photomatix Pro costs US$99 or €75. One license for the Tone Mapping Plug-In costs US$69 or €55.

› Saving on lighting equipment
Given that most digital cameras can auto-bracket at different exposures, you do not need to acquire expensive lighting equipment -and carry it- when shooting high contrast scenes. Just enable Auto Exposure Bracketing, and let Photomatix merge your photos into an image with extended dynamic range.

› 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.

› Taking advantage of your 32-bit images
Have you created a 32-bit HDR image in Photoshop CS2 and could not get a good HDR conversion? The Photomatix Tone Mapping tool may help. See how it compares to Photoshop CS2 HDR conversion.

› 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. Check this image as example.

› Noise reduction
The Exposure Blending functions of Photomatix Pro merge any number of bracketed photos -- this process is equivalent to image stacking, which tends to reduce noise in the resulting image.

› 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.

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, Light Smoothing, Luminosity, Gamma, Black and
White Point, Color Temperature, Saturation Highlights, Saturation Shadows, Microcontrast, Micro-smoothing, Highlights Smoothing, Shadows Smoothing 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 sizes (small, medium, large and fit)
› 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
› In the case of Details Enhancer, 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.

Exposure Blending (Combining differently exposed images)
- Four algorithms for Exposure Blending: 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 Blending 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.

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 blending
- 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.

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)
- Basic image operation tools
› Cropping (also works with HDR images)- (High Dynamic Range)
› Resizing (also works with HDR images)
› Rotating (also works with HDR images)
› Sharpening
› Brightness & Contrast
› Remapping of mirror ball (also works with HDR images)
- Availability of Lightroom Export Plugin to Photomatix Pro

 - Availability of Lightroom Export Plugin to Photomatix Pro

 

Additional Features:

• Generation of HDR (High Dynamic Range) images from differently exposed images

• Conversion of single RAW file into pseudo-HDR image

• Tone Mapping tool for revealing highlights and shadows details in HDR image

• 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

• Four algorithms for Exposure Blending

• 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

• Preview and Loupe available for all Exposure Blending methods

• Automatic alignment option for hand-held images with two alignment methods available

• Ability to select the images for method ‘H&S – 2 images’

• Automatic Batch Processing

• Support JPEG, TIFF, Radiance RGBE, OpenEXR, PNG, PSD, RAW files from several camera models