HDR applications to create natural look

I'm annoyed at the poor performance of PS's HDR function, and am willing to pay for a better program to produce a more natural looking result. Any recommendations?

tvphotog wrote in post #17640536
I'm annoyed at the poor performance of PS's HDR function, and am willing to pay for a better program to produce a more natural looking result. Any recommendations?

You talking about the older HDR function inside Photoshop, or the new one with ACR or Lightroom?

For natural looking results I like Oloneo Photoengine. It is fast and excellent, but has a pathetic 1990's-looking UI. Photomatix is capable of natural looking results, but requires more finesse (read greater learning curve) with the controls.

My summary / my opinion:

Oloneo - produces natural look but has a pathetic anti-ghosting algorithm. I used it for years while they were trying to program anti-ghosting. They never did figure it out so I gave up. I have not used it in over a year so maybe they have. Don't know.

Photomatix - can produce natural HDR, but rather should be treated as the best tool to use when wanting the tonemapped look. Even when producing natural HDRs, Photomatix tends to over-saturate some color groups, introduce noise into shadow areas, and more. Has the best anti-ghosting algorithm.

Nik HDR Efex - Probably the best all-around tool for natural HDR. When the tonemapped look is desired, it's harder to achieve in Nik because it tends to produce more natural-looking images which is what you want. Good anti-ghosting.

Lightroom / PS CC - Don't know. I use CS5. I've read varied reviews about LR / CC. But I do know the HDR in CS5 is probably the worst on planet earth.

Thanks to you both.

I found this B&H video very helpful working with "natural looking" HDR. Tim does a good job with it.

https://www.youtube.co​m …2&list=PLA2A796​6A44E77011

Ron

To be honest, ultimately if you want truly natural looking images don't use any HDR software at all. Learn to blend luminosity masks. There's tons of tutorials all over the place. And a new photoshop (lightroom?) plugin makes it really easy. I have Raya Pro running on PS CS5 just fine. If you shoot multiple exposures and blend with LM, you never need to worry about HDR software adding tonemapped effects, skewing colors, introducing noise and so forth.

Picture North Carolina wrote in post #17642594
To be honest, ultimately if you want truly natural looking images don't use any HDR software at all. Learn to blend luminosity masks. There's tons of tutorials all over the place. And a new photoshop (lightroom?) plugin makes it really easy. I have Raya Pro running on PS CS5 just fine. If you shoot multiple exposures and blend with LM, you never need to worry about HDR software adding tonemapped effects, skewing colors, introducing noise and so forth.

Thanks. Now that's an interesting idea, I just read about it online at the site. How long have you been using it and do you have some examples?

I love SNS-HDR. I use the free version. Very realistic in my opinion.

tvphotog wrote in post #17643199
Thanks. Now that's an interesting idea, I just read about it online at the site. How long have you been using it and do you have some examples?

I have been dabbling in LM off and on for years, but never really got into it because, to be honest, I found working with the many luminosity channels a PIT'A. I just found out about Raya Pro a short while ago. I'm going thru the tuts as time allows and still learning it, but I can already see that it will make working with masks a whole lot easier. Working with L masks is more challenging, but once mastered the results far surpass HDR app stuff.

Machinery HDR is a good software.

http://www.machineryhd​r.com/

Along the line of luminosity mask, a PS plugin called Lumenzia.

http://gregbenzphotogr​aphy.com/lumenzia/

Thanks again. I decided on the Nik program. But what was impressive was that I had already had it on my computer. I had been using Nik Color Efex Pro but had had trouble with the license number when I added the program to my new computer.

I emailed Nik, and they were gracious enough to give me a new licence for their entire Nik Collection, now sold as a unit, which included HDR Pro 2.

I tried it and it's fantastic, just what I wanted to enhance my HDR composites. Incredibly better than the HDR function in PS. BTW, the Youtube instructional videos of HDR Pro are incredible.

Thanks again.

I've had good results with Exposure Fusion as opposed to traditional HDR using LightRoom EF which is a free LR plug-in. Actually it's donationware so it costs a little. Now I'm just using LR 6's merge to HDR but also working with LM.