What is the best HDR software?

I'm cheap, so I use Gimp. Just downloaded an HDR plug-in for it. haven't had much time to play with it yet though so I can't say much for it right now, other than it is free

try this program...it's free

http://www.hdrlabs.com​/picturenaut/index.htm​l

Photomatix is a great program....with great customer support. FDR tools is good also and Topaz adjust works well for doing single picture HDRs. I actually own all 3 and bounce between the 3 depending on what I'm doing.

I use Photomatix PRO and it's great, I recommend it!

GUI - I sat and spent an hour on your site (google translation from Spanish) and I am very very very impressed. Your HDRs look so natural (I also like the unnatural look of HDRs - esp those with the almost purple sky....) and you make it SOUND easy - though I have yet to figure it all out. It seems that I will have to invest more time in understanding and playing with the program. I have a s3IS and with a hack we can get out a RAW file of 8-10bits (i forgot which). Do you think it would work along the same principle?

Try it. I use my old 1D occasionally, and it's RAW files are are not cr2, but tif. Photomatix won't import those, so I mailed Photomatix support. They said to just rename the .tif to .cr2, which I did, and they then imported fine. Might be worth a try.

ceriltheblade wrote in post #7123646
I have a s3IS and with a hack we can get out a RAW file of 8-10bits (i forgot which). Do you think it would work along the same principle?

If that RAW format is supported by DCRAW or you can convert to DNG, it should work the same.

And looking at Dave Coffin's list of supported formats:
Canon PowerShot S3 IS (CHDK hack)

It is supported. Let me know of your tests (email please).

BR

SpeedkingXSi wrote in post #7117316
try this program...it's free

http://www.hdrlabs.com​/picturenaut/index.htm​l

Thanks, I did! Shooting jpg with a P&S... it's not great, and I didn't notice a car ruined a shot, but I'm very pleased for a first try! It's far better than I could've got with a single exposure. PP was slight curves, sharpen, fix a few hot pixels, and of course I couldn't resist a little over-saturation

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This morning I processed a HDR scene (14 f-stops of real DR) from several shots (I used 7 shots but 4 would have sufficed):

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I have used Photomatix for about 2 years and FDR Tools for about 6 months now. I have processed over 200 HDRs in Photomatix and probably nearly 100 in FDR Tools. After getting to know the ins and outs of both programs I think Photomatix (PM) probably holds a slight edge IMO, but it depends on the shot, and on what style of HDR you prefer. In some cases FDR Tools produces better results IMO.

It's hard to compare HDR apps because many parameters in each program are different, for example, PM has two sliders "microcontrast" and "micro-smoothing" that, as far as I can tell, are effectively combined into a single "compression" slider in FDR. Overall, PM has more fine-tuning options, although FDR has a curves adjustment in the tonemapper which is handy. So a feature-for-feature comparison is nearly impossible since the features vary a lot. What I am left with is an overall impression of how each program lets me achieve the look I want.

One clear area in which PM holds a huge edge is in the UI department. It's a much more user-friendly program with more useful options. That said, FDR has a wonderful "projects" feature which retains the settings used to process a given set of exposures allowing you to go back at a later time to re-edit an image without starting over, as you would need to do in PM (unless you saved your settings as a preset).

However, in terms of image quality, each program has its strengths and weaknesses. Although usually the differences are minor, I haven't yet figured out a way to tell before hand if a given shot is better suited to one program or the other. I often end up processing the same set of exposures in both apps to see which I prefer.

If I was pressed to say what the strengths of each program were I'd say for PM it's the preservation of the overall character of light in a scene, shadows retain their cores and umbras more often, whereas in FDR often they get flattened out more.

FDR's main strength is it's ability to resolve detail and texture, sometimes to extreme levels.

Here are 2 examples from each program (please note that each of these shots was further processed after tonemapping. The goal in my processing was to achieve the the result I liked best, these were not processed with the aim of comparing the two HDR programs, YMMV):

Of these two, I prefer the FDR version:

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I use Essential HDR Community,for me i find it the easiest to use.It seems to work for me,and if you use the free version they don't put the water mark right across your picture it is discretely in the bottom left hand corner.