CS5 & HDR

How does the HDR function in CS5 compare to that of Photomatix. I"m trying to decide if I should upgrade to CS5 - but need to know if the HDR function is as good, better or not as good as Photomatix ?

I have the same question.

Just a side note, in October Nik Software is planning to release their HDR module and for what I have seen it will give Photomatix a run for their money. I use Photomatix and sometimes merge images in CS5 but so far color, strength and enhancement controls Photomatix has it over CS5. Although I find truer colors with CS5.

At this point it all comes down to personal preference and comfort with the controls. CS5 and Photomatix do the same thing. I have found CS5's alignment and ghosting control to be superior to Photomatix, especially shooting handheld at long focal lengths. Photomatix suffers from color casts as well, as kevin mentioned, compared to CS5. Photomatix has a new version (4.0) in beta - you can download it and see if you have any more success with it compared to the 3.x version. Supposedly, Photomatix 4.0 is going to give a better representation of the final tonemapped image in the preview, addressing a long standing problem that often led to unpredictable results once the user pressed the "Process" button.

CS5 also offers the advantage of a more integrated 32 bpc workflow when compared to Photomatix. Its Raw conversion during the HDR merge process is much better, in my opinion, than Photomatix and once the 32 bpc file is created within CS5, you can go straight away into editing in 32 bit mode prior to conversion (mode change) to 16 or 8 bits. The fact that CS5 offers a tone mapping curve in the "Local Adaptation" conversion to lower bit depths is almost, in and of itself, a reason why it is superior to Photomatix in terms of tone mapping.

While Photomatix is still very popular, it appears to be lagging behind some of the advances in the newer HDR apps, in terms of the workflow, Raw conversion and color control that have become important areas of HDR creation. With the release of updated versions of FDR Tools, HDR Expose aand Picturenaut, and new releases of SNS-HDR, Oloneo and Nik HDR Efex, and of course CS5, Photomatix has some work ahead to take their game to the next level. Of course each of those apps, including Photomatix, has its own special niche or feature that may make it preferable to others in certain situations - It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out, but the popularity of HDR has created a demand that has spurred innovation and choice where Photomatix used to be the only game in town. Thankfully.

Try CS5 - you will be pleasantly surprised - if someone claims that CS5 cannot achieve all that Photomatix does, they aren't trying hard enough. You can make a similarly natural or completely overcooked, over-the-top image in both applications, so I suppose it comes down to your comfort level with the controls and the price tag you are targeting, although the controls themselves are pretty similar in terms of what they do and how they are laid out.

Try the trial versions of each and see which you prefer.

Kirk

Kirk, have you given Oloneo a spin yet? I was really surprised at what it does and how fast it is.

Kevin wrote in post #10825101
Just a side note, in October Nik Software is planning to release their HDR module and for what I have seen it will give Photomatix a run for their money. I use Photomatix and sometimes merge images in CS5 but so far color, strength and enhancement controls Photomatix has it over CS5. Although I find truer colors with CS5.

Gary McDuffie wrote in post #10833329
Kirk, have you given Oloneo a spin yet? I was really surprised at what it does and how fast it is.

From my recent experience with Oloneo, I think that apps like Photomatix, CS5 (HDR), HDR PhotoStudio (Or Expose or whatever they're calling themselves this week) will soon be backseat issues.

I have gotten both realistic and "tonemapped look" results from Oloneo that FAR surpasses anything else I have tried to date with both faux (single) and real (multiple) image input projects.

Not to mention it has a more intuitive interface, is faster, produces better preview-to-saved image results, etc.

With a proper marketing budget and the help of a promotion genius, this app could make themselves the new benchmark in HDR.

Oloneo looks to be a app to be reconed with for sure. I don't run a parallel OS on my Mac so until they develop it Mac I will just have to watch and wait. I'm sure Mac development will come as soon as they see the windows version gaining market interest.

A while back I messed with Oloneo. Here are some examples processed with the beta.* I messed with it for about 45 minutes, in XP running in VMWare Fusion on my Mac Book Pro.* It is fast even in that environment, but still has some alpha/beta refinements needed.

Kirk

Here are two "true" HDRs:

1) - Equirectangular panorama

Here is a two-part (p)review of Oloneo I found written by a member of another forum, exploring Oloneo and comparing the output to some other HDR apps:

http://www.webphotos.n​l/pages/review.html

Kevin - I don't get the feeling that a Mac version of Oloneo is in the works - this from the "System Requirements" page of the website:

http://www.oloneo.com …/system-requirements.html

I run it on my dual core MacBook Pro in VMWare Fusion / Win XP and it is responsive and WYSIWYG.

Kirk