I have been contemplating trying my hand at HDR and researched it a bit over the last while. I am trying to understand what is the best direction for me to go.
I do the vast majority of my work in LR3.4. I tend to be a minimalist when it comes to cloning and find I can usually do what I need to in LR. I have CS3, but almost always use it just for prepping my pictures for my web site ('framing' and signature).
Some time ago I bought Noise Ninja and then a year or so later upgraded to LR3. I found the noise reduction in LR3 so good that I almost never use NN any more. I wondering the same thing about CS5. Is it as good/nearly as good as third party, dedicated HDR programs and buying dedicated HDR software will be a very short term investment?
From what I can understand PhotoMatix is the leader in HDR software. So my questions are:
- Is that the feeling of most of you (PhotoMatix being best of breed)?
- Is PhotoMatix Pro the way to go instead of PhotoMatix Essentials? Only Pro has the Merge to HDR and the LR plugin, so I'm thinking with my work flow I probably want Pro?
- Is CS5's HDR close enough to PhotoMatix Pro that I should spend the $200 to upgrade my CS3 to CS5 (even with my limited use of CS) vs buying PhotoMatix Pro for $99?
I'd spend the money on CS5. it's HDR does a pretty good job and once CS6 comes out, if you dont *already* have CS5, you'll be forced to pay full price for CS6 (ie. no upgrade pricing for anything pre-CS5). You might also want to research 'exposure fusion' which is a less heavy-handed kind of HDR
Thanks for the reply howardm4. I can see from the specs that Photomatix Pro has exposure fusion. I saw only one post (at blogs.adobe.com) that seems to indicate that CS5 has exposure fusion. Does anybody know if it actually does.
Any other thoughts out there on CS5 HDR vs. Photomatix Pro?
I have both and I use photomatix for HDR... it's pretty cheap if I recall, $60 or so? And I believe they let you upgrade across versions (take THAT adobe!)
Anyway, the LR plugin is very easy to use and since I got photomatix before CS5 (went from CS3 to CS5) maybe it's just habit.
You can always try them both out for 30 days to see for yourself. CS5 has so many upgrades over CS3 it's almost worth doing it for everything BUT HDR. Photomatix has some nice anti-ghosting steps built in at the front of the process.
Howardm4, just curious, have you seen something that says Adobe will provide a CS6 upgrade path only to CS5 users and that all others would have to buy new? If that is Adobe's formal position on CS6 then I may be better off to get CS5 rather than spend my money on Photomatix Pro right now. I can get my feet wet on HDR with CS5 and then decide if there is a big enough difference between CS5 HDR and Photomatix Pro.
The above may make sense as long as there isn't a large difference between CS5 HDR and Photomatix Pro re ease of use and final picture quality.
"With regards to upgrades, we are changing our policy for perpetual license customers. In order to qualify for upgrade pricing when CS6 releases, customers will need to be on the latest version of our software (either CS5 or CS5.5 editions). If our customers are not yet on those versions, we’re offering a 20% discount through December 31, 2011 which will qualify them for upgrade pricing when we release CS6."
Thanks for the reply Z_man. I think that kind of seals it. I am going to upgrade to CS5 from 3 and check out its HDR, as well as see what other features I might want to make use of. I may or may not upgrade to CS6, but at least I will have a (somewhat) reasonable cost upgrade path. And if I don't like the CS5 HDR, I can later compare it to Photomatix Pro and CS6 HDR.
I find the cs5 hdr interface difficult to work with. photomatix is far easier. that much said, I think the best is LRenfuse, a plugin for LR which is donation based, and gives by far the best, most realistic results (well the best is manual exposure blending actually)
kevindar wrote:
I find the cs5 hdr interface difficult to work with. photomatix is far easier. that much said, I think the best is LRenfuse, a plugin for LR which is donation based, and gives by far the best, most realistic results (well the best is manual exposure blending actually)
I prefer a more realistic look when combining exposures. LRenfuse will give you that. It is also easy to batch from inside LR.
Photomatix also has a fusion option (which is the most natural) and the results are very similar to LRenfuse. They both align your shots (which is necessary even with tripod exposures). Photomatix offers saturation, sharpening, noise reduction,etc. but I use Lightroom to complete post.
