Get Creative With Photomatix

Photomatix

I really love photography but since it’s quite an expensive hobby i can only wish somebody would sponsor me a nikon or canon. Last week, a friend of mine introduced me to this cool software for creating High Dynamic Range image or HDR. I just can’t stop myself, i’ve been playing with it for the whole week. It’s like magic, turning my dull photos into a super cool HDR photos. It’s like a chick, pulling me deeper into photography. Plus it’s easy to use compared to photoshop.

See for yourself, the Photomatix awesomeness.

Original Photo

Created With Photomatix

You need three files from a single photo with different exposure value. You can use photoshop or lightroom for that. The three files are the original, a lighter(+2) one and a darker(-2) one. It’s not limited to three photos, you can have more , depends on your creativity. Then you can have your HDR photo in three steps.

-2 darker | original | lighter +2

1. Click Generate HDR Image to import those three photos. You will be prompted to select EV (Exposure Values). Photomatix usually suggest a value but you can change it to what ever you want from 1 to 4. He recomended me to stick with EV 1 to 2. Of course this requires a deeper knowledge in photography to understand it, so i just do what i was told to do.

2. Now you got yourself an unprocessed HDR image. You might not like it here as the photo looks pretty bad. Don’t worry, you didn’t messed up. Standard monitors just can’t display the large range of information within an unprocessed HDR image, that’s all. Next, click on Tone Mapping.

3. Get creative, go further with the presets or you can play around with Details Enhancer and Tone Compressor if you want until you get the result you want. This is the final step, save your photo when you’re done.

Photomatix Pro

Visit NoCritics photo blog if you want to see more photos or you can watch this simple Photomatix video tutorial for more information.

Thanks.

Tags: imaging, photography