HDR PhotoStudio 2 Review will be coming as soon as I make my run through other HDR/Tonemapping apps, but just a few review comments:
- It handles color/saturation/hue very well for HDR/Tonemapping.
- I like that it has a Photoshop plugin so that PS can open their proprietary .bef file format.
- If you don’t read the manual or watch their YouTube videos, you’ll waste valuable time.
- White balance, color tuning, saturation & noise reduction are all VERY useful tools in the pipeline.
- Recipes will come in handy when I get back to playing with the app (think presets).
This is a quick follow-up post with three images I merged to HDR then tonemapped in HDR Studio Pro 2. I’m still new to the software so I’m sure I could have done a better job on these, but the only way to learn these apps is to get face time and just tinker (after reading the manual!!!). I always finish off by exporting 16bit tiffs and then do spot removal and/or final tweaks in Photoshop CS3.
The shots are too large to post on the blog (1200 pixels wide for the landscape shots) so I’ll give you the gallery link I uploaded them to.
IMAGE GALLERY of shots edited in Unified Color HDR PhotoStudio 2
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Tried it. The “halo” effect is still simply unacceptable. All of these programs are still in their infancy. They all halo and the tone mapped image has to be layered in PhotoShop with one (or more) of the exposures to “paint out” the halos. Some day one of the programs will be able to handle power lines against a blue sky. But not yet. Interfaces and controls are nice but the result still has halos even for very light enhancement. Well, I guess we know how to handle that.
Sorry it didn’t work out for you. Yeah, powerlines against a blue sky = Nightmare for any tonemapper.
I find the color to be scintillating, subtle and veridical.
The veil tool is a breakthrough
The noise and sharpness are world class
Thank you for the tip on the manual & videos.
However I would like a plugin for Aperture for workflow