bkijek Loc: Oak Lawn, Illinois

I was just told by Canon that their DPP4 does not support HDR. Comments?

2666loco

Hello
There is a neat free program. It is called San Serif Plus. It has an HDR option. It can be downloaded free from:
https://download.cnet.com/Serif-PhotoPlus-Starter-Edition/3000-2192_4-75547686.html. It's been in my computer for years and caused no harm. I bought the program years ago (upgraded from free). I use Adobe Elements 9 or 11 myself. I haven't ever used the HDR but it is in Elements. Sounds like you shoot a LOT of photos and you can buy Elements for $60-80, well worth it. I still used Elements 9 a lot because I like the dark screen work area better than PSE 11. There is a freebie San Serif Panoramic download also that works well.

Jim

bkijek Loc: Oak Lawn, Illinois

Thanks for the reply. As it turns out I was given incorrect information. Canon's DPP$ has HDR capabilities.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

There are two primary approaches to HDR - realistic and interpretive/impressionistic. Captain Kimo and Trey Radcliffe (stuckincustoms.com) are interpretive. Their stuff hurts my eyes to look at it. Nothing natural about anything they do, but some people do like the look.

Realistic is just a compression of tonal range from wider to narrower, without the colors, contrast and false-looking shadow detail that can be so typical of the other style.

Photomatix is the most mature and capable HDR merging program. It does the Tonemapping (interpretive) and it does Exposure Fusion (realistic) - both really well. Yes, there are a gazillion other programs that can do HDR, but none as complete, regardless of what the Contrarian Luddite says.

SNS, Aurora, On1, Nik, Topaz, Oloneo PhotoEngine LR/Enfuse - and even Lightroom and Photoshop - can all do HDR as well with varying success. Some are stronger at tonemapping, others at Fusion. Real Estate photographers had pretty much adopted LR/Enfuse as a standard because of the natural and realistic result it produced - and it was free. People like free.

I use Lightroom 98% of the time, unless I am feeling playful, in which case I will use Oloneo or Photmatix. If I am creating one hand-held or if there is movement, Photomatix is the best tool.

I am an old zone system guy too - (1967) but I have kept up. You will have a ball playing around with these tools, but you may want to consider upgrading your basic editing software - and get the current version of Photoshop - it comes with Lightroom, which although it has the same raw processing engine, has a much better interface. What I like about using Lightroom for HDR, btw, is that it first produces a preview to let you adjust your settings - then after processing you have a raw file - dng - that behaves just like a regular single shot raw file, and the end result is a bit cleaner than using any of the other products.

bkijek Loc: Oak Lawn, Illinois

Thanks for the input. What is a dang file?

bkijek Loc: Oak Lawn, Illinois

Did I actually type a “dang” file instead of “dng” file?😂 maybe I was trying to a “dang, dng” file.

(Acually, I discovered that the keyboard changed “dng” to “dang” and I didn’t proofread close enough.)