Comments on: HDR – Lightroom, Photoshop CS5 & Photomatix?

By: Rachael Towne

Rachael Towne — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 16:54:11 +0000

I still feel that Photomatix is superior to Photoshop, even CS5. I do admit that image alignment and deghosting might be better in CS5, but Photomatix is still superior in the tone mapping and color department.

By: dan mccoy

dan mccoy — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:59:41 +0000

for what its worth…i have photoshop 5 and photomatix and i find photoshop 5 is still not up to photomatix….still have to work more with it but so far the photoshop results are just not as good.

By: Servalpe

Servalpe — Fri, 28 May 2010 11:06:49 +0000

Hi,

Are you using the final version ? I only select 32 bit in HDR Pro and ghost removal tool if it’s necessary. I’m not doing more in this step.

Regards,

Sergio

By: rexyspinner

rexyspinner — Wed, 26 May 2010 17:25:10 +0000

My issues with CS5 HDR Pro is I can’t use it on my Windows 32 bit system. All I get is a black image, I even upgraded my graphics card as I was getting some weird lines and stuff through the images so I couldn’t see what my adjustments were doing. The graphics card eliminated that but now after doing my adjustments all I get is plain black. Drives me nuts. Photomatix is here to stay.

By: John

John — Tue, 25 May 2010 12:47:37 +0000

Servalpe, I’m having trouble using a similar workflow (almost identical actually).

All of my pictures coming out of CS5 are “fuzzy” and out of focus. I think the problem is in how I am working with CS5 because they are out of focus when i start to do tone mapping in Photomatrix. I was using CS4 before with the same steps and everything was sharp sharp sharp. What am I doing wrong with CS5?

By: Richard

Richard — Mon, 17 May 2010 11:00:36 +0000

I have been a long time user of Photomatix Pro for HDR and PS for other post production tasks. I do NOT like the “HDR look”. It mainly shoot landscapes and use HDR for the greatest tonal range and tend towards a more saturated look. I really like the output of Photomatix except the noise and ghosting (as almost everyone else said). However, I have found the effect of the HDR Pro workflow to produce flatter images which I have had a hard time getting to the results of Photomatix, even using the tone curve in HDR Pro (don’t overlook this). However, I use HDR Pro to create the HDR or EXR file and then open this in Photomatix for rendering as a 16-bit file. That gets results more to my liking and yet removes the ghosting and noise. It may be that I haven’t quite got the hang of HDR Pro yet, but at least I reap some of its benefits and still get more of the flavor of the Photomatix images I like. For those who can’t afford CS5 but have CS4, the auto-align feature can help with ghost removal for Photomatix Pro.

By: Andy M

Andy M — Sun, 16 May 2010 19:48:43 +0000

Tim – I have long thought exactly the same. I agrre entirely with all you comments – Andy M

By: Servalpe

Servalpe — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:09:40 +0000

Hi all,

I am going to tell you that from my point of view the best workflow is to use both of them, PS and Photomatix.

I discovered with PS CS4 that is better aligning the bracketed pictures to generate hdr files and to reduce noise too. With CS5, not only the noise reduction is better, the ghosting removal is working very fine. So what is the problem ? The color management. I don’t know id there is a problem because by deafult colorspace for LR is ProPhoto, sRGB for Photomatix and Adobe RGB 1998 for PS. So for example, if you try to export directly from LR to Photomatix or you export to PS to generate HDR file and later open this in PS, not only the noise is different, the color is too.

So what is finally my workflow:

1) Catalog my pics at LR and export them to generate an HDR file with PS CS5 HDR Pro tool, selecting 32 bit and checking ghost removal tool. Later, I save the result as .hdr file.

2) Open the HDR file in Photomatix and I do tonemapping. I save the processed file as TIFF 16 bits file.

3) I open the TIFF file in PS and adjust the colours with curves, shadows and highlights … I am also using Topaz Adjust and Details plugins. And Noiseware too.

If you want to see the results of my workflow, you can check my pictures at my Flickr website: http://www.flickr.com/photos/servalpepbase/

If someone can resolve my problems with the colour cast that produces Photoshop with hdr files, please let me know. For any comment and help about my workflow, please don’t hesitate to contact with me (servalpe@hotmail.com)

Regards,

Sergio

By: Steve

Steve — Sun, 09 May 2010 06:19:19 +0000

HAve been playing around with HDR Pro since being able to buy CS5 upgrade. Is it as good as Photomatix?
I have found it much easier to achieve what I want for photorealistic images using HDR Pro, but conversely I prefer the effect I can achieve with Photomatix when going for a more surreal look. So having both is great. However I cannot see the need to buy photomatix if you do not have it already.
I havent timed it but I would say Photomatix processes images a fair bit faster than HDR Pro.
I personally dont think HDR Pro de-ghosts that much better than Photomatix, but where it really speeds ahead is in its handling of noise control.
Noise control is one area where Adobe have really pulled it off, whether in Photoshop CS5, Camera Raw 6 or the Lightroom 3 Beta, If I was Noise Ninja or Noiseware I would be worried. The way in which these upgrades allow you to control noise and still maintain image detail is amazing and make the cost of upgrade worthwhile on their own.

By: Simon

Simon — Fri, 07 May 2010 21:27:50 +0000

I’ve just done a bunch of experimenting with the new CS5 HDR tools. So far I really like the new functionality. It produces really high quality noise free images, although the processing times are incredibly slow!

I’ve put together my initial thoughts in a rough review on my blog:

http://mundoview.com/wp/2010/05/07/hdr-in-photoshop-cs5/

Cheers,

Simon