Photo Software Reviews,
High Dynamic Range Photography:
Tonemapping Makes Photomatix Tick

Cool photo software reviews and HDR tutorial (high dynamic range photography) on Photomatix tonemapping are featured on this page.

The image which appears is comprised of the tonemapping settings from the last use of Photomatix. If this is your first run-through, it should display its default settings - a great place to start.

After awhile, you will develop your own style and thus corresponding settings, which you can save with the program's preset function.

There is also a loupe so you can magnify various areas within the pic.

If you were like me, you went hiking the ol' triple-W ranch for some insight as to preferable settings for the Details Enhancer function. And just like politics, there are no shortage of opinions.

From the outset, you should understand this learning curve is just like any other. The knowledge keeps building as you get more familiar with the program. You will go through a lot of trials and errors.

Even after you think you have settled on a group of settings, you'll find a website on photo software reviews that suggests another set - and worse still, they seem to work better than yours!

Hey, accept that you're not a Photomatix guru. At the least, you learn some more setting options which may come in handy sometime when you've found yourself in a tough spot.

Here are my settings for the Pro 3.1.2 version, from top to bottom as you see them in the Details Enhancer dialog box

Strength: 100

Colour: 60

Luminosity: 5

TONE SETTINGS

Light Smoothing: High or Very High

Microcontrast: 9

White Point: .111%

Black Point: 0%

Gamma: 1.00

COLOUR SETTINGS

Temparature: 4

Saturation Highlights: 6

Saturation Shadows: 6

SMOOTHING SETTINGS

Micro-smoothing: 9

Highlights Smoothing: 31

Shadows Smoothing: 31

Shadows Clipping: 31

The HDR photo in the example below (Mud Lake along McGregor Brook Road, a mile north of Sussex) was created using those tonemapping settings.

Adjusting the light smoothing to middle gives us this effect:

And if the light smoothing is very low, this is the result:

You can visit Wikipedia to learn more about tonemapping.

By visiting HDR-photo.org, you may receive a 15% online discount when you buy Photomatix HDR photo software by simply entering "hdrphotositeorg" in the coupon code field.

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