Introducing Photomatix Pro

It’s common knowledge that Google is no longer supporting the Nik Collection by Google. This fact left many photographers wondering how they were going to create realistic HDR images. Lightroom and Photoshop have the ability to merge bracketed exposures into an HDR image, but pale in comparison to the power of HDR Efex Pro II. Fortunately, there’s another solution

Photomatix Pro by HDR Soft is a wonderful piece of software that once installed works seamlessly as a plug-in for Lightroom. Select your bracketed exposures, and choose to export them to Photomatix Pro, and you’ll be presented with a wide variety of choices for creating an artistic, realistic, or surrealistic HDR image. You also have the option to tone map a single image. After selecting a single image, or bracketed exposures from Lightroom, the images are prepared for Photomatix Pro and the application opens. As you can see from the following illustration, you have many options for the image you create with the application. I always start with a preset that catches my eye and then fine-tune the image by tweaking the settings on the left side of the interface. It’s all very intuitive. And if you don’t like the results, you can always click a preset to erase your edits.

 

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The following images were created with Photomatix Pro.

Photomatix Pro is an excellent choice for photographers who used and loved HDR Efex Pro II and are looking for an alternative now that Google no longer supports The Nik Collection. Photomatix Pro sells for $99.00, but you can enjoy a 15 percent discount by clicking the “Have A Coupon” link on HDR Soft’s Buy page. You can download a trial version of Photomatix, that does not time out, but will stamp a Photomatix logo on the finished image. To download a trial version of Photomatix, click here: HDR Soft Photomatix trial version.