HDRI links

In the past I've taken a few sets of bracketed exposure images in the hopes of combining them into a High Dynamic Range Image. I finally started doing a little more research into what software would be best to use. It certainly sounds like Photomatix has been the de facto standard for a while. There are a few other alternatives, however, and I wanted to find out which was the best one for my needs.

In the process of searching for some comparisons, I ran across this DP Review post identifying some options, and this tutorial with some amazing images.

I downloaded and tried "Dynamic Photo HDR" and Photomatix to see what I could do with them using my images. The first thing I found out was that clouds can move faster than you think. :-) I took several shots of sunsets that clearly showed the clouds in different locations from one exposure to the next. Ignoring that fact (or we can say I was trying the programs to see how they would handle that situation), what I did find was that I liked the price and UI of Dynamic Photo HDR better than Photomatix. Unfortunately when I went to produce a JPG (tone map) of the previewed image in Dynamic Photo HDR, it came out looking nothing like I expected. It was much darker and lost all of the cool HDR details I was looking for. Photomatix did a much better job in that respect. Note, I let them both take in my Canon RAW files and didn't even have to produce JPGs to get started. I did like that, and it looks like Photomatix has some capabilities to produce a pseudo HDR image from a RAW file that I didn't see in Dynamic Photo HDR.

I haven't spent enough time to make a decision yet, as I think I must be doing something wrong to get such poor results with Dynamic Photo HDR. If I could get that to work it would be my choice.