Creative photographers, especially landscape photographers who shoot during twilight hours, love the HDR photography.
The workflow helps recover detail in a dynamic scene, allowing human eyes to better see the image, including the usual exaggerated shadows and highlights.
To add HDR photography to your arsenal, you’ll need the best HDR software. This allows you to merge the bracketed photos in the subsequent editing of the image and makes the image more aesthetically pleasing. The HDR programs They use exposure fusion or tone mapping to merge photos.
The best HDR programs
High dynamic range (HDR) photography is a technique that allows you to expand the range of highlights and shadows in a photo by combining multiple exposures.
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In this way, a balanced exposure is achieved in high contrast scenes. This technique is very popular among landscape, real estate and architectural photographers.
1. Aurora HDR
Skylum’s Aurora HDR has received several awards from HDR photographers from around the world. For photos that need more detail in shadows and highlights, Aurora HDR is a great option to resolve this concern.
The motor Quantum HDR powered by Artificial Intelligence offers unmatched results, providing zero chromatic aberrations, halos and artifacts. Artificial Intelligence produces the highest quality bracket fusion and outstanding color improvements.
Aurora HDR It not only allows you to work with shadows and highlights, but also with color tone, polarizing filter, detail enhancer, LUT mapping and much more. For more advanced photographers, it has professional features such as RAW support, batch processing, and layers and masks.
It works as a standalone tool or as a plugin for Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom and Apple Photos. Aurora HDR works for both as for PC. It’s not free, so you’ll have to pay for it if you want to use it, but it tops our list of the best HDR programs.
- OS: Mac and Windows
- Price: 99 dollars. Follow this link and use coupon code aperlust to get $10 off the regular price.
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2. Photomatix Pro
Photomatix Pro is a powerful HDR software which allows you to merge three or more bracketed photos to create a high dynamic range photo without sacrificing highlight and shadow details. Create the HDR photo lining up bracketed exposures of the same photo, resulting in a perfect shot.
A ghost removal tool allows you remove unwanted artifacts, caused by motion blur. If you need to give your photo a touch, Photomatix Pro offers extensive stylization tools, which you can use to enhance it.
It also comes with 40 built-in presets, which you can use as a reference point when editing photos. If you think the preset has done a great job refining your photo, you can accept it as is. If not, you can modify it to your liking.
You can use Photomatix Pro as a standalone application or directly in Capture One or Adobe Lightroom. The app requires a license but has a Free trial that never expires. However, when working with a free trial, a watermark appears on the final result.
- OS: Mac and Windows
- Price: 99 dollars. Follow this link and use coupon code aperlustphoto to get 15% off.
3. ON1 HDR
ON1 HDR allows you create a natural high dynamic range photo and excellent without sacrificing shadow and highlight details. Its live preview function allows you to control the movement of objects.
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It best of preview function live is that it only takes seconds, compared to the competition, which can take minutes. When you’re happy with what you have in the live preview, you can quickly move on to removing ghosting, adjusting the tone, adding layers, and more.
Another great feature of ON1 HDR is the production of HDR looking photos from a single photo. In case you don’t have bracketed exposures of a photo, ON1 HDR allows you to use the HDR toolset on a well-exposed raw photo to reveal all the highlights and details.
ON1 HDR can work as a plugin for Adobe Lightroom CC or as a standalone application. The app has a free trial version, which allows you to use it for a short period.
- OS: Mac and Windows
- Price: $49.99
4. SNS-HDR Pro
SNS-HDR Pro is an application that allows processing high dynamic range photos. Sequences of the same photo are merged to create a single HDR photo with shadows and details adjusted.
It supports several popular photo formats such as TIFF, JPEG, RAW, Radiance HDR, and OpenEXR images. In addition to being able to process sequences of the same photo, SNS-HDR Pro can also process individual photos.
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The application includes tools photo editing such as ghost reduction, image alignment, masks and presets. SNS-HDR Pro works with Mac and Windows. It has a demo version, with which you can try it before deciding whether to buy it or not.
- OS: Mac and Windows
- Price: 30 euros
5. Luminance HDR
Luminance HDR has a wide range of functionality, which you can use when working with High Dynamic Range photos. It works with both JPEG and RAW images and outputs different formats such as TIFF and JPEG.
Like other HDR programs, Luminance HDR allows you to merge multiple photos to create a single HDR photo. Multiple tone mapping operators allow you to map the HDR photos on standard screens.
It features a 16-bit channel output that expands the range of post-processing of photos. Another great Luminance HDR feature is the ability to export your work to a different photo editing application, such as Adobe Photoshop and GIMP.
- OS: Mac, Windows and Unix
- Price: Free
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6. Lightroom
Lightroom is a digital asset manager made for organize your photos. It has a built-in and comprehensive image editor that can do most of the jobs. To compete with standalone HDR programs, Adobe added HDR fusion to Lightroom.
The HDR capability It is extremely basic, as no other shadow or highlight recovery or tone mapping can be adjusted. However, you can still use Lightroom’s main image editor to make further adjustments to the developing module.
The nice thing about Lightroom is that if you don’t intend to do advanced HDR editing, HDR fusion in the software will suffice. Plus, you get one of the best photo archiving systems and image editor used by many professionals.
The Disadvantage of Lightroom is that you need to purchase it as an Adobe Creative Cloud membership subscription.
- OS: Mac and Windows
- Price: $9.99/month
Conclusion
We hope that this list of the best HDR programs has given you a better idea of which app to choose. Aurora HDR is the best HDR program, followed by Photomatix Pro. You can leave a comment if you find the right software for you or if you have any software that you think should be on the list.
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