easyHDR PRO

A good thing about digital cameras is that you can check the results immediately on its LCD display. Although you can get a general idea on how the picture would come out, it is still difficult to see if the color tones are good. The LCD displays of some cameras may be faulty or too small. In other cases, the camera itself can't produce high quality images. Of course, this can be solved with image processing software, but most of them offer too many features than you actually need. If your camera's settings were off target when you took a picture, you can still get some good results if you process it with easyHDR PRO. You can use it to produce HDR (High Dynamic Range) images out of sequences of images with different exposure settings. You can also use a single image and get good results.

The software's installation package is almost 7 Mb large and it can be installed in a manner of seconds. You can run it without any problems in Windows XP, Vista or 7 and you won't need a top of the line computer to do it.

When you launch it, you will appreciate the fact that easyHDR PRO has a familiar design. The interface resembles the ones of most image processing software out there. One or more images can be loaded by browsing for them in the interface or by clicking and dragging them from an explorer window. It will be displayed on the main area of the window and you can make a series of adjustments on its right side.

You will not find too many settings, like you would in other similar programs, but the ones available in easyHDR PRO are all you need in order to give a picture a professional look. Most of the adjustments can be made with the aid of sliders and the results will be applied immediately on the loaded image. You can set different levels for gamma, compression, saturations, sharpness and more. It is also possible to modify certain aspects of a photo's local contrast, including strength, highlights, shadows and more.

If you don't have time for all these adjustments, you can select one of the presets, found in a drop menu on the toolbar. Each of them will make different adjustments automatically. You can opt for high contrast presets, natural, dramatic and other ones. The entire tone map can be saved as a file, in the program's own format, in order to use them at a later date, instead of starting from scratch. Although the effects will be applied immediately on the picture, these will not be saved. To further avoid ruining a picture, you can always go back to the default settings by clicking a toolbar button.

Besides creating a tone map, you can also add image filters such as a Gaussian blur, unsharp mask, median or bilateral filter. Like the previous set of adjustments, most of these can be made with the aid of sliders, found in the same area of the interface, under a different navigation tab. One of the software's core features is HDR generating. If your digital camera supports autobracketing (AEB), you can use it to take photographs of the same scenery, with different exposures. These pictures can be loaded simultaneously in easyHDR PRO. It is recommended that you take the pictures using a tripod, because they will need to be perfectly aligned. If you have a steady hand and the pictures will be misaligned only slightly, the program can automatically align them or you can do it manually when loading the images. You can also remove "ghosts" that may show in some pictures, again, manually or automatically. Ideally, you should load three images. One that is overexposed, one that is underexposed and one with a middle value. After loading them, the program will overlap them, with their exposure values, giving you better looking pictures with great colors.