Which Is The Best HDR Software For Professional Photographers?

Nature is beautiful. If you have got an eye for it, you can catch a glimpse of what heaven must look like while perceiving your earthly surroundings. For artists, nature has got it all, which is why they always try to capture its beauty either with their words or through their lens. But they rarely become successful in capturing it truly.

However, if someone were to have a look at the landscape photography of the present and compare it to the pictures that were taken in the past, he would immediately notice the difference. It is not to say that landscape photography in the past was not done well. Instead, what it means is that today, we have got certain tech and tools at our disposal that are capable of truly enhancing the quality of landscape pictures. They make them look more real. One such tool is HDR software.

Now, if you a professional photographer who has some experience working with landscapes and nature or who often works with challenging light conditions, you would already know what we are talking about. However, on the off-chance that you are not familiar with HDR software, we will start with a little introduction. So, shall we begin?

What is HDR?

HDR stands for high dynamic range imaging. The HDR images work with shadows and highlights in a detailed manner such that the picture looks more appealing. Now, human eyes have an impressive dynamic range. No matter what camera you are using, or how advanced it is it can never mimic that range. As a result, with your camera, you can never expose the shadows and highlights together. If you will enhance the highlights in the snaps, it will make your shadows look darker, and if you will expose the shadows the highlights will appear too bright.

HDR software overcomes this issue by using the right tech. Working it would require you to take at least three images of the same thing at different exposures. Once you have completed this step, you can later combine the photographs in HDR software. So, you take one photo that exposes highlights, another photo that exposes your shadows, and one neutral shot. Then, at the end, when you combine the snaps, you will see that the best parts of each picture got highlighted. In the photography lingo, this process is called ‘bracketing’. Now, for those of you who work in real estate photo editing, and are searching for the best HDR software to enhance their pictures, we have curated a list. Have a glance?!

1. Aurora HDR

Aurora HDR software has been recently introduced in the markets. This software is highly recommended for both beginners and experienced photographers as it offers lots of editing tools and provides an interface that is exceptionally easy to handle. Using this software means access to playing with features like masking and layers. Aurora HDR also has this really cool batch processing feature that comes in handy when you are editing a bunch of pictures in one go. This software is highly liked by professionals, and it works on both Windows and Mac Operating System.

2. Lightroom

With the lightroom software, you get access to tools that can combine exposures and work ghost removal. Now, ghost removal refers to this technique that can aid you in aligning your snaps and adjusting any element that might have changed its position in different exposures, like the sun or clouds. All you need to do is to select all the pictures you want to combine and click on the dropdown menu ‘photo’. Next, you got to click on the ‘photo merge’- ‘HDR’ option, and gotcha!

3. Photomatrix Pro

The Photomatrix Pro software is developed by a UK based organization named HDRSoft and is probably one of the oldest HDR software you can find in the market. The software is a favorite choice of landscape photographers as it comes intact with a set of tools like the tone balancer that helps you in toning the HDR effect so that it doesn’t look unrealistic, the brush tool that enables you to make certain adjustments to some selected areas of the photo, and the straighten tool that does what its name suggests, straighten lines or buildings that may appear curved in pictures as a result of some issues with the lens. Using these tools can turn your pictures beautiful.

4. HDR Projects 2018

For those of you who are trying to create natural HDR photos, HDR Projects 4 is a highly recommended software. Its Lightroom plugin feature that allows the user to export photos from Lightroom to HDR Projects 4 without many additional efforts makes it an appealing choice to anyone who uses Lightroom. It also offers many other options and controls for adjustments that would suffice anyone who is working at the beginner’s stage. It can be run on both Windows and Mac.

5. Photoshop (HDR Pro)

If you use Photoshop, then you must be familiar with its HRD Pro tool. One can access it by clicking on the ‘File’ dropdown menu, going on ‘automate’, and then selecting the ‘merge to HDR Pro’ feature. Using this tool, you can make many useful enhancements to your images like adjusting edge glow, color, and tone curve that can alter exposures in your photographs. Now, in case you are new to HDR photography and you are not much familiar with it, you can also try its impressive presets for improving the quality of your snaps.

6. HDR Efex Pro

Nik has always been a reliable brand for the photographers out there. Its filters and presets for Photoshop are a testimony to that. Now, its new HDR software, the HDR Efex Pro is also winning the public. The software offers the users a feature that groups the presets into relevant image kinds - artistic, landscape, architecture, which makes organizing stuff easier. It has an easy labeling system understanding that all the HDR software users are not familiar with photography terminology. However, if you ask us to call out its best feature, we are going to say that its capability to work as a plugin in any photo editing software is deserving of that title!

7. EasyHDR

EasyHDR is one of the well-known HDR software that is used by professionals. It has high-quality performance and a user-friendly interface that allows you to complete your work swiftly. The software also offers tools for batch editing, clone brushing, masking, and color correction. Plus, it doesn’t require only a powerful and expensive computer to run on, and can smoothly function on a basic computer that has 4 GB RAM. It offers users some pretty cool presets and access to a streamlined HDR process.

8. Luminance HDR

For those of you who are looking for free high dynamic range programs, Luminance HDR is something that you ought to check-out. It has some pretty amazing features like automatic anti-ghosting, enhanced 1/10 with TIPF 32 Bit, FITS support integration, and new merge algorithms, that if used in the right manner, can bring out the best in your images. It is designed to read both JPEG and RAW files and allows the users to easily export the snaps to another image editing software. Its new sliders like the ‘Gemma’ and ‘saturation’ are also worth trying.

9. FDRTools Basic

FDRTools Basic is yet another free HDR software that can be used to lend a realistic look to HDR images. If you are still at the beginning stage of using HDR and don’t wish to work with a complicated interface or too many options that will leave you confused, then FDRTools Basic is worth a try. This software reduces the gap between tone mapping and merging and offers an advanced mapping algorithm. The user is handed here all the control so that he can complete the merging step by taking hints from the tone mapped images. The developers also provide impressive customer service that is worth mentioning.

10. Picturenaut 3

Picturenaut 3 is a highly intuitive software that is designed by HDR Labs, a project that designs free software for different purposes. It is a very light software, which is easy to install and simple to use for anyone who works in a photo editing company. It offers users both drag and drop options, and works with both PNG and RAW files. It has some awesome features like Alpha channel view, quick tone mapping option, and auto-cropping feature. One can also use the open-source API if he wishes to tweak the program for even better use.

Conclusion Some photographers who work in real estate, landscape, or artistic fields have great use for HDR software as it helps them in highlighting and shadowing the perfect parts of the picture. So, in this blog, we have mentioned some suggestions that you can check before deciding which software works the best for you. However, be careful while using them, as using too much HDR can do the exact opposite of what you had in mind and make your snaps look fake and unreal. All the best!