Review by Busy Executive

Photomatix offers a relatively strong and low-cost way to get into HDR photography, and I find it a great creative tool.

The program’s support for RAW format images seems to be good - it handles RAW from my Nikon D300 and D3x without problems, although the large files that come from my D3x seem to take a long time to process. A fast computer and lots of memory help.

Assuming good basic technique, the images come out amazingly well. Although the basic idea is to stitch together images taken with different exposures, sometimes it’s handy to use the program’s tone mapping capabilities, even on a single image.

I tend to start my workflow with Photomatix, outputting HDR TIF images that I usually bring back into an editing program (PhotoShop) for further tweaking. Photomatix is good at HDR - you still need something else for many of the other changes you might want to make to your images.

Overall, I find the software a great creative tool and it’s helped me think in new ways about contrast and dynamic range in my images. Definitely worth the price.