its day six of our twelve days of christmas gifts for photographers

Have you ever photographed a high contrast scene? If so, you know that even the best exposure gives you blown out highlights, or flat shadows, or both. The solution is High Dynamic Range (HDR) processing:

› Take multiple photographs at varying exposure levels (brackets) › Merge the photos into an HDR image › Adjust the settings to get the look you want: from natural-looking with Exposure Fusion to painterly or surreal with Tone Mapping

See examples of HDR photos

Learn HDR techniques with video tutorials

Try HDR processing with a free trial of Photomatix

Photomatix Pro and Photomatix Essentials are stand-alone programs running on Windows and Mac OS X.

One license for Photomatix Essentials is US$39. One license for Photomatix Pro is US$99.

Photomatix Essentials focuses on simplicity and ease of use. Photomatix Pro offers more options and includes advanced features such as batch processing and selective deghosting, as well as a Lightroom Plug-in.

Some of the features of Photomatix are also available as an Edit Plug-in for Aperture and a Filter Plug-in for Photoshop CS2 or higher. A free Lightroom Plug-in makes it possible to access Photomatix Pro directly from Lightroom, if desired. Tell your family and friends that if they want to purchase the software they can receive 15% off of the Photomatix plug-in if they go to http://www.hdrsoft.com/ and enter KPepPhoto on checkout to receive the discount.