HDRtist NX2.1
Combine exposures to reveal detail HDRtist NX2.1 has all the tools you need to create detailed HDR composites
$39.99 (about £30) FROM Ohanaware, ohanaware.com NEEDS OS X 10.11 or later
When faced with a high-contrast scene, your camera may struggle to capture detail in the brightest highlights and the darkest shadows. One way to capture more detail is to shoot three bracketed exposures. One shot captures an average exposure, revealing detail in the midtones; a second shot overexposes the scene to capture shadow detail; a third shot underexposes the scene to capture detail in the brightest highlights.
You then need an app to combine the correctly exposed bits of each shot into a merged image that boasts a high dynamic range (HDR). HDRtist NX2.1 has all the tools you need to create colourful and fully detailed HDR composites from a series of bracketed exposures. It also does a great job of clawing back detail from a single Camera Raw file, making it useful even to those who don’t shoot bracketed exposures.
The cleanly designed home screen invites you to combine multiple shots. It then presents you with a colourful and detailed composite HDR image that you can fine-tune to your taste. One problem you might face after combining several images is misaligned objects due to camera movement, but HDRtist has an auto Align box that produces great results – although we did notice some ghosting on our test images, where a moving object such as a car in one of the source images appears as a semi-transparent ‘ghost’ in the HDR shot. You can also crop the composite shot using handy presets.
It’s in the detail
True HDR images contain more detail than can be displayed on screen or in print, so they need to be tone-mapped to create viewable versions. This can lead to artefacts such as lighter halos clinging to contrasting objects. HDRtist’s Polaris tone-mapper can reveal shadow or highlight detail right up to the edges without creating halos.
The Styles panel provides previews that quickly enable you to experiment with HDR looks. You can then pop to the Edit panel to tweak the results using sliders. You can also add extra functions to the Edit panel to expand your control, such as adding a vignette to your HDR image.
GEORGE CAIRNS