Frequently Asked Questions

Most HDR programs available on the market today are "tone-mappers" — although they merge to 32-bit floating point HDR format, to process the image these applications have to convert it to 8- or 16-bit integer mode. HDR Expose is the only HDR digital photography software application that edits and saves full HDR images in the 32-bit floating point format, which preserves most of image definition in dynamic range, color range and retains its precision. Every tool and operation in HDR Expose always works in the high-precision 32-bit floating point/channel mode (96 bit/pixel).

In the tone-mapping workflow paradigm you lose image quality when you convert to 8- or 16-bit representation. This significantly reduces the dynamic range, clips the color range and degrades the precision of image data definition. Keeping image data in the 32-bit floating-point representation ensures that none of these essential image qualities are lost.

HDR Expose uses the Unified Color Beyond RGB™ color model, a significant science and technology breakthrough. Beyond RGB is directly based on the human vision and was specifically designed to address the needs of high dynamic range imaging. Tone-mappers typically rely on output-based RGB models, which were not specifically intended to work for HDR applications. In addition to the mentioned image quality degradation, such issues as color shift during image editing can be experienced in result.

Human vision color modeling lets you manipulate image information independent from the image output, which becomes a separate stage in the Unified Color HDR workflow. First, you create and process the image using a device-independent (human-vision referred) representation; second, you output the image using available color reproduction device (i.e. a monitor). This approach lets you have the most image information preserved at the first stage, even though some of this information may exceed the capability of your device at the output stage.

Some programs support-limited options for the 32-bit floating point processing. For example in Adobe Photoshop, although the 32-bit/channel mode is supported, most editing operations and plug-ins are disabled. Thus, in order to do anything useful, you're forced to downgrade image quality to a lower bit definition. In HDR Expose you can keep the image quality at highest level at all times.

Dynamic Range Mapping is a more proper term for "tone-mapping" used by other HDR products. The term describes the same technique of mapping one dynamic range (in image) to another dynamic range (output device, such as computer monitor).

The primary difference between Dynamic Range Mapping and Tone Mapping comes from the underlying color model. Traditional HDR imaging applications are typically based on the RGB model, and this is why the tone-mapping technique is referred to as "mapping of tones" — that is the R, G and B tones. But HDR Expose is built on the Beyond RGB™ color model, which separates brightness (luminance) information in image from color (chromaticity) information. Therefore HDR Expose can use mapping in only one brightness channel without affecting color channels.

HDR Expose is a full color managed application.

For image visualization HDR Expose uses selected color profiles (ICC profile). Click on the small display icon at the lower left corner of the HDR Expose window to access the color profile menu. By default your primary monitor's ICC profile is selected. When you recalibrate your monitor, use this menu to point HDR Expose to the new color profile. Note that it is not recommended to specify other that your monitor's profile in this menu, as this may lead to inaccurate colors in the image.

For file input HDR Expose will accept any embedded color profile in any type of supported image format. It will read such images according to their color profiles.

When saving image files (in JPEG or TIFF formats) HDR Expose allows you to embed any color profile with the image data. It is recommended to use a color profile for any non-HDR format (e.g. JPEG or 8/16-bit TIFF), to achieve best color matching in your workflow. Color data in BEF format does not require a color profile, since BEF always represents visual data in full, unclipped color gamut.

Yes. HDR Expose is implemented natively for the x64 computing architecture. If you're running an x64 capable system with a 64-bit OS, we strongly recommend installing the x64 version of HDR Expose.

You can verify what version of HDR Expose you are running in the About box of the application (on Windows it is available in the "Help" menu; on Mac in the "HDR Expose" application menu). The application will report what computing architecutre it is using — 32-bit or 64-bit in the About box.

Using the 64-bit version of HDR Expose will let you have such advantages as the ability to work with much larger megapixel files (upto gigapixel range, depending on your available RAM), as well as the increased performance of operation.

Note that on Mac OS, HDR Expose installation package contains both 64-bit and 32-bit builds of the application. By default HDR Expose works in the 64-bit mode. If desired, although not recommended, you can switch HDR Expose to 32-bit mode using the standard "Open in 32-bit mode" option in the "Get Info" preference pane.

BEF plug-in enables support for BEF file format (which is HDR Expose native file format). By default HDR Expose will install BEF plug-in for Adobe Photoshop, so that you can open and save BEF files in Photoshop.

BEF is a Unified Color HDR file format, similar to such formats as Radiance HDR or OpenEXR. It is however much more capable format, allowing you to store HDR images with high precision and high compression ratio. It achieves an impressive 2x-3x lead in compression efficiency over Radiance or OpenEXR, while preserving image data with full dynamic range, full color range and high visual precision.

Yes — you can install and activate HDR Expose on a second system (e.g. a laptop). Your personal license comes with 2 activations. You can also move a license between machines if needed.
To move your license on Windows, uninstall HDR Expose on first machine. The un-installation program will give you a choice to deactivate (free up) your license. Then use the same serial key for the second installation.

On Mac, navigate to the Help menu and choose "Deactivate the license code". Note that once you deactivated, the application will revert to trial mode, which may have expired at that time (so you won't be able to save images).

You can deactivate and activate your license (move the license) an unlimited number of times. Additional installations on more than 2 computers at one time will require purchasing a new license for each 2 additional activations. Multiple-seat licenses can be purchased at a discount. Contact us for details.

Normally our order processing system sends out the license information in just a few minutes after the completion of a purchase transaction. At that moment the license information is forwarded to the email you entered in the transaction details. Sometimes this email message can be falsely detected as spam, so check your spam folder to see if this is why you didn't receive the message with licensing details. Another common reason for the information not reaching you is that the email bounces from the address you provided. Make sure you use a valid and working email address.

If you still can't locate the license, you can request to resend it at this page.
Just enter your email address and click "Send" to retrieve your serial code.

OS: HDR Expose supports the following Operating Systems:
Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard)
Windows 7 x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit)
Windows XP x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit)
Windows Vista x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit)
Disk space: About 65 MB (for installation) and at least 2GB when running the application (for temporary files for your images).
Memory: Minimum is 2 GB. For optimal performance and ability to process large megapixel images we recommend at least 4 GB.
CPU: Minimum is 2.0GHz dual-core, we recommend a high-end (2.8GHz or better) quad-core processor for the best performance (especially when processing larger megapixel images).

You can do an automated check for updates in HDR Expose "Help" menu — choose "Check for updates..." If there is an updated version available for download, HDR Expose will prompt you and direct you to a web page where you can download the updated version.

Follow the original installation procedure. If you lost your serial key send an email to support@unifiedcolor.com. Make sure you include your name and email address that was used when you purchased the product.

All licensed users of HDR PhotoStudio are eligible for free upgrade to HDR Expose. In short, your HDR PhotoStudio license has been setup to be recognized by HDR Expose, just enter your existing serial code in the activation process.

Please navigate to the HDR PhotoStudio page for more details.

You can see the licensing information details in the order comments when you login to your account.

You can also conveniently request your license details online on this page. On this page enter the email address used when you purchased the license, and the licensing details (including the serial code) will be sent to this email address.

We recommend 1EV or 2 EV, depending on actual contrast you have in original scene. In most cases shooting at 2EV will do a good job, however there could be cases when 1EV step is the best.

For example if the scene has a little bit higher range than your camera can capture, 3 bracketed exposures at 1EV step may produce a better result than same 3 exposures taken at 2EV step. This is because, if we take the underexposed shot, given the original dynamic range, the -1EV exposure may be able to capture highlights with better noise definition than the -2EV exposure in the same conditions. For the overexposed shot, the +1EV exposure may do a better job than the +2EV for capturing shadows (again, given the original dynamic range) due to a less veil from lens glare that happens on longer exposures.

It really depends on the original scene you're photographing. In most situations 3, bracketed exposures at 2EV step (-2EV, 0EV, +2EV) will provide a good result. However in some cases you may need to take more shots to capture full dynamic range available from the original scene. Also, in some situations you may choose to do 1EV step for best quality. For each scene there's an optimal number of shots (sometimes even just one!) and an optimal EV step.

JPEG or TIFF can be used as source images for "Merge to HDR" function.

You can also use HDR Expose to enhance single 8-bit JPEG or 8/16-bit TIFF photographs with great results. Because HDR Expose uses the Beyond RGB™ color model, image editing and enhancement become a quick and powerful process. HDR Expose operations work on any image.

Yes. HDR Expose includes Adobe Lightroom export plug-in. The option to install it is included by default in the installer. HDR Expose supports both Lightroom 2 and Lightroom 3.

Most image file formats are supported. This includes RAW files from most cameras (.CR2, .NEF, .DNG, etc), JPEG, TIFF, as well as High Dynamic Range formats such as Radiance HDR, OpenEXR, and TIFF with 32-bit floating point.

You can see a list of supported Camera RAW formats on this page.

Yes. We provide a file format plug-in that makes .BEF format files compatible with Adobe Photoshop, so you can edit and save .BEF files in Photoshop. In this way you continue to benefit from Unified Color's industry-leading compression ratios when you save .BEF files in Photoshop

You can certainly do so, however you must note that this process will not create any new information in the image. You can just load the original RAW file into HDR Expose and process it from there to obtain same level of details in the final image. The image result may be different because conversion to JPEG or TIFF changes the image information (typically RAW converters apply various S-curve corrections), however to note again this manipulation cannot create any new image information (shadow or highlight details) — you need to capture it from the original scene with true camera bracketed shots.

Yes. HDR Expose implements HDR batch merge operation.

If you shoot many bracketed sequences in one day you can conveniently merge them into any HDR format file for later processing. In the "Merge to HDR" dialog (accessible from the File menu), choose the "Batch merge" tab. Then press the "+" button. In this window you have the option to specify the number of bracketed shots in each individual HDR sequence and a folder where the source files for the sequences are located. Note that the batch operation only works on bracketed sequences with the same number of shots within one folder. If you have images with varying number of shots, you have to place them in separate folders in order to perform the HDR batch merge on them.

Color Tuning is designed specifically not to change neutral tones. The closer to white point your source color is, the smaller range circle of target color you'll get. Color Tuning is intended to fine-tune only more or less saturated color tones.

Use White Balance to change gray tones first, then use Color Tuning to fine-tune the other color tones.

Absolutely. While many HDR programs function primarily as merge applications, with HDR Expose™ you can take advantage of full-featured editing of 32-bit per channel floating point images (something you just can’t do in Adobe Photoshop, for example). Even if you do not intend to merge your 32-bit images, you can edit them in HDR Expose. If you intend to perform spot editing or another similar task in Photoshop, you should consider performing all your brightness and color adjustments in HDR Expose because it provides the most accurate color, and these adjustments will not affect your image's color (as they do in Photoshop).

There is no maximum number of images that can be merged together; rather, the number of images you can merge depends upon the size of your machine’s available memory. For example, on a typical 2G-3G system, you could merge 20 images whose average size is 10-12 mega pixels. Note that typical HDR pictures won't require that many images, usually 5-7 is sufficient to capture full dynamic range.

If you encounter any memory related problems using the HDR Expose Aperture or Lightroom plug-ins on the Mac, please make sure that Aperture or Lightroom is running in 64-bit mode. 64-bit processing is required in order to take advantage of the physical and virtual memory required for processing large HDR image files.

Please make sure to uncheck the "Open in 32-bit mode" option in the application's "Get Info" window and re-start the application.

Some users reported that HDR Expose may crash during execution of an operation. We've determined that in most of these situations the culprit is the OpenCL code. OpenCL stands for Open Computing Language, and it is an interface that allows HDR Expose run most computational intensive operations on GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), resulting in much better performance. OpenCL is a relatively new technology, and its software and hardware support is still maturing in the marketplace.

While we investigate this behavior (typically these crashes aren't reproducible on our test systems, or we would be able to fix them quickly or find a workaround), a temporary solution is to disable the OpenCL mode.

To disable OpenCL, navigate to Preferences dialog, go to Performance tab, and select a "Pure CPU" option. For most users affected by the problem, disabling OpenCL will resolve the crashing issues.

After exchanges with a number of customers that complained of very strange behavior such as "unable to interact with HDR Expose" and "When I move the mouse over things they light up but I can't click them", it appears that the issue all of them had was with using a mouse that connects through a tablet.

When we asked the users to connect a regular mouse or used the standard tablet and pen, they were able to use HDR Expose. Just the mouse extension seems to be giving the trouble. If you use a tablet and are affected by this issue, please try connecting your mouse directly to your computer.

We are developing a solution for this problem, and will release an update soon.

If you have an ATI graphics adapter, and you're running Windows, OpenCL may not be turned on by default. The reason is because ATI Catalyst video driver doesn't support OpenCL (unlike NVIDIA's graphics driver). In order to enable OpenCL on ATI cards, users must install ATI Stream SDK from the following page:
http://developer.amd.com/gpu/atistreamsdk/

Windows 7 uses a different security scheme than the rest of Windows family OS versions. In Windows 7 by default all programs run at a reduced privilege level, even if your user has administrative rights. Therefore when you try to activate HDR Expose will get you a warning message that you need administrator's rights to proceed.

Please do the following to activate HDR Expose on Windows 7:

• Copy HDR Expose shortcut icon onto your desktop.
• Right click on the shortcut and select "Run as administrator".
• Complete the activation by entering the serial key and clicking "Continue".
• Verify that HDR Expose has switched to licensed status in the About box.

After you activate you may run HDR Expose normally, by double clicking on the icon, or launching it from the Start menu, or through a task bar pinned icon.

The HDR Expose installer detects whether Lightroom is at the default location in order to determine whether or not the HDR Expose plug-in can be installed. If you have Lightroom moved to a non-default location, the installer won't be able to install HDR Expose plug-in. The workaround in this situation would be to manually install the Lightroom plug-in.

Here are the instructions to manually install the plug-in:

1. Mount the HDR Expose installer and open it up
2. Right click on the HDR Expose package and select "show package contents"
3. Navigate to the "Contents" folder and then to "Resources"
4. Drag the files HDRExpose.lrplugin and HDRExposeLRPlugin to your desktop
5. Open up the terminal (command+space bar, type terminal, press enter)
6. Copy and paste the following statement into the terminal:
   chmod -R 777 ~/Desktop/HDRExposeLRPlugin.app && chmod -R 777 ~/Desktop/HDRExpose.lrplugin && mv ~/Desktop/HDRExpose.lrplugin ~/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules/ && mv ~/Desktop/HDRExposeLRPlugin.app/ /Library/Application\ Support/Unified\ Color/
7. Press Enter if the above command didn't run automatically
8. Restart Lightroom, right click the image, you should see "Merge and Edit in HDR Expose..." under the "Export" menu item