HDR PhotoStudio Features

High Dynamic Range, Accurate color, Full color gamut

HDR PhotoStudio is the only HDR software available that features accurate color, full color gamut and HDR editing capability. HDR PhotoStudio is the only imaging software based on a color model of full human vision, rather than a particular display device.

Color Integrity

When you use HDR PhotoStudio tools, your image will not exhibit any of the color shift problems commonly associated with image editing in traditional tools. What does this mean exactly? — In HDR PhotoStudio, when you change anything related to brightness (brightness, contrast, shadow/highlight, sharpness, etc), the color tones of your image will not change. Vice versa, when color tones are changed (such as in white balance, saturation, color tuning, etc), your image's brightness and contrast will remain intact.

Full featured, high-precision HDR editing

HDR PhotoStudio offers a unique, powerful and easy-to-use image editing tools. For the first time, full featured 32-bit floating point image editing has become available. You don't have to degrade your image quality to 16- or 8-bit — in HDR PhotoStudio, every operation always works in high precision mode.

HDR PhotoStudio supports the following file formats:

Input (open file)

• BEF (HDR PhotoStudio native file format)
• Radiance HDR (.hdr, .pic)
• OpenEXR (.exr)
• All popular camera RAW formats (.cr2, .nef, .raw, etc.)
• 8-, 16-, and 32-bit TIFF (.tif, .tiff)
• JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg)
• Bitmap (.bmp)

Output (save file)

• BEF
• OpenEXR (.exr), all OpenEXR compression options are supported
• 8-, 16-, and 32-bit TIFF (.tif, .tiff)
• JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg)
• Bitmap (.bmp)

HDR PhotoStudio's user interface is designed to be intuitive. Note the following aspects of the interface:

• Full screen mode (F11).
• Fast image scroll and zoom in/out (from 5% to 800%) with mouse.
• Selectable Display Theme:
  • Dark Color Theme.
  • Light Gray Theme.
  • System Theme.
• Operations panel (dockable).
• Image Metadata window (Ctrl-I).
• Status Bar with:
  • Color Profile selection button.
  • Display Brightness control (current brightness EV, select bright point pipette tool, reset brightness button, and display brightness slider).
  • Help and status message area.
  • Zoom control with 100% ("1:1") zoom and "fit to screen" buttons.
• Large or small buttons in operations panel.
• Preset selection control in operation dialog windows.
• Pipette tools in Brightness/Contrast (select bright point or 18% gray point), Veiling Glare(select base point) operations, Shadow/Highlight (select midtone point), White Balance (select target color), Color Tuning (select target color).
• Recipe (script of operations) that you can assign to the recipe button.
• Undo/Redo buttons with operation history menu.
• Free angle rotation by specifying a line by which to align the image.
• 100x100 pixel preview area in Noise Elimination window.

Undo/Redo

Quickly undo or redo operations using the operation history menu. Create recipes (scripts of actions for automatic processing) from the history.

CW and CCW rotate

Rotates image 90^o clockwise or counter-clockwise.

Free angle rotate

Specify a line on which you wish to align the image (either vertically or horizontally). Automatic mode chooses the most appropriate direction of rotation.

Crop

Crop selected area of image using aspect ratio, free select or fixed size selection.

Resize

Resize image up or down using a unique Unified Color photometric resize algorithm. Can specify the new size either in pixels, or in % from the current image dimensions.

Veiling Glare

Veiling Glare is a problem seen in any optical system. It appears as a whitish haze over image, and is due to stray light reflecting between the glass elements of camera lens. This problem is very manifesting in case of HDR imaging because of multiplying effect of reflection in multiple HDR shots. Use this tool to reduce (or add) veiling glare in image. Use pipette tool to set base point in image and then adjust the amount of veiling glare taken from this point. Amount at -100% will completely remove any veiling glare, 100% will increase it twice. The default setting at dialog opening sets the base point at 18% neutral tone (-2.47EV). This tool is very useful for producing very deep blacks, especially for night shots. It can also be used to reduce fog or atmospheric haze present in image (use it sparingly for this purpose though).

Brightness/Contrast

Adjust image brightness and contrast, including its local (detail) contrast. The contrast in combination of local contrast provides a powerful dynamic range mapping tool. Use brightness slider to adjust image's brightness, -5EV to 5EV with slider, or -20EV to 20EV if enter manual values. Use "set bright point" pipette tool to select the point in the image that should be of maximum brightness on your monitor. Use "set 18% gray" pipette tool to select the point in the image that should become neutral tone 18% brightness. When "keep local contrast" checkbox is set, if you move the contrast slider, the local contrast slider is automatically adjusted to the reciprocal contrast value, preserving detail contrast in image, while the dynamic range of image is adjusted. Use "reduce halo artifact" option to get rid of any halos that may appear due to use of local contrast. A small slider next to this option gives an additional control with choices of Fast, Optimal and Quality halo reduction.

Shadow/Highlight

Another powerful dynamic range mapping tool. Adjusts shadows and highlights, and also has a reduce halo option. Use the Midtone point control to specify the offset in EV for the brightness point between shadows and highlights. Can also select the midtone point with a pipette.

Sharpness

Sharpen or blur your images — make sure you look at the image at 100% zoom. Also try it with a smaller radius/higher power setting.

White Balance

Correct lighting conditions using several standard White Balance settings (found in preset menu). Do more advanced color correction by specifying source and target colors. Color Temperature slider lets you control White Balance setting using Kelvin temperature scale.

Color Tuning

A very powerful color correction tool: fine-tune specific color tones in the image by specifying upto 3 points of "source-target" color. Use Color Tuning after White Balance to selectively change specific color tones, while preserving the other color tones in the image.

Saturation

Increase or decrease color saturation in an image or change its hue (color). With Color Tone Equalizer tool you can control saturation of colors per 6 selected tones: red, yellow, green, cyan, blue, magenta.

Tint (toning)

Create either black and white or mono-colored effect for your images. The Preset button has several popular choices.

Noise Elimination

Powerful noise reduction tool with a preview window. You can reduce brightness and color (chromatic) noise.

Recipe

Assign your custom recipe to this button. You can now access all operations in the assigned recipe with just one click.