Tag Archives: hdr pro

Variations in HDR Processing

While scanning through some images, one of the shots that showed up in my catalog was an HDR processing of some shots of a US Army Chinook.  It had been processed with a plugin that I had previously experimented with.  I thought it looked over vibrant but I was impressed with the way the dark interior of the helicopter had shown up while the outside was also well lit.  I decided to have another go at processing the images.

I used Lightroom initially to do the processing.  It came out surprisingly well and looked not unlike the outcome from the plugin.  However, there was some ghosting on people in the shot and there was a lot of chromatic aberration.  I have noticed issues with Lightroom making a worse job of it than Photoshop so I decided to try HDR Pro in Photoshop as well and use Camera Raw for tone mapping.  The outcome was very similar from an overall perspective.  However, the ghosting was virtually eliminated and the aberration was not apparent either.  It clearly is still a better bet than Lightroom.

HDR Pro Comparison

wpid12423-IMG_2448.jpgThe iPhone has an HDR function available in the camera’s software. However, it hasn’t impressed me in the past. My friend Hayman introduced me to an app called HDR Pro and I have used that as my default iPhone HDR app since. Recently, they introduced an updated version of the app called HDR Pro X. I decided to give it a go. I wanted to see what the images it produced were like, how the new controls worked and also to make a comparison with the output from HDR Pro.

wpid12425-IMG_2449.jpgThe top shot is from the new app.  The second one is the previous version.  The added control certainly seems to be beneficial and the blowing out of the higlihgts is far better controlled.  I am generally happy with the new version.  The controls could be more user friendly.  When you use Lightroom/Camera Raw all the time, anything less seems clunky!  See what you think of the results.