easyHDR PRO documentation

The full easyHDR PRO documentation is available in form of a PDF document. You can get it from the "download" section of this website. In addition to the PDF documentation you may also find the following articles interesting:


Documentation download

Below you can find a Quick Start tutorial that describes in a very compact way how to process a HDR photo sequence with the easyHDR PRO 2 software.


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Quick Start


easyHDR PRO, bracketed sequence - hdr image - tone mapped result

Set of photos of a HDR scene Take a set of photos of the same High Dynamic Range scene at different exposure times, ISO values or f-stops. In order to achieve best results the Exposure Value difference between the photos should be 1 to 2EV. EasyHDR PRO will load JPEG, RAW (i.e. CR2, NEF, etc.), TIFF and FIT file formats.

Tip: you can start with sample photos that were installed along with easyHDR PRO. There are also tone mapping settings files that were used to achieve the results. You can find those examples in: C:\Documents and Settings\[USER_NAME]\easyHDR PRO 2\examples. On Windows Vista and Windows 7 the "C:\Documents and Settings" folder is replaced by "C:\Users".
 
Loading photos Click File->Open and select all of the photos from the sequence that you want to merge into HDR. There is always a possibility to open additional photos or to remove those already loaded. EasyHDR PRO will also load photos that you drag & drop over the program window.

Instead of processing a HDR image sequence you can load a single image and do "LDR enhancement".
 
Chromatic aberration correction tool Before making a HDR image it is possible to preprocess the input photos. Preprocessing possibilities are: Chromatic Aberration correction as well as alignment (manual or automatic). They are available in the "HDR generation" window.

With Chromatic Aberration correction tool you can minimize the chromatic aberration effects caused by imperfections of the lens.
 
Manual alignment tool If the input photos are misaligned in respect to each other you may use the automatic, or the manual alignment tool. Both are capable of compensating for shift, rotation as well as perspective misalignment. The manual tool may be used in a semi-automatic way. Just use the automatic pin placement option, then you can verify the quality of alignment and do corrections. The idea of manual alignment is simple - just select the base photo and place the pin pairs (each pair is marked with a different color) in a way that they point exactly the same details on the base picture (top left) as well as on the photo to be aligned to it (top right). The live preview is shown in the lower left window, but please note that all the pins must be placed before the good preview is shown. Repeat this operation for all photos to be aligned to the base.

Tip: It is possible to fine tune the pin positions by moving them with keyboard arrows. Just double click on a pin to enter keyboard mode. Shift key allows big jumps.
 
Auto alignment tool In many cases however, automatic alignment will be sufficient. Just choose the method and the base image to which the function shall align the rest of the photos and click "Apply". By default the middle exposed photo is selected to be the base one.

When the alignment is done you may save the transformed photos for future use. You can do it any time - before or after generating the HDR radiance map.
 
Generating HDR image After pre-processing the input images (chromatic aberration correction and alignment) you can generate the HDR image. Instead of generating a true HDR radiance map, there is a possibility to merge the photo sequence using a pseudo-HDR algorithm (called Smart Merge) or to generate an image stack (simple average).
 
Ghost removal The True-HDR method has a ghost removal capability. When the manual option is chosen, a ghost removal tool window appears before the HDR is generated. The user is supposed to paint masks that mark the ghosted areas. Those areas are repaired by using just one, user-selected photo to reconstruct the HDR image.
 
Tone mapping preview After the HDR image is generated, the photo is automatically resized for faster previewing. It is also automatically tone mapped with the currently defined settings.
 
Using presets Now you can play with the tone mapping settings in order to find the best result or a special effect that you want to achieve. You can use the already defined presets - in this example "dramatic-dark" preset was chosen.

Tip: hover the mouse cursor over the sliders to see short description of the particular setting.
 
Tone mapping the photo at full resolution Having chosen the best settings you can finally process the whole image at full resolution by clicking the "Process all" button.
 
Post-processing Before saving the result you may wish to process the photo using available filters - blur, sharpening, noise removal, white balance, sample/target balance or color tone manipulation. Before applying a filter to entire image you can preview just a selected area.

There is also a possibility to rotate, flip and to crop the photo. Tip: the area selected for cropping can be moved over the image with Shift button held pressed.
 
Now you can save the result (File->Save). When saving as JPEG or TIFF you can choose the input photo from which the EXIF headers shall be transferred (if the EXIF is available). For best quality choose to save as 48-bit TIFF (16-bit per channel).
 



Copyright © 2006-2012, BartÅ‚omiej Okonek. All rights reserved.

The current version of easyHDR PRO is: 2.13.2 (January, 25th 2012).
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