Photomatix- are there any satisfied customers?

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Robert T Higaki

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I got off the phone with a friend in LA. He suggested this product called Photomatix for shooting high contrast situations. I want take advantage of this forum to reach out to more people and get more opinions on this product.

Bob- the slide shooter at heart
 
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I, too, am quite happy with Photomatix Pro. It's easy to use and can produce nice results.
 
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I bought it this week after playing with the trial for a few weeks.

I think the trick is to make sure what you are photographing has very high contrast, I know that sounds obvious but it's surprising how many times I've tried HDR and found the original scene looked better in a single raw file because there wasn't enough contrast to take full advantage of HDR.

I guess when you are playing with something new you also tend to try it on anything and everything to see what happens :icon_biggrin:
I've also found that masking the Tone Mapped HDR with one of the original files in Photoshop can get some nice results too.

The biggest issue I have is noise, LR & Photoshop don't quite get rid of the noise that is produced during the HDR process so I may have to invest in yet another product. I have found that applying noise reduction on the images before exporting to Photomatix helps a fair bit even if the original images aren't noisy.
 
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[quote author=sizzlingbadger link=topic=7368.msg5286'#msg5286' date=1252'957'5]
I bought it this week after playing with the trial for a few weeks.

I think the trick is to make sure what you are photographing has very high contrast, I know that sounds obvious but it's surprising how many times I've tried HDR and found the original scene looked better in a single raw file because there wasn't enough contrast to take full advantage of HDR.

I guess when you are playing with something new you also tend to try it on anything and everything to see what happens :icon_biggrin:
I've also found that masking the Tone Mapped HDR with one of the original files in Photoshop can get some nice results too.

The biggest issue I have is noise, LR & Photoshop don't quite get rid of the noise that is produced during the HDR process so I may have to invest in yet another product. I have found that applying noise reduction on the images before exporting to Photomatix helps a fair bit even if the original images aren't noisy.
[/quote]

You are right about the noise but I always run the original through Noiseware Pro and don't find noise to be much of an issue doing it this way. I really like to varying degrees of result I get with Photomatix
 
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I have a different take on Photomatix Pro. I do not think it's a great program. Not at all. I think it's a great technology, but I think the application has the clunkiest, most obnoxious user-interface of any HDR software I've tried. That said, I use it sometimes. Here's one I did with it and had in my graduating portfolio at Hallmark Institute of Photography:

Campagna_Matthew_P4_E'6_CT'7.jpg



My issues have nothing to do with the end output; it's possible to get fantastic images out of Photomatix, and it gives you a lot of control. But teh application is clunky and slow. The refresh rate on images is awful, especially when you're used to working in Lightroom or Photoshop, and receive live feedback on slider adjustments.

The tone mapping controls have very obtuse names, and it's difficult to know what is going on as you adjust the sliders. Because the names give you very little indication what the sliders do, and there's no live feedback, it feels kind of like a crap shoot every time you make an adjustment.

John Paul Caponigro had an excellent article in Digital Photo Pro earlier this year that explained each slider. It was an excellent article, something like a Photomatix bible, and I like to keep it beside me for reference when I work with the application. It's funny, though, because Photomatix is the ONLY application I use where I constantly feel like I need that "Bible" at my side. For me, that speaks volumes to the application's lack of intuitive usability. There's nothing intuitive about it. In this day and age, I've come to expect from from a user interface.

Performance-wise, though, Photomatix still outstrips Adobe's HDR implementation in Photoshop. What I really wish would happen is that Adobe would buy out Photomatix and implement the processing technology into Photoshop and Lightroom. That would be incredible.

An alternative worth keeping an eye on for Mac users is Hydra. It's not quite on the same level as Photomatix yet for image making, but when it comes to user interface and ease of use, Hydra runs circles around Photomatix. If Adobe isn't going to buy Photomatix out, I wish the Hydra people would ... Somewhere in the grey area between Photomatix and Hydra, I'm convinced is the perfect HDR application. We just haven't seen it yet.

I'm told there's a Lightroom plugin for Hydra in the pipeline as well, so that's something I'm looking forward to.
 
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I agree, the interface is not user friendly and it operates at clunky most times. But, what else is out there that comes close to its abilities? It would be absolutely wonderful if Adobe did purchase and support it for LR and PS.
 
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Nice work finding that article link, sizzlingbadger. I had Googled for it, but failed.

You're running Snow Leopard; seriously, check out the demo for Hydra. Then come back and tell me Photomatix can't do better on processing and refresh.
 
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I downloaded Hydra but haven't installed it yet, I plan to try it out though it looks pretty good if the website examples are anything to go by.
 
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quick and dirty comparison of Hydra / Photomatix. First impressions are pretty good. The image is cleaner and sharper from Hydra but it is quite difficult to tone map in Hydra as the controls are very sensitive. The UI is certainly better designed, it mimics the Aperture interface. It will take some playing about to get good results. I used 3 dng images 2 stops apart to test. Photomatix renders the dng images better initially but Hydra does have some RAW controls that once tweaked look good and also allow sharpening. The alignment stage in Hydra allows you to choose the alignment points in the image which is very useful. I will need more time to make a better judgment but overall I think it's a good app and with the right development may be a favourite. The images below were resized in PS. The Photomatix image was also sharpened as it doesn't do that as part of it's process.

I think it may be better to use LR / ACR to process the RAW files first and get them rendered correctly etc... then export TIF files to these HDR applications (this is how the plug-ins normally behave)
 
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[quote author=sizzlingbadger link=topic=7368.msg51375#msg51375 date=1249953845]
I think there is a learning curve to producing good results though. [/quote]

It does :icon_neutral: It took me some while to get the pictures in "naturual colors";

I'm a happy costomer works fine with lightroom; I used it for a book about a church;

an example:
[img width=399 height=6'']http://www.jeroeneck.nl/hetfotoforum/overig/jeck2''8'724-9'7.jpg[/img]
 
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