Hydra 3.0.2 — 3rd January 2012

• UI localized in Italian
• Fixed a crash when importing images on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Hydra 3.0.1 — 31st October 2011

• Autoalignment is no more proposed for single image documents
• Batch jobs can now be removed with backspace (delete) key (Pro version)
• Fixed Import action behavior (File menu)
• Fixed a crash for image import on Lion
• Fixed a problem that would prevent correct display ghost checkboxes, sometimes related to fullscreen mode
• Fixed a problem affecting probe removal (Pro version)

Hydra 3.0 — 6th October 2011

• Completely new user interface
• Additional features available in the Express version (image processing features, plug-ins...)
• Localized in English, French and German
• Better interactive visualization:
  • Full resolution image, fast display
  • Interactive adjustments
  • Overview/manipulation of displayed image area within the whole image
  • Mouse scrolling and zoom in/out
  • Optional flashing low/highlights alerts
  • Better fullscreen support
  • Improved display of photo information
• Image processing:
• 2 modes of operation: Photo Preparation, and Photo Development
• Better camera response function estimates
• Automatic or zone-based ghost removal (due to moving objects in different exposures)
• Image alignment:
• Much improved automatic alignment, even for farther apart exposures
• Interactive point placement, with increased contrast display for easier manual matching
• Subpixel point matching with subpixel user input
• Reset button for individual alignment points
• Better support for low contrast/less textured images
• Tone mapping:
• Entirely rewritten tonemapper
• Full 32-bit floating point pipeline (per color component)
• 32-bit EV histogram and 8-bit tone-mapped histogram
• Realtime adjustments on full resolution image
• Reset of any slider by double-clicking it
• Better central exposure determination
• Better quality & user control
• New controls - adjustable per scope: Overall exposure adjustment, shadows & highlights enhancement, details enhancement, hue, saturation, brightness, contrast
• 12 presets available
• User presets can be stored per document (snapshots)
• Scope-based adjustments to target only bright or dark areas, red, green, or blue tones
• Probe-based adjustments (Pro version only)
• Probes are used to select areas based on distance/color/brightness tolerance (Pro version only)
• Interactive probe placement (Pro version only)
• Post-processing:
• Crop
• Glow
• Vignetting
• White frame
• Workflow - Batch processing (Pro version only):
• Drop files and folders, Hydra groups them as exposure sets
• Photo sets can be modified by user (add/remove photo, split set)
• Photo sets can be given different processing options (tone mapping preset, automatic alignment, ghost removal...)
• Can create final images and/or Hydra documents for later manual editing
• Display of batch processing progress
• Export:
• Improved export to iPhoto, Aperture, and Lightroom
• Export to Flickr
• Export to Twitter
• Export to Facebook
• Export to Mail
• Better EXIF information handling
• Copyright information added to EXIF data
• Optimized for Lion:
• Fullscreen Mode
• Autosaving and Versioning
• Automatic Termination and Restart
• Improved Aperture plug-in
• Improved Lightroom plug-in

Hydra 2.3 — 14th January 2011

• Product Line Split
• Hydra Express available on the Mac App Store
• Hydra Pro available on Creaceed's website

Hydra 2.2.1 — 26th November 2010

• Lightroom 3 compatibility (plug-in installation)

Hydra 2.2 — 23rd February 2010

• HDR Plug-In for Lightroom 2
• Improved User Guide

Hydra 2.1.5 — 13th February 2010

• Better default value for Perceptive tone-mapper
• Improved automatic alignment
• Fixed Mach-bands issue in Aperture plug-in preview rendering
• Fixed Alignment panel refresh problem

Hydra 2.1.4 — 11th February 2010

• Aperture Plug-In: Support for Aperture 3 (64-bit architectures)

Hydra 2.1.3 — 31st August 2009

• Fixed Automatic Alignment Crash in Snow Leopard
• Fixed Fullscreen Mode in Snow Leopard

Hydra 2.1.2 — 28th August 2009

• Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard compatibility
• Support for 64-bit architectures
• Improved performance under Snow Leopard (final rendering up to 2.5 times faster)
• Use of sliders with real-time feedback

Hydra 2.1.1 — 10th June 2009

• Reference points can now be deleted with the Delete key
• Navigation through reference points with Tab key
• Loupe availability now coherent
• Fixed disappearing document window when importing image with no EXIF tag
• Japanese localization (stand-alone application, Aperture plug-in and user guide)
• Italian localization (stand-alone application and user guide)

Hydra 2.1 — 11th March 2009

• New feature: Source image thumbs can now be clicked for smooth overlay. This makes it easier to compare the tone mapping output with any source image, or to compare source images together.
• New feature: Accurate dual histogram display (LDR/HDR). The HDR histogram represents the merged, 32-bit image before tone mapping in a logarithmic scale (EV). The LDR histogram represents the currently displayed preview, it is a regular 8-bit histogram with a 0-255 scale. Histograms are computed in a separate thread to keep overall interactivity.
• Improved: Faster rendering pipeline when previewing (up to 5x), especially true for RAW input images.
• Improved: Incremental rendering as tiles is implemented.
• Improved: Changing GPU setting in the preferences does not require Hydra relaunch anymore.
• Improved: Faster window resizing.
• Improved: Cancel rendering is now immediate when not using GPU acceleration.
• Improved: The sharpen filter is now scale invariant, meaning that the preview rendering accurately demonstrates the effect as it appears in the full resolution output.
• Improved: Automatic update is now signed for improved security.
• Improved: Import progress sheet for images is displayed.
• Aperture Plug-In: Fixed cancel import problem.
• Aperture Plug-In: Fixed hang when exporting back to Aperture.
• Aperture Plug-In: Smart Aperture projects do not cause a hang anymore, option to save to the Pictures folder when project is read only.
• Aperture Plug-In: 16-bit TIFF rendering is now supported, 32-bit removed (use stand alone Hydra if OpenEXR format is needed).
• Aperture Plug-In: Shift key can be used to import modified versions of images into Hydra. This way, any modification in color temperature, contrast, etc. is made available to Hydra Plug-in. This remains an optional behavior as it has an impact on rendered image, and it can make the initial import process longer.
• Aperture Plug-In: Auto updating of the Plug-in when a new version is posted.
• Fixed bug: Importing images of different pixel sizes does not cause a crash anymore.
• Fixed bug: Removing/adding images now resets reference points.
• Fixed bug: About panel now scrolls properly.

Hydra 2.0.1 — 26th January 2009

• RAW: Full dynamics support, with additional control (boost, shadow, tint, sharpening)
• RAW: Single RAW image tone mapping improved
• Decreased default requirements (preview size, GPU acc.)
• Loupe will not pop up anymore, only on user request
• Fixed activation process error
• Dropping image on app icon in the dock now imports images
• Fixed Loupe for portrait images
• German Localization (user interface)

Hydra 2.0 — 6th January 2009

• General: Improved image processing pipeline - faster, higher quality
• General: Now provides default values for missing exif tags
• General: Additional keyboard shortcuts for common operations
• General: Additional display of image information (EXIF tags)
• General: New document examples
• General: New welcome screen
• Stand-alone: Output display in Preview, export to Aperture or iPhoto
• Aperture Plug-In: New interface, more inline with the stand-alone version
• Alignment: New homography based method, in addition to the unconstraint one
• Alignment: Notification of disabled homography due to too few points
• Alignment: Can be disabled without requiring to remove all the points
• Alignment: Special image border handling (mirror)
• Alignment: Display of point deviation to easily identify erroneous reference points
• Loupe: New real-time 1:1 full quality preview
• Loupe: Adaptive exposure compensation when previewing HDR
• Loupe: Display of transparent image frame when navigating through
• Loupe: Synchronized with alignment window when control-dragging points
• Loupe: Degraded rendering when manipulating to preserve responsiveness
• Tone Mapping: New Perceptive tone mapper, for more natural images
• Output: Choice of file name and directory
• Pro: New Settings Stack to quickly try different effects and revert to the preferred one
• Pro: Point coordinates display
• Pro: Exposure Value Calculator
• Pro: Additional image processing options
• Pro: Input filters, contrast, sharpness, color temperature
• Pro: Output filters, saturation, sharpness, brightness / contrast
• Pro: Apply to all, reset
• Pro: Export of individual aligned images, before merging process
• Pro: Enabling or disabling of GPU processing to better tune on each machine

Hydra 1.6.2 — 29th December 2008

• Aperture plug-in: fixed Aperture import hang-up
• Stand-alone: added support for Pentax .PEF raw images
• Fixed bad color profile for JPEGs (Hydra output)

Hydra 1.6.1 — August 2008

• Aperture plug-in: added image size check
• Aperture plug-in: check IPTC tags and EXIF
• Aperture plug-in: fix missing lens model
• Aperture plug-in: fix missing progress bar animation in import
• Aperture plug-in: fix import sheet freeze
• Stand-alone: fix re-opening preferences window crash
• Stand-alone: new option to choose 8/32-bit depth for TIFFs
• Always display computed EV offset in import panel
• Fix missing ISO information
• Make more robust handling of ISO / exposure time / FNumber (Zero, fractional numbers, missing info)
• Keep camera model unchanged (add Hydra as another tag)
• Choose better tone mapping default values
• Moved to Karelia's media browser v1.1.1
• Accelerated final rendering processing speed
• German localization (stand-alone application, Aperture plug-in and user guide)

Hydra 1.6 — July 2008

• Aperture plug-in: Installable package
• Aperture plug-in: better viewing window (resizeable)
• Aperture plug-in: shift-click Save, saves one image but stays in the plugin
• Aperture plug-in: stacks output image to inputs as an option
• Aperture plug-in: add a render sheet with cancel button
• Aperture plug-in: output file format options (before aperture import)
• Aperture plug-in: remove temporary image from disk
• Aperture plug-in: add license support
• review localization (plugin and s/a app)
• updated User Guide
• updated French localization
• fix colorspace in output
• fixed bug in canon eos 10D images (check)
• fixed bug in DNG image processing, leading to no output
• fixed bug in match checkbox (manual alignement panel)

Hydra 1.5.3 — June 2008

• Italian localization
• fix final rendering coordinates system
• Aperture plug-in: rotated 90° images support
• Aperture plug-in: coordinate system based on correctly oriented image
• Aperture plug-in: fix Match View drawRect:
• Aperture plug-in: bring back alignment panel
• Aperture plug-in: automatch
• Aperture plug-in: manual match
• Aperture plug-in: move / create point tools
• Aperture plug-in: density setting in settings sheet.
• Aperture plug-in: add tag to identify HDR outputs
• Aperture plug-in: PPC support (>= G5)
• Aperture plug-in: 3D perspective view as an option
• Aperture plug-in: support for setting preferences
• Aperture plug-in: quality of preview

Hydra 1.5.2 — May 2008

• Fixed Intel GMA chipset bug + PPC for Aperture PlugIn
• Single image processing added (tone mapping RAW)

Hydra 1.5.1 — May 2008

• Fixed Intel GMA chipset bug + PPC

Hydra 1.5 — May 2008

• better UI concepts
• better fullscreen handling (HUD for window controls)
• HUD for zoom and image navigation
• import from Aperture
• export to Aperture
• OpenEXR output
• RAW import
• Improved warping quality
• EV histogram representation
• True Tone-mapping implementation
• Tone Mapping: Local Adaptation
• Tone Mapping: Highlight Compression
• Support for presets
• Increased speed final rendering
• more than 4 images
• new reference point image
• examples added
• Aperture Plugin Beta
• french localization update
• documentation update

Hydra 1.0.4 — March 2008

• French Localization

Hydra 1.0.3 — February 2008

• More accurate and faster automatic image alignment
• Added an option for controlling the density of ref points
• Alignment made by default when importing images (can be disabled in Hydra Preferences)
• Updated User Guide

Hydra 1.0.2 — February 2008

• Added TIFF Output

Hydra 1.0.1 — January 2008

• Fixed crash when quitting Hydra
• Fixed bad labels in Welcome window

Hydra 1.0 — January 2008

• First Release