New in Hydra 3: 12 tone mapping presets

Tone Mapping Presets


12 tone mapping presets are available in Hydra 3. They will help you imagine brand new ways of enhancing your photographs.
  • Photorealistic: flattens the dynamic range by pushing shadows and pulling highlights
  • Artistic Black & White: produces a detail-enhanced black and white photo
  • Contrasted Surrealism: boosts details and saturation
  • Soft Surrealism: makes image softer and boosts saturation
  • Arabesque Silhouettes: splits highlights and shadows to make dual tone (bright/dark) photo
  • Crispy Clouds: detail-enhanced in bright areas (typically clouds)
  • Tinted Sky: shifts the blue tint in original photo to red for artistic effect
  • Reds Only: makes image black & white, except for reds which are preserved
  • Sepia Tones: decreases color saturation and tints to sepia color, also adds vignetting at corners
  • Retro: decreases saturation and dynamic range to resemble old cameras
  • Cyanotype: Cyan-blue rendering or blueprint inspired by the so-called printing process.

More information about Hydra's tone mapper here.



Optional Flashing Low/Highlights Alerts


Activate the feature, and see on each image which parts are either underexposed, or overexposed. They will flash to help you localize them more easily.




★ 1st shot out of a set of 3
Exposure duration = 1/13 sec.
The highlights areas are flashing (black areas on the screenshot on the right).









★ 2nd shot out of a set of 3
Exposure duration = 1/25 sec.
The highlights areas are flashing (black areas on the screenshot on the right).









★ 3rd shot out of a set of 3
Exposure duration = 1/60 sec.
The lowlights areas are flashing (white areas on the screenshot on the right).






New in Hydra 3: The highlights areas are flashing in black


New in Hydra 3: The highlights areas are flashing in black


New in Hydra 3: The lowlights areas are flashing in white










New in Hydra 3: Snapshots enables you to easily compare several drafts in a single HDR project

Snapshots


Snapshots are user presets which can be stored per document. They are used for helping you experiment before rendering the HDR image.
  • Change the value of some controls, and click the + button to temporarily save the image in your Hydra project. A dot appears in the first circle.
  • Edit the control values again, and click the + button. Another dot appears in the second circle.
  • Select another tone mapping presets, and click the + button. A dot appears in the third circle.
  • Click the 1st circle to preview the 1st image you saved. Click the second one to show the second image, and so on. So, you can easily compare images, and render the one you like best.

1st snapshot: HDR image using the Crispy Clouds preset
2nd snapshot: HDR image using the Reds Only preset
3rd snapshot: HDR image using the Photorealistic preset
Snapshot 1
Crispy Clouds
Snapshot 2
Reds Only
Snapshot 3
Photorealistic



Ghost Artifacts Removal


You can see ghost artifacts on an HDR image if a person, an animal or any other object moved between the different exposure shots. To get a perfect HDR image, you need several shots which are exactly the same. Or you can use the ghost removal feature of Hydra 3.

There are 2 methods available in Hydra 3 for removing ghost artifacts: an automatic technique, and a zone-based technique. In the example below, you can see how to use the zone-based technique.

Remark: you can add several zones if you need to correct several ghost artifacts.
When pictures are not 100% the same, it creates a ghost effect in the HDR image
Ghost artifact example: a bird was swimming
when the pictures were shot. As a result,
you can see 3 bird shapes on the HDR image.


New in Hydra 3: Prevent ghost effect using zones
New in Hydra 3: Draw a line around the zone where a ghost effect would appear
New in Hydra 3: Choose a single picture, so that when the HDR image is rendered, a single shot is used for that zone
Step 1: Activate the zone-based
ghost removal feature
Step 2: Draw a line enclosing the area
where you want to avoid the ghost artifact
Step 3: Select the image(s) to be used
for rendering this part of the HDR image



X-Ray-based Alignment Editing


Hydra 3 provides an advanced automatic image matching technique relying on multi-core acceleration. You can activate manual matching when the automatic technique failed to locate a reference point on an image. Move the point on the image until the target is at the same location as on the reference image (i.e. the middle image which is shown in yellow).




The last pane in the series shows an X-ray view. It allows you to position more accurately the alignment points towards the reference image. Colored lines provide visual feedback on the correctness of subpixel positioning.



New in Hydra 3: Image alignment window with X-Ray preview



Probe-based Adjustments (Pro only)


You can use probes to select areas based on distance, color, or brightness tolerance, and modify these areas. This probe-based selection mechanism is only available in Hydra Pro.

HDR Image made with Hydra - San Francisco
The HDR Image








New in Hydra Pro 3: modify some parts of the HDR image using probes
Move the probe to the appropriate location, and move the sliders to adjust distance, color, or brightness tolerance.



Batch Processing (Pro only)


Do you have many series of exposure shots you want to make HDR images from? Hydra Pro 3 and its batch processing feature will enable you to render several HDR images in a row.

Simply drag and drop the images or folders in the batch processing window, and Hydra Pro will automatically make series of them. If Hydra Pro happens to be mistaken, you can manually modify the photo sets by removing a picture, splitting a set, or merging a set with the previous one.

Then, you can choose for each photo set how to process the image:
  • which tone mapping preset to apply
  • whether images have to be aligned
  • whether there are ghost effects to remove automatically
  • where you want the HDR images to be saved
  • which image format you want to output
  • whether you want to save a Hydra document for later fine-tuning it manually.


New in Hydra Pro 3: batch processing to render several HDR images in a row

See all new features.