Digital Photographer's Software Guide - Bertemes - Net

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The Digital Photographer's Software Guide
Some people believe that HDR is the way forward for digital photography, a reasonable
prediction because the representation of dynamic range is one of its few weaknesses.
Like 3D or panoramic photography, it makes a great hobby and has the potential to
make a great business. To get started, check out the products listed in this chapter.
Artizen HDR
Vendor: Supporting Computers
Purpose: All-in-one HDR and LDR solution for home and professional photographers
Description
Described by the vendor as “the first all-in-one HDR (High Dynamic Range) and LDR
(Low Dynamic Range) solution for the home and professional photographer,” Artizen
HDR brings many editing facilities to HDR photography. It has a metadata editor for
Exif, GPS, and IPTC; color-correction tool with more than 20 options; an image
browser for over 40 formats; batch processor; icon creator; RAW image editor with support
for 11 RAW file formats; Web gallery creator; Web page generator; artistic painter;
and a panoramic fisheye creator.
Artizen HDR has the main functions you would expect of an HDR stand-alone program,
including a merging tool with x,y alignment and masking support; a tone mapping application
with 11 operators; and HDR x,y autoalignment. The image editor supports 8-bit
(LDRi), 16-bit (LDRi), and 32-bit (HDRi) and has unlimited multi-processor support.
The vendor has also taken the tone mapping functions, which are included with the
main stand-alone package, and incorporated them into a Photoshop HDR plug-in package
called Photoshop Tone Mapping Operator plug-ins or “TMO Bundle.” As an extra,
the vendor has included the Orton artistic blending method that’s popular among HDR
enthusiasts, along with the other plug-ins.
Comments
Artizen HDR has so many normal editing functions in addition to its HDR features it
is almost a general-purpose editor. These multiple features are popular with reviewers,
but less popular are the heavy demands it makes on system resources. Tone mapping
algorithms, which make the HDR image displayable on LDR devices, can be very slow,
as you can imagine, given the huge numbers they manipulate. However, the tone mapping
is non-destructive and the results are first-rate. The price is also extremely competitive,
making the package an excellent value for photographers who want a complete
HDR solution.
Version: Artizen HDR 2.5.29 (2008)
OS: Windows 2000 SP3, SP4, 2003, XP SP1&2, and Vista; Mac OSX in development
RAM: 512MB (3GB recommended)