I finally upgraded to Adobe Photoshop CS5 this weekend. My only reason for waiting was because many of my plugins weren’t ready for 64 bit. OnOne Software just released its update for the Complete Collection, so now I’m waiting on NIK (Viveza 2 is ready) and Red Giant. So despite my reason for updating, I’m still running Photoshop in 32-bit mode.
All of the features I’ve been reading about are finally at my disposal. I decided to start with HDR Pro – Adobe’s improved HDR engine and compare it to Photomatix. I’ve only processed one image so far and I can see enough to determine what I like and dislike about each. I understand that Photomatix is preparing to upgrade soon, so I’ll get a chance to compare again when that hits the street.
Overall, I found that I still prefer Photomatix to Photoshop’s HDR Pro. Let me show you why. I performed the same post-processing on each image, but they clearly have a different look and feel to them based upon the HDR processing engine.
CS5 WWII Memorial by William Beem
Photomatix WWII Memorial by William Beem
There are a couple of aspects that jumped out at me when I viewed the HDR Pro image. The first was the harsh striations in the sky. The next was the lack of exposure in the bottom foreground steps . I used the option to remove ghosting with HDR Pro. I think it did a better job than Photomatix in that regard, but I don’t know if that’s enough to turn me into a fan. The overall look is relatively flat, despite the fact that it has the same Curves adjustment as the Photomatix image below it. Some will like HDR Pro because they’ve said it looks more “realistic” than Photomatix results. I’d agree with that, but I don’t think it looks better. That’s a matter of opinion and preference, though. I suppose I like a more impressionistic view.
The Photomatix version definitely has worse ghosting suppression, but it handles the tone changes and striations in the sky much better than HDR Pro. It also provides more options to play with the light (smoothing) than HDR Pro offered, giving the photographer more control over the final image. It was also faster than HDR Pro – significantly faster. Something I didn’t like about HDR Pro was that it flattened the image in Photoshop upon completion. If you want to mask in some of the original exposures, you have to re-load them into Photoshop as layers. It adds another stop on top of a slower process. I can’t imagine why Adobe felt the need to flatten the image rather than create a new layer, but it seems to take some of the “Pro” out of HDR Pro. It’s bad workflow.
I’d like to try a few more scenes to compare with Photomatix and HDR Pro. Perhaps I’ll find times when I prefer the result of HDR Pro instead of Photomatix. One thing is for sure. HDR Pro has a poor workflow and takes longer to do the same job as Photomatix.
