[Eric Seavey]

Well, after contemplating for about a year, I have decided that I am in a way saying goodbye to Fhotoroom HDR that I have used for a long time. Fhotoroom HDR has an incredible and powerful tonemapper and excellent alignment and deghosting performance for a very low price. Unfortunately, this 32-bit program does run out of memory easily and then crashes with larger images. Also, it is pretty slow. Other than that, the performance is in the league of the "big boys" such as Photomatix Pro, Oloneo, HDR PhotoStudio and HDR Efex Pro. Unfortunately, the crashing with larger images, and the lack of updates of this "almost finished" piece of software led me to look into other programs for my HDR processing.

I thoroughly tried almost all HDR software that is available (except SNS HDR-Pro, and I would if there were an trial version) for their realistic and stylized tonemapping capabilities. I also evaluated their handling of ultra-large panoramic-sized photos, and auto alignment and deghosting performance. I want a program that handles everything as well as possible. In a nutshell, my choice narrowed down to Photomatix, Oloneo, and HDR PhotoStudio or just keeping Fhotoroom HDR and hope an update comes soon. Here are my thoughts on the best software I tried:

SNS-HDR Pro - My feeling it is this could be a very good program with a powerful tonemapper similar to Oloneo, but again I haven't tried it. Their realistic photo samples look very good!

HDR Efex Pro - Very nice plugin interface for Photoshop! Works well, but the tonemapper is too limited for stylized tonemapping.

HDR Photostudio - Beautiful program for realistic HDR photos. Tonemapper is not really meant for creating stylized looks.

Photomatix Pro - One of the three programs I tried most thoroughly (Fhotoroom for comparison and Oloneo PhotoEngine are the other two). Very good program that is fast, and performs well. It has a powerful tonemapper designed to be easy to use. However, it is not as elegant as the Fhotoroom HDR and Oloneo tonemapper that allows users to adjust the dramatic look from natural to dramatic with the use of sliders as supposed to tonemapper modes. The presets provide very good starting points where only minor adjustments are needed to get a satisfying look without all the halos.

Oloneo PhotoEngine - Very good program and is very fast. Very powerful tonemapper that can operate (similar to Photomatix Pro) in different modes. However, the advanced mode is able to produce a natural look as well as a stylized look using a single slider. It suppresses halos extremely well too. The tonemapper has a lot of controls to tweak the look of the image REAL TIME. This is very nice, compared to the preview image in Photomatix Pro and Fhotoroom HDR that do not always look the same as the processed image. Also, Oloneo PhotoEngine allows HDR and LDR adjustments to be done the same time, where Photomatix Pro and Fhotoroom HDR need to process the tonemapping to the HDR first and then one provides the option to do additional LDR editing.

There are cases where Oloneo PhotoEngine, simply cannot produce the look to images that Photomatix and Fhotoroom HDR produce and vice versa. Oloneo PhotoEngine tonemapper produces images that are somewhat similar to Fhotoroom HDR however. Of course the tonemapper is what produces the "look" of the image and its use, and output is also going to be the most personal aspect that people like or dislike of the program. I guess reviews are sometimes helpful for narrowing down software that one may want to try, but nothing beats trying the software out for oneself.

So ultimately, for my purposes, Photomatix and Oloneo came quite close, but Oloneo PhotoEngine is what I decided to purchase for my HDR processing.

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Last edited by Eric Seavey; 07-28-2012 at 07:52 AM.

[Den]

I use it too and find it very good for HDR multi image. Some have said that Photomatix does a better job at aligning. I am also finding that some of the new advances in other programs that use only a single image are getting very good at producing the same results.

[Matchete]

Like Eric, I've tried almost all the HDR softwares available, and finally settled for Oloneo Photoengine which produces really nice and natural looking images with much less effort needed than with Photomatix for instance. The recent version of HDR Efex is really good though, you should give the trial version a run.

But when I show my HDR images coming from PhotoEngine, most people (even photography savvy ones) can't tell if it's an HDR or not, because they often associate this technique with an overcooked and cartoony look.

Most of the times I use Photomatix for alignment and then export 32 bits .hdr files to PhotoEngine for tonemapping, best of both worlds

[interested_observer]

Good Morning,

I too acquired Oloneo PhotoEngine at the first of the year. Its workflow appealed to me and it works much better than the other packages I have looked at and considered. I think I have tried most of them. Thanks for the excellent summary of the options available.

The only soft area for me with Oloneo is that I have gotten VERY use to automatically stitching while tone mapping - and the results are less than optimal. Stitching results are good, tone mapping results (control) is much less than perfect - with the other packages that support both. That is what actually drove me to Oloneo. They have a different approach - that works well, however since I do a lot of low ambient light work, my under exposed frames are usually too dark to really stitch independently. There are other approaches to the work flow that provides a work around, I just have been too lazy to pursue them. I am going to have to.

Another approach that I have had excellent success with is using just a single image. I found that I can get wonderful results from just loading in one image and processing it just like a stack of several images. Here are a couple of examples. The first one may be a bit over cooked (I was probably a bit too aggressive), but for some reason it appealed to me.

• https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/post-your-photos/193237-landscape-uss-constitution.html
• https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/post-your-photos/170261-machinery-last-navy-fighter.html

[Eric Seavey]

Indeed, I found Oloneo PhotoEngine to have slight sloppiness aligning handheld shots, where Fhotoroom seems to be the best at aligning, though with Fhotoroom it now seems to take forever for it to finish. Somthing I really liked about Oloneo PhotoEngine is that it shots thumbnail previews of raw files for selecting image stacks. Fhotoroom has the option to show them, but is painfully slow. With Oloneo PhotoEngine I don't have to open FastStone Image Viewer to see the images. Now, if Oloneo PhotoEngine could put up the previews as quick as FastStone Image Viewer, that would be even better. Also, I am noticing very little multi-core processing going on when loading image stacks (from raw files) in Oloneo. For a program that is so fast in other aspects, I am a little surprised that the loading/aligning/deghosting hasn't been optimized even more. Despite that, Oloneo PhotoEngine is very fast.

[interested_observer]

Indeed, I found Oloneo PhotoEngine to have slight sloppiness aligning handheld shots, where Fhotoroom seems to be the best at aligning, though with Fhotoroom it now seems to take forever for it to finish.

I processed a stack of bracketed shots while I was in their free evaluation period. It was in the late evening and the car headlights had moved over a number of seconds. I did not notice it at first, but Oloneo's handling was a bit different. I finally figured it out, but the way they made the adjustments probably works in some situations and not in the others. The movement is on the extreme left and right edges on either side. The fix was to turn off the auto alignment and re process the stack and everything turned out as expected.

• https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/post-your-photos/162451-landscape-sunset-over-sedona.html

Somthing I really liked about Oloneo PhotoEngine is that it shots thumbnail previews of raw files for selecting image stacks. Fhotoroom has the option to show them, but is painfully slow. With Oloneo PhotoEngine I don't have to open FastStone Image Viewer to see the images. Now, if Oloneo PhotoEngine could put up the previews as quick as FastStone Image Viewer, that would be even better. Also, I am noticing very little multi-core processing going on when loading image stacks (from raw files) in Oloneo. For a program that is so fast in other aspects, I am a little surprised that the loading/aligning/deghosting hasn't been optimized even more. Despite that, Oloneo PhotoEngine is very fast.

I too like the thumbnail viewer, however it is VERY serial and tends to be slow when you have a few hundred frames within the same directory. Another nice feature is that you can size the shots in the browser.

Another feature that I haven't tried yet is the multi lighting source [Re-Light] capability. To use this you really have to take sets of images with specific intent to use them in this way. The same thing for the denoise capability. I have not really figured this out yet - but their online video tutorials are great.

[Joyen]

I would recommend Machinery: MACHINERY HDR Effects. HDR Technology. HDR Program. HDR Image Processing. A great program IMO and cheap too only 29 Euros.

[JohnBee]

I would recommend Machinery: MACHINERY HDR Effects. HDR Technology. HDR Program. HDR Image Processing. A great program IMO and cheap too only 29 Euros.

Looks very good!
I can't say I like all of the samples(some could use adjusting) but it seems to do what it does very well.

[Eric Seavey]

I have never heard of that program. I am downloading it now, and am going to give it a whirl...

[JohnBee]

QQ. does Oloneo PhotoEngine come as a plugin with Photoshop?

[Eric Seavey]

JohnBee: No Oloneo does not come as a plugin.

Here I produced stylized HDR images with Photomatix Pro, Oloneo PhotoEngine and HDR Machinery, and tried to produce the best looking edits in each image. Photomatix clearly shows the dreamy cartoonish look. Oloneo I like for its tonemapping, but the deghosting is pretty weak (the tree on the left is messed up) for such full-priced program. HDR Machinery is the new kid on the block, with fast alignment and deghosting, but much weaker tonemapper and it simply has a hard time dealing with the details in the tree on the left, and the structure. A challenging image like this will bring out the weaknesses in each HDR program. I actually think Photomatix handles this image with the fewest flaws, but also looks the most cartoonish.

[JohnBee]

Wow Oloneo PhotoEngine really stands out against the rest.

[Eric Seavey]

Indeed, I like the tonemapping style of Oloneo here, and it handles the extremes well. But the tree on the left has many ghosting artifacts, and the structure has sharpening artifacts, that Photomatix does not have. HDR machine did handle the ghosting well, but has terrible detail artifacts and discolorations in the tree as well as the structure.

[Eric Seavey]

OK, and then here is the photo edited using Fhotoroom HDR. It is having a hard time with the extreme highlights, and there are quite a bit of halos.

[Eric Seavey]

Update: I have downloaded the trial version of SNS HDR. It is not that fastest, but its performance is very good. Here I have the photo again produced with SNS HDR. It is up there with Oloneo Photomatix, HDR Expose, and HDR efex Pro. What stands out with this program is that is provides controls over the midtones and highlights separately. It can also produce very good natural looks too.