In a previous post I mentioned that I would do a comparison between Photomatix Pro and some new software called HDR Max. Here we go!
Photomatix Pro works great for me under certain lighting conditions – on clear days when the sun is out I am able to get great shots that I am really happy with (such as this one and this one). Unfortuantely I haven’t got the hang of Photomatix under cloudy conditions – my images turn out seriously bland. With that in mind I wanted to compare Photomatix against HDR Max under bad lighting i.e. ugly clouds dominating the sky. I chose a picture of a fountain that you can see in Stephen’s Green in Dublin.
For each software I tweaked the setting until I was satisfied with them – I didn’t apply the same settings to both or anything like that – I just played around until I was happy. (Playing is the best way to getting anything done I think.) The first image below is from HDR Max, the second is Photomatix. You can see I couldn’t get very good results with Photomatix, and ordinarily I wouldn’t post an image like this, but HDR Max worked wonderfully and turned out much much better: more vibrant, smoother tones, fewer halos, and more true to life. (I ran both through GIMP to fiddle with curves also.)
One major problem I had with HDR Max thougth was saving. Regardless of whether I chose jpg or TIFF, the saved image always turned out terrible – mountains of information was being lossed during saving. The image I’ve posted here for HDR Max was actually screen captured and cropped! This is not only annoying as hell but means I can’t save at full 4320×2868 resolution! Does anyone else have this problem? (Actually this may be happening because it’s the trial version I’m using.)
Anyway this has been a long post and it’s time to wrap it up – in my book HDR Max wins hands down, but then again I’ve always sucked at getting good results in bad weather condtions with Photomatix. I’ll do another comparision in the new year with an image taken under some wonderful, sun splitting through the clouds like god’s loving stare, weather conditions.
- Aperture: f/5.6
- Shutter Speed: 1/500s, 1/250s, 1/125s, 1/60s, 1/30s
- ISO: 200
- Lens: 18-200@18mm
HDR Max: The clear winner!
Photomatix Pro: Grrrr, just wait ’till Round Two!
Hi, tried out the new software after reading your post and I cannot agree with you that HDR MAX is a clear winner. I have the same problem, all the information gets lost and the image looks terrible after you convert it to TIFF or JPG. Besides it’s full of weird spots full of noise and the image is overall very noisy compared (could that be because it’s a trial version..? I don’t think so). However you cannot make an HDR without tweaking it in PS, which I did and after 30 minutes dodging and burning I got a more or less decent result. But it’s still far away from photomatix.
However, if they can solve the conversion problem, this could be a rival.
Looking at you comparison I can say, yes the HDR max
MAX has much more detail, but unfortunately it’s just a crop, and you don’t get that in JPG. Besides, look at the cloud on your left hand under the tree branch. In PM version you clearly see a gray cloud, but in MAX you see only blown highlights where there are no highlights, actually.
I think they still have a lot of work to do.
And thanks for the visit and comment
Personally I do prefer HDR Max (at the moment) because I prefer the more painting-like, rather than super-realistic, image I can get from it. What each of us wants out of our shots vary I think. Don’t get me wrong, Photomatix is great and I intentionally used the image above to compare the two softwares precisely because I couldn’t get the results I wanted with Photmatix for that particular shot. Others have turned out great though. I Intend to do another comparison with a photo that Photomatix has given great results with.
The problem with saving to TIFF or JPG in HDR Max is a real deal breaker and a few people at least have been having this problem. If this isn’t sorted then I’ll definitely be dropping it for PM. Cropping from about 4000×2500 to under 1000×600 is out of the question!
Nice catch noticing the cloud’s