Where Art & Engineering Collide

HDR PhotoStudio Review

Posted on 06. Mar, 2009 by Terry Reinert in Featured, Reviews

One of the topics in photography that has gained a lot of attention over the last few years is high dynamic range (HDR) imagery. A new comer to the HDR software application realm is Unified Color. As I write this review there is a group of Unified Color employees at the PMA (Photographers Marketing Association) show in Las Vegas conducting the official launch of the application. For those that cannot be in Vegas, I’ve got you covered… here is an in-depth review of HDR PhotoStudio based on my experience using the software over the last few months.

I think it is important to give a little background on this review since it will shed a lot of light on the way I went about testing and reviewing HDR PhotoStudio. I was contacted by Unified Color in January asking if I would like to review an HDR processing application. I have never been one to turn down the chance at playing with a new gadget or application so of course I said yes. While waiting for them to send me the development build I started researching their company to get a better idea of what I was getting into. At the time they didn’t have a website up and I could find very little about them. Then I came across some information about a few patents that they filed dealing with a revolutionary way of dealing with color… a way that actually mimics true human vision instead of slaving the color to a particular physical device like a CRT which most imaging applications are. They also created a new file compression that supposedly offers high quality visually lossless HDR images in the file size of your average JPG! With that information in hand, I made sure to pay special attention to the color during all phases of processing. I also complain about user interfaces a lot so I spent a great deal of time playing with each features interface to find its strengths and weaknesses.

All of the screen shots contained in this review are from my processing of three bracketed images (-2EV, 0EV, +2EV) of the Glades County Courthouse that I shot back in January. They were taken with my Canon 5D around noon in direct sunlight.

Basic Information / Installation

My review of the software was conducted on two platforms;

1. AMD Athalon 64 X2 4400+ Dual Core @ 2.2GHz, 3GB DDR, NVidia GeForce 9800GX2
2. Intel Core 2 Duo @ 3GHz, 4GB DDR2, NVidia GeForce 9800GX2

Note: Both platforms above are running Windows Server 2008 SP1 64-bit which is basically identical to Vista SP1 in terms of what I am doing for this review.

This brings up the question of why I didn’t review this on my MacBook Pro which brings me to the first negative point to this software… there is not an OSX version out yet. Currently only Windows XP and Vista are supported. According to the FAQ on Unified Color’s website they are working on a Mac compatible version but there is no news as to when it will be released.

The installation process was very fast and the overall size of the program is just under 20MB. Usually when I review software I actually read the license agreement. In the agreement there was the usual clause that you can only install the application on one computer. I absolutely hate when companies do this since I mirror a lot of work on my desktop and my laptop. However, in their FAQ it does state that you can install it on your desktop and laptop… So my guess is that the agreement was not updated to reflect the change and it is OK to install it on both (though my laptop is a MacBook Pro so that doesn’t help me much).

Merging To HDR

The first step in processing an HDR image is to merge your bracketed exposures into a single HDR image. The first build (software version) that I tested did not support the Canon 5D RAW format so I had to convert the images to TIFF’s and merge those. However, the latest release build does support the 5D’s RAW format. Their FAQ states that most RAW formats are supported as well as TIFF, JPG, Radiance, OpenEXR, and bitmaps.

One thing you’ll notice is there are no settings or configuration values to be set when merging. You simply select the files you want to merge and that’s it. Merging three Canon 5D RAW images took about 15 seconds. I hand shoot a lot of my HDR’s instead of using a tripod like I should but the image alignment in HDR PhotoStudio isn’t all that great. In all the images that I have merged using HDR PhotoStudio I have seen some color halo’s on sharp edges and a bit of ghosting. Again, I do not use a tripod nearly as much as I should so those things are to expected but the image alignment out of Adobe Photoshop CS4 is much better. The two images below show one area of the merged image from HDR PhotoStudio (left) and Adobe Photoshop CS4 (right). As you can see the alignment algorithms in Adobe Photoshop CS4 appear vastly superior to those in HDR PhotoStudio. I have found that to be the case with every HDR application which is why I always do my image merges in Adobe Photoshop and then take the merged image into the HDR processing application.

HDR PhotoStudio                    Adobe Photoshop CS4

General Features

Before I get into the image editing features I will take a minute to talk about some of the general features of the application and the user interface that are used throughout the work flow. Along the bottom of the main window there are slider bars for adjusting the display brightness and zoom as well as some general information about the image you are working on (click on the image below to make larger).

The display brightness does exactly what it sounds like… adjust the brightness of the image on the display. Note that this does not change the brightness of the output file… I have not found a use for this feature as of yet but I am sure there is something it is good for that I just haven’t realized as of yet. To the left of the display brightness slider is an EV information display that indicates the amount of exposure changed by the display brightness slider.

The zoom slider is also self explanatory… it zooms in and out on the image. The awesome thing about the zoom in HDR PhotoStudio is that it is instantaneous. One of my big problems that I mentioned in my Areia HDR Max review is that the zoom was incredibly slow and it was impossible to work on the image when zoomed in over 50% due to the performance decrease. In HDR PhotoStudio the zoom is wicked fast. I zoomed into 800% and then moused around the image and it did all of it instantaneously without any lag. After making a lot of adjustments to the image I could still zoom and pan with no lag or stuttering at all. I do not know if they use any GPU rendering for the zoom like Adobe Photoshop CS4 does but regardless Unified Color gets an A+ for zoom and navigation speed! Another thing I love about the zoom is that you can use the zoom slider and pan around the image at any time including when you have any of the image editing tool windows open. For example, when you are adjusting the sharpness of the image using the sharpness tool, you can zoom in and move around to see how the sharpness setting you current have set is effecting each part of the image.

Also along the bottom pane is an indication of the resolution that your photo is as well as quick buttons to set your zoom to 1:1, zoom to fit, and to reset your display brightness to 0. There is also a setting that allows you to embed a color profile into the image and adjust profile settings as needed.

Image Editing Features

FREE ROTATE

The first thing that I like to do when working on an image is to set the composition using the crop tool. I try to compose the image in the camera before taking the shot but I usually leave room to crop it down to an 8×10. There are also times when I don’t hold the camera perfectly level and completely screw up the composition. HDR PhotoStudio has a pretty cool feature that helps you rotate your image to get it back to level. Its called “Free Rotate” and it allows you to draw a line across the image and tell it to rotate the image to make that line either horizontal or vertical. In the image above you can see how I drew a line using the building as a reference in order to rotate my shot to be perfectly horizontal. Amazingly enough I actually shot this one horizontal so no change was needed… but this feature would have come in handy on some of my landscape shows where the horizon was never quite level.

CROP

The crop tool gives you three options on how to crop the image… Free Select, Fixed Size, and Aspect Ratio. I personally like to crop most of my images to 8×10 (1.25) and it bothers me that this setting is not available in the aspect ratio box. I would think this is a common aspect ratio that should be included. There are entries for HDTV, ASP-C, NTSC, and so forth. I just do not think photographers are really going to care about those things and they are just clutter. I would much prefer if the entries in that box were simple (such as the 4×6, 8×12, etc listings) and included all the important aspect ratios that photographers use. So I just cropped to 8×12  and if I didn’t like it then waited until after I was done and cropped it in Adobe Photoshop CS4. Last thing to note on the crop tool is that it gives you the option to display a grid so that you can easily compose the image based on the rule of thirds or any of the other spacial design tricks.

RESIZE

There isn’t much to say about the resize tool. It allows you to resize the image either by specifying the pixel amount of each edge or as a percentage of the original. A small complain that I have is that the drop down list specifies pixels as pix instead of px or pixels. It is like when people use sec instead of s for seconds. It is probably due to my physics and engineering background but as long as all I can complain about is something small like this then we are in good shape!

BRIGHTNESS / CONTRAST

The brightness and contrast tool is just like the layer adjustment tool of the same name in Adobe Photoshop. It contains sliders to change the brightness and the contrast but also contains an eye-dropper to select a bright point on the image so that the software will determine a base setting itself. I use the eye-dropper and selected a bright white area of a cloud on the courthouse image that I am taking all these screen shots of and it washed the image out way too much. So I canceled that change and went back into the brightness / contrast tool and set the values manually without selecting a bright point.

At this point I can begin to comment a little on the user interface. You can click anywhere on the slider bar to make the setting jump to that point. You can also drag the slider setting anywhere along the slider using the mouse as well. Both of these are great features that other applications have overlooked. It would be nice if the brightness, contrast, or other settings actually updated as you moved the slider around. It would also be nice if the UI contained a feature similar to the Adobe products where putting the mouse of the name of the setting would bring up horizontal arrows so you could hold down the mouse button and change the setting by moving side to side. I personally love that feature and would love to see it included on every application UI that I use. It would also be so incredibly nice if you could double-click on the slider setting to have it return to its last position. I just do not understand why so many companies to do not think of this!!

It is also a good time to start talking about color… Unified Colors big claim to fame with this new application. It is at this point when you really start to see what they are talking about by color quality throughout the work flow. The screen shots above show the image at a brightness of 0EV and 3EV. Pay attention to the color of the bricks in the courthouse. While the brightness is drastically increased on the second screen shot, the bricks still maintain a lot of their red and orange color values. In other software applications a great deal of that color would be lost… it would be blown out and way over exposed. The same can be said for the grass, flowers, and even the shadows and texturing on the white pillars. Now of course I would not leave this image at +3EV brightness but I just wanted to show how much color this application saves when you make brightness adjustments. The same goes for making adjustments to the contrast… the color is not affected nearly as much as it is in other applications.

It is important to note that the power of these two sliders is drastically different. A small change in the contrast slider has a huge effect on the image whereas a small change on the brightness slider only results in a small change. This isn’t a problem of course but you’ll laugh the first time you make a large brightness adjustment and follow that up with a large contrast adjustment. You’ll have to scale the contrast adjustment back a lot! I can say that I like the result that I get from the contrast slider in HDR PhotoStudio a lot more than the results I get in Adobe Lightroom 2.2 or Adobe Photoshop. The end result seems to be more rich and my only guess is that it has to do with the way this application handles color.

At this point in my work flow on this one specific image I would really love to have the ability to change the brightness in one area of the image and not others… just like layers and layer masking in Adobe Photoshop. I want to make the courthouse a bit brighter but keep the sky a bit darker. Lucky for me, this is easily achieved in HDR PhotoStudio and it is a lot easier than using layers and layer masks. I will simply set the brightness of the image to about the middle between where I want the courthouse and sky brightness levels and then touch it all up using the Shadow/Highlight tool that I will talk about a little bit later in the review.

WHITENESS

The whiteness tool allows you to set the black point using an eye-dropper tool as well as a slider to adjust the whiteness of the image. From all the photos I have processed in HDR PhotoStudio I haven’t really seen major differences in using this tool. My guess is that it is similar to setting the white point and black point in Photomatix Pro but it doesn’t have near the drastic effects that those settings in Photomatix does. However, as it should, setting the black point to a point on the photo that is black does change the colors of the image slightly to create more depth.

LOCAL CONTRAST

The local contrast tool is very interesting. It allows you to set the power and radius of a contrast adjustment to the whole image. What local contrast really does is enhance the small details contained in an image… hence the local part in the tools name. Think of Adobe Photoshop’s Unsharp Mask Filter but much much better. You can go really crazy with this tool or use it sparingly but either way I think this tool is great! As with the other tools the effect that it has on color is much less than I have seen in other applications and the enhancement to detail is amazing.

Additionally, there is the Reduce Halo Artifact setting that you can use on this tool. As it says right next to the name on the UI, it is slow. An adjustment with this setting turned off took 2 to 3 seconds max. An adjustment with this setting turned on took around 3 minutes! But the end result of this tool is worth the time to use it… You know those crazy halo’s you get in many HDR images (look at my first HDR image from April 2008 for an example)? Well, they are drastically reduced with this feature! Just make sure to set the local contrast how you want it before turning on this setting. Then you can turn it on and take a short break to refill your drink and buy some of my prints while you’re waiting for it to finish processing! Note there is not a progress bar to give you any indication as to how much longer you’ll have to wait until it is done. This would probably be a good thing for Unified Color to add in the next release.

SHADOW / HIGHLIGHT

I mentioned the shadow / highlight tool earlier when talking about the brightness / contrast tool. I want the courthouse to be a little brighter and the sky to be a little darker. The reason for this is to bring out more of the color and texture details on the courthouse but at the same time keep the clouds from blowing out and loosing all of their detail. That is where this tool comes in. This tool allows you to adjust the mid-tone point, highlight power, shadow power, and the radius of these settings. It also has the reduce halo artifact setting just like the local contrast tool.

In order to bring the detail back into the sky (remember I set the brightness about midway between where I wanted the sky and the courthouse) I simply decreased the highlight power by a great deal. This brought a lot of the detail back into the clouds and also brought the walk way and pillars down a little too. To get the courthouse and surrounding area to brighten up I reduced the shadow power slider a bit as well. Again, notice how all the color in the image was not impacted by changing these settings!

Now I got the result that I wanted when using the brightness tool by adjusting the shadow/highlight settings. This took about a minute of playing with sliders instead of spending 5 to 10 minutes in Adobe Photoshop playing with layer masks or in Adobe Lightroom messing around with the adjustment brush. However, applying the reduce halo affect setting did cause another long pause in the work flow. Once it was done processing the image did seem very flat (see screen shot below) but the halo’s were gone. So I increased the shadow power back up a bit and then used the brightness/contrast tool to add 0.1 contrast to the whole image to get it back to looking how I wanted it.

SHARPNESS

The sharpness tool simply allows you to adjust the power and radius of the sharpness on the image. The only thing to note is that the radius on the sharpness tool is adjusted in pixels and not as a percentage like it is on the other tools that contain it. Also remember that you can zoom and pan while the image adjustment dialog box is up so you can zoom in to 1:1 or even closer to see the actual effect of the adjustment tool.

SATURATION

Another self explanitory tool… you can use this tool to adjust the saturation and hue of the entire image. Again, it seems like the color quality is much better in this application than in others when adjusting the saturation. Although it isn’t as apparent since, by its very nature, saturation is going to affect the color when you adjust it.

TINT

The tint tool allows you to put an effect on your image much like that what you would get using chemical toners if you were dealing with film instead of digital images. You can spend a lot of time playing with these settings to get a nice sephia effect or anything like what you’ve seen or done with film. But to be honest these same effects can be done in seconds using a filter inside of Adobe Photoshop. Although I am sure this tool does have strong appeal to other photographers, it just doesn’t seem to be a big deal to me. Maybe it is because I’ve only dealt with digital and never developed my own film in the past.

NOISE ELIMINATION

The noise elimination tool will help remove both brightness noise and color noise. One thing that I have noticed with this tool is it doesn’t seem to have a huge effect on the image. I’ve noticed that HDR PhotoStudio doesn’t produce a lot of noise like Ariea’s HDR Max did. Maybe the photos that I have processed weren’t all that noisy so the noise elimination feature didn’t really come into play. You should always play with it to see if it will help your image. If you do not like it you can always undo it. I will warn you though that this tool does take a little time to process like the halo removal. I ran a noise elimination on the courthouse image and it took about 6 minutes to process it.

Saving the Image

After completing the HDR processing work flow it is time to save the image. Unified Color invented a new file format that they named BEF image format (.bef). When you go to save the image in this format a dialog box appears allowing you to set the quality of the save. As always, the larger the file the better quality it is. However, this dialog box lays it out a little more simple… any setting less than 1 means the image is visually indistinguishable. Anything above 1 means you are going to start seeing a visual impact to the quality of the photo. A setting of 1 is the threshold of visual distinction. So I have always left the slider set to 1 and haven’t noticed any problems in the files that I’ve processed.

When I saved the courthouse image with a quality setting of 1 the BEF file size ended up at 13.3MB. When I checked the original quality check box, the file size ended up at 17.0MB. Either way, this is not bad at all especially since I have seen TIFF’s and Radiance files at least three times that size! Speaking of TIFF’s, when the same image was saved as a 32-bpp image, the file size ended up at 110MB!

Opening the Image in Adobe Photoshop

Along with HDR PhotoStudio comes a BEF file format plug-in that allows you to open BEF files in Adobe Photoshop. At first I was unable to open a BEF file and then I realized that I run the 64-bit version of Photoshop CS4. I looked in the plug-in folders for the 32-bit and 64-bit versions and the BEF.8bi file was in the 32-bit folder (where HDR PhotoStudio installed it) and not in the 64-bit version directory. I manually copied it from the 32-bit folder to the 64-bit folder and the 64-bit version still would not open the file. I will continue to try to find a work around to make this happen but the plug-in might be 32-bit specific. Once I loaded up the 32-bit version of Adobe Photoshop CS4, the BEF file opened with no problems. Just be aware that if you prefer to run the 64-bit version you may not be able to open the BEF file and will either have to use the 32-bit version or save the processed image as a TIFF instead.

Conclusion

From start to finish HDR PhotoStudio was enjoyable to use. Even though the user interface has a few weak spots it is much better than many other software applications and the areas that it is weak in really do not detract away from the overall use of the program. The tools that this application offers are pretty standard but do a great job at allowing the user to tweak even the smallest details of the image. Although, having layer masks or spot editing incorporated would be pretty awesome I think I would prefer them to continue to focus on features relating to HDR processing and leave that stuff that Adobe Photoshop already does to Adobe Photoshop!

I have to admit that I am very impressed that this is the first version of HDR PhotoStudio… this isn’t an application that has been on the market for awhile. Compared to some of the other applications that have been on the market for a few years, HDR PhotoStudio pretty much blows them out of the water. But they really need to get Mac OSX support quick! There is just something inherently wrong with me editing photos on a Windows machine!

On that note, my conclusion is that I am officially switching any realistic HDR image processing that I do over to HDR PhotoStudio. To be perfectly honest, it blows Areia’s HDR Max right out of the water. HDR Max had a few really cool features but its performance and it’s tendency to generate a ton of image noise puts it way below HDR PhotoStudio. I will be sticking to Photomatix Pro for the fantasy type HDR processing that I do. But for the realistic looking images… HDR PhotoStudio all the way. Unified Color has definitely raised the bar on HDR processing.

Try It For Yourself!

Don’t take my word for it… try it out yourself. Unified Color is offering a 30-day free trial of HDR PhotoStudio and if you want to purchase it they are offering it at an introductory cost of $129.99. Even better, they hooked me up with a discount code that you can use to get an additional discount. Just use the code TKRPHOTO or click here: HDR PHOTOSTUDIO DISCOUNT to buy it at the discounted rate.

Also, you can read a full press release about HDR PhotoStudio that contains a lot of interesting information here: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/03/prweb2201634.htm.

Final Image

After doing some spot editing and clean up in Adobe Photoshop CS4, this is the final Glades County Courthouse HDR image. I removed the antenna, wires, some of the electrical boxes along the front of the building, and the traffic light on the right side of the image. I did not make any color adjustments to the image outside of HDR PhotoStudio.

Did you find this review useful, have a question about HDR PhotoStudio, or want to add something to the review? Please enter your comments or questions below as I look forward to hearing from you!

EDIT: I posted a follow up post about this review containing information from Unified Color’s Cheif Technical Officer that he sent me about points I made in this review. Make sure to check it out here: http://www.tkrphoto.com/2009/03/hdr-photostudio-review-follow-up/

Related posts:

1. HDR PhotoStudio Review Follow Up
2. HDR Expose Review
3. HDR PhotoStudio 2.12 Released
4. HDR Expose Is Out!!
5. Areia HDR MAX Review

Tags: Canon, HDR, HDR PhotoStudio, Review, Unified Color