Edit Dynamic Range (HDR) images with Picturenaut and AutoHDR


HDR is a method that enhances the “dynamic range” of photographs, i.e., the ratio of light to dark. HDR usually exploits three photos taken at different exposures, putting those images together and selecting the best parts of each. Big landscape photos usually have a lot of contrast between sky and land, which is difficult for a camera to deal with in just one photo. With HDR, you can capture the sky’s detail without making the land look too dark, and vice versa.

Too much lighting on someone’s face—like harsh sunlight—can cause dark shadows, bright glare, and other unflattering characteristics. HDR can even that all out and make your subject look better. If your photo is looking a little too dark—which often happens if your scene has too much backlight—HDR can brighten up the foreground without washing out the well-lit portions. Here I give download links for two HDR efficient and free editors.

Picturenaut‘s architecture is modular, and its most important functions can be also accessed from a command line. It will help you create HDR images from single or multiple shots. HDR display options let you change the exposure, gamma, and offset values of an image. You can make exposure correction, ghost removal, automatic image alignment, and color balancing on a set of images to merge. Add Weight to an image with standard or mid emphasis. Manage Image Curve to manipulate linear, compute, standard, or user defined curve. Grayscale or RGB-color mode can be chosen and color density can be changed to either 8 Bit, 16 Bit, or 32 Bit per channel. With Picturenaut you can also transform your images using pan, zoom, rotate, flip and resize options. Picturenaut supports DNG, CRW, CR2, MOS, RAF, 3FR, DCR, KDC, K25, PXN, MEF, MRW, NEF, ORF, RAW, PEF, X3F, SRF, SR2, ARW, TGA, VDA, ICB, VST, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and PPM files, and it saves in TIFF, EXR, HDR, PIC, or PFM.

AutoHDR is a free, portable and convenient editor of HDR images. Just drop any picture into AutoHDR and process with one click – no need to create multiple exposures, use RAW files or manually mask areas or brush on effects! The default settings produce natural, clean results free from halos, garish colours and other artefacts.

Download Picturenaut 64bit or 32bit ||| Download AutoHDR