#Photomatix essentials single photo full#
#Photomatix essentials single photo pro#
#Photomatix essentials single photo software#

This blending layer is also useful for reducing the HDR program’s propensity to excessively brighten the closest part of the corona adjacent to the lunar disk.

#Photomatix essentials single photo full#

I easily fixed this in Adobe Photoshop by using a single HDR stack of just one 9-image sequence and blending the central portion of it into my full stack. But due to the greater length of totality, the Moon moved noticeably relative to the corona between the first and last images in the sequence, blurring its image in the HDR stack. Using the latest version, I combined the 36 frames essentially the same way as I described in the 2009 article. You can check the company’s website,, to compare both programs and decide which one best suits your needs.

#Photomatix essentials single photo software#

The parent company, HDRsoft, offers a basic version of the software called Photomatix Essentials for $39 that performs many of the same functions.

#Photomatix essentials single photo pro#

Now on version 4.1, Photomatix Pro includes new tone-mapping presets that didn’t exist in 2009, and it also allows you to save your own custom settings so you can duplicate your process on many images. As HDR processing has matured, Photomatix Pro has kept pace with new updates. Next, I moved on to the program’s Tone Mapping section. I also made sure to save a copy of this “raw” HDR file in case I learned new processing tricks in the future.

Without having field stars to register each frame, image shift caused by a fixed telescope during the exposure sequence reduces your ability to precisely combine the exposures into a single HDR result.Īfter aligning and cropping each of the 36 exposures, I used Photomatix Pro to combine them. I used MaxIm DL 5.08 to register the corona in each exposure using two stars that appear near the Sun and were detectable even in the brief, 1 / 500 -second exposures - a testament to the sensitivity of the Nikon D700 and the sharp focus Dennis achieved with the Tele Vue TV-85 objective and Hotech field flattener. For the image of the 2010 Easter Island eclipse in this article, I worked with Dennis di Cicco’s four groups of nine bracketed exposures. Most everything discussed in my earlier article remains relevant, though if you shoot your eclipse exposures without a tracking mount, you’ll need an additional software program to register your images before combining them. Whether your intention is to faithfully depict the visual appearance of the eclipse or to reveal as much detail as possible within the solar corona, high-dynamic-range (HDR) processing techniques are still the way to go. While capturing bracketed exposures of a total solar eclipse has gotten easier thanks to features available on many new DSLR cameras, processing the results hasn’t changed much since the article I wrote in the June 2009 issue, page 64.

Equipment Editor Sean Walker walks us through processing photos from the 2010 Easter Island eclipse. If you want the best results from your eclipse photos, you'll need to do some processing.