FreeHDR™

[jcr6]

In another thread I had announced PercepTool 2, which had a HDR component.

Through a rather interesting discussion, some about price, some about image quality, color, etc., people had suggested that the price of PercepTool 2 ($149.95) was too high.

After much deliberation, George DeWolfe and I agree. (The ones who wrote it.)

Announcing the release of Atlantic Light Works FreeHDR™. More on this in a minute.

I think our press release missed the point with PercepTool 2. It isn't simply about HDR. In fact, it's really about improving the user's images (hence the presence of a PercepTool function and the Equalizer multiscale tone mapping function). HDR is there for completeness, but isn't the whole story or even the majority of the story since most people don't do HDR.

Most people DO, however, take pictures and want to improve them.

And in this thread, many of you are talking about HDR blending. So what we're doing is taking the HDR Align and Blend function from PercepTool 2 and releasing it for free.

Not Ad-ware, not NAG-ware, not shareware... FREE.

Download it from here.

We put a lot of effort into producing a low-noise, good color constancy blend that works well with as few as two images and as many as one hundred.

HDR blending isn't the whole story, as I mentioned above. You then need to do contrast adjustment and/or tonemapping. But if you start with a good, low-noise image, many other kinds of manipulation become possible. If the image is noisy or the colors are wrong, not so much.

It's also actionable and scriptable so you can record it into your own actions.

Oh, and please check out PercepTool 2 while you're at it. We dropped the price to $95.

Thank you.

-Chris Russ

[secretagents]

I have neither CS4 or 5. Is it possible to extract some 8bf filter from that file? I think not but I guess it doesn't hurt asking anyway.

Cheers.

[jcr6]

There are no .8bf files in that -- it is entirely a script (and supporting graphics) and that script requires CS4 or better.

Sorry.

[secretagents]

Ok, thanks.