High Dynamic Range imaging (also called HDR or HDRI) is a way to “bridge the exposure gap” for scenes that have too great a tonal range to be captured by today’s best DSLRs. For example you may have a sunset where the highlights, when properly exposed, do not allow for the detail to come forward in the shadow areas (or vice-versa).
HDR imaging was designed to circumvent this problem by leveraging your camera’s bracketing features to get a good exposure for each of the highlight, midtone and shadow regions, and then merging them together. From there special software algorithms are used to “tone map” the camera data into a visually appealing shot.
Now, photographers who use OS X can add a new HDR tool to their digital photography arsenal. HDR PhotoStudio 2 offers a completely self-contained solution for selecting, merging and tone-mapping raw files on the Mac. After working with the trial version for a couple hours, I think this software has real potential. There are a couple quirks and bugs, but that’s to be expected with any new software, and considering they’ve knocked $50 off the price for a limited time you can’t beat it. The feature set is pretty deep, including sharpening and noise reduction, and all of the tools are fairly straight-forward.
