# HDR basics Q?



## Reel-tor (May 21, 2004)

I want to do HDR photos.

I know I need software to do this but which software? From some research it looks like PS Elements is good, in my price range but how easy is it to do HDR?

I have PC laptop, WIN 10 so I'm probably OK in that dept. I like to "slide" my screen over to my 2nd, larger display (22" diagonal) to work on/view items (laptop screen is too small for these old eyes). So, software must allow me to "slide" the screen over to the big monitor. (I mention this because I bought Roxio Creator Pro 4 that was supposed to do HDR but (1) it would not move over to the monitor (????) and (2) was totally dense to me, ie not user friendly to this user-could not find how to even start HDR or any tab/drop down, etc for HDR. returned for refund).

I'm NOT a big fan on making weird photo changes that some like so I'm not looking for a full blown Elements processing (can't afford it, wouldn't understand it).

I used to have an old Elements 5.0 that used with my older PC but it doesn't work with newer PC and doesn't do HDR.

Any advice?


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## Shaky (May 21, 2004)

Adobe Creative Cloud has a subscription service for Lightroom and Photoshop, for like 10 bucks a month. I know the Photoshop can merge to hdr, but I've never used it for that. As far as standalone programs, look at Photomatix pro, its pretty much all hdr, very simple and tons of "plug-ins" out there. I THINK it ran about 100bucks, but it's been awhile since I purchased it. Works really well.


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## teckersley (May 25, 2004)

It depends on how deep you want to go. I have the adobe cloud for Lightroom and Photoshop. I do a lot of photo post processing in Lightroom to make them look even better and am a moderate photoshop user. Unless you want to get super detailed into HDR, companies make plugins for adobe the can simulate HDR pretty well and still have the post processing capabilities. Personally, I have Topaz Labs and Akvis. again, i will say i have not done a super deep dive into taking multiple photos at different camera settings then merging them into HDR but i did do a few tests with multiple exposures vs letting a post processing plug in replicate a photo and for me, I couldn't see a huge difference. Maybe a pro could but the plug in and native processing was enough for me. Good luck.


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## stargazer (May 24, 2004)

Howard,
Photomatrix Pro, This is what I use if I am in a hurry. Good software and has a tutorial section. Lots of presets for easy using. I have the pro version

http://www.hdrsoft.com/index.html


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