# Anyone tried these Open Source HDR applications?



## cayenne (Aug 17, 2012)

I was looking at Luminance....but also found this article, listing others to look at...

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-high-dynamic-range-hdr-software.htm

Just wondering if anyone had experience with this...the open source program Hugin was fantastic for stitiching together panos...so, wondering if one of these open source projects might do the same good work for HDR photography?


Cayenne


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## Jotho (Aug 17, 2012)

cayenne said:


> I was looking at Luminance....but also found this article, listing others to look at...
> 
> http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-high-dynamic-range-hdr-software.htm
> 
> ...


Hi, I haven't tried any as it's all new to me, but I was actually thinking of posting the same question today, then I saw your post. From reading the link you attached I actually downloaded Luminance. Will try it out, if it's good then I'll keep it, if not uninstall and get another one. HDR is not in any way vital to me currently so I think I can afford that luxury.


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## cayenne (Aug 17, 2012)

Jotho said:


> cayenne said:
> 
> 
> > I was looking at Luminance....but also found this article, listing others to look at...
> ...


I'm a bit side tracked by working for a living work...and won't be able to get near my camera or play with all this for a bit....so, if you could give it a try and maybe post back to this thread your thoughts (and hopefully some images you did), it would be appreciated!!!

C


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## RobertG. (Aug 18, 2012)

Hi, I do use picturenaut from time to time. I'm no big fan of HDRs, so I gave this freeware a try. It can produce HDRs, which are OK. It's also quite easy to use. This http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=295.msg123040#msg123040 HDR was done with 2 grad nd filters and picturenaut.


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## dr croubie (Aug 18, 2012)

I've used Luminance (well, it's the only HDR program i use, but I just don't HDR that often). Sometimes I use it in conjunction with Hugin Panorama Tools to stitch layers and then hdr-merge in Luminance. Takes a while and a lot of Swap space...

Like the review says, it's powerful. It's very powerful. There's almost nothing you can't do.
But the biggest problem (and i've read this on other reviews too, and in my own experience), there's no way to learn what anything does except without trying it (invest in more RAM if you want to experiment). There's an almost infinite way to create the HDRs (plus 6 'presets'), then another infinite way of 9 types of tonemapping algorithm. Some look good, some look cartoony, some have that horrible 'fake hdr' look, some are great.
If you've got a free weekend (or a free month), get it, try it, and experiment.

Also, my other beef is that it only tone-maps using 1 core of my 6-core Phenom. With a stitched HDR (like 300mb), some tone-maps can take an hour. That would be 10 minutes if it could use all 6 cores...

and examples (look at the filenames for what algorithm i've used).
They're not meant to be good, just representative of what each algorithm does:


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