If you have ever photographed a high contrast scene, you know that selecting the correct exposure will not avoid blown out highlights and flat shadows. Photomatix Pro offers its effective ways to solve this problem.

Photomatix Pro is a stand-alone program that runs on Mac OS X and Windows 98/Me/2000/XP, it is designed for productivity—automatic blending, unlimited stacking, easy comparison of results and batch processing save hours of masking and layers work in image editing softwares.

Not being a skilled photographer, but liking to take photos, I'm not always satisfied with their quality. That's why I decided to try this program.

Opening the interface of Photomatix Pro for the first time, I even didn't realize that it was the interface itself, so simple and plane it was. Nevertheless, I continued following my way to an ideal image.

The program offered me several methods allowing automatically combine different photos of an object to one picture with maximum quantity of details. Along with easy and useful automated ways of image processing, it was possible to take part in the creation of the picture and use semi-automatic method "Adjust". One more interesting regime was "Intensive", with help of which I could correct the intensity of impinging light. Due to these functions I managed combining several low-quality photos from my picture collections into rather high-grade image.

The result of my manipulations was the generation of HDR-file, containing the photography of wide dynamic diapason. One can to continue working in any graphic editor, but I would like to remark that it is better to save a final result in the format TIFF, because HDR files may be taken incorrectly by some applications.

Of course, the similar operation may be done in Photoshop as in any other editors, supporting the work with layers, but in these cases you should spend time on the regimes of mixing and correct everything manually. Photomatix Pro noticeably simplifies this task.

At any rate, I got to know from my experience that Photomatix Pro splendidly performs Exposure Blending functions, merging differently exposed photographs into one image with increased dynamic range; and Tone Mapping, revealing highlights and shadows details in an HDR image created from multiple exposures. The tone mapped image is ready for printing while showing the whole dynamic range captured.

So, whether you have a shadowless hazy sunlight or overcast sky, Photomatix Pro allows you to turn these poor pictures into great-looking images.

Moreover, if you have a panoramic scene, you can't limit your view to only areas with the same brightness when shooting a 360° panorama. By taking views under several exposures and processing them in Photomatix Pro, your panorama will show details in both the dark and bright areas of the scene.

You shouldn't resort to the professional photographer's help if you always have Photomatix Pro at hand.