HDR Utilities

HDR SHOP

The godfather of all HDR utilities. HDR Combination is very dated, and it does tone mapping only via Plugins. But it has a good amount of editing capabilites, that still make it the swiss army knife in HDR.

HDR MAX

HDRMAX comes in a very professional outfit and fits right in with Adobe's Creative Suite. Tonemapping is powerful, simple to use, and pretty halo-resistant.

HYDRA

$60

Hydra has by far the flashiest interface, a 101% Mac-App. Tight integration with iPhoto, even comes with an Aperture plugin version included. Unique strength is the alignment feature, that will morph and warp each exposure into place based on control points.

PHOTOMATIX

HDR Combination and Tone-Mapping, very user-friendly hence recommended for beginners. Sports ghost removal, RAW decoding with CA compensation and batch processing, which makes it photographer's favorite. Integrates nicely with Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture.

PICTURENAUT

The new kid on the block, hosted right here. Highly configurable HDR Combination and fastest tone-mapper around. It runs HDRShop plugins, and performs basic conversion tasks. Not quite as many editing features as HDRShop yet, but eventually getting there.