Photomatix Pro Plugin For Lightroom
Frank Belair
If you are processing a high volume of HDR photos in Lightroom, the HDR Batch Plugin will save you a lot of time. The plugin lets you merge multiple Stacks of bracketed exposures, and process them with an HDR preset you can choose with a preview.
You can tell the plugin how many photos are in each bracket and which photos should be treated individually, by grouping your bracketed sets into Stacks. Each Stack can have a different number of exposures, and unstacked photos can be processed individually.
I do not use this PS plugin version, so I only know it exists. The implication from HDRSoft's website is that you need a separate license for this plugin, even if you have Photomatix Pro itself. HDRSoft's site implies a bundle licence is needed/available:
Photomatix itself is a standalone application, so the LR plugin is (like any LR plugin) simply export/import code to that standalone application. A PS plugin is a piece of code that runs inside PS itself. Hence an LR plugin is a different piece of computer software to a PS plugin and if you have one it does not mean you have the other. It is entirely up to the software developer what they provide and how they bundle and licence it.
Many people find the resulting images attractive and these effects to add an interesting new set of choices for post-processing in digital photography. Some people believe that the results stray too far from realism, or find them unattractive, but these are aesthetic judgements, and often concern the choices made by the photographer during the tone mapping process, rather than being a necessary consequence of using tone mapping. I have no experience with photomatix, but this approach is where it truly shines, because it offers many different tone mapping algorithms.
Hi Again TJ, I reached out to the Photomatix team and confirmed that when you use the LR plugin (Mac or Windows) you are converting your RAW files to TIF when you send them to Photomatix and they include any adjustments you may have made in LR. Thanks for prompting me to do some research. I learned something new, too! According to the folks at Photomatix/HDRSoft using the LR/ACR RAW conversion is usually preferable. Cheers! -Angela
In May 2019, Photomatix launched a plugin allowing you to batch process multiple sets of bracketed images within Lightroom through a simple plugin. Two years later, and Photomatix has updated this plugin, creating version two of this powerful HDR batch processing plugin.
If you want more control over your individual HDR images, we recommend you get the Photomatix Pro version (free trial available). Or, even better, by buying the Photomatix Pro Plus bundle you can get the plugin for free.
Below you can see an HDR image we created with the new bracket plugin. The source images were three bracketed shots (at a fixed aperture of f/9, and ISO 125. The shutter speed for the images was 1/100 sec. (under-exposed to highlight the sky), 1/60 sec. (normal exposure), and 1/40 sec. (over-exposed to highlight the foreground).
Another useful plugin is the Focus Mask by Capture Monkey. This plugin highlights the parts of the image that are in focus, the same way what focus masking does in your camera. This helps you to choose the best shot between two or more similar images of the place in just a glance.
Following Photolemur is Sleeklens. This one offers Lightroom presets and brushes in order for you to enhance the beauty of the exteriors and interiors of the houses you took a photo of in a few clicks. Just like Photolemur, this plugin is a paid product and unfortunately, does not have a free version.
There is this plugin for Lightroom called Photomatix Pro too. It is a plugin that lets you select a bracketed photo or photos set in Lightroom and then export it to Photomatix Pro for HDR processing. After that, reimport the final output back to your Lightroom library.
Next in line is VSCO Film. These revolutionary VSCO presets and camera profiles work very well with Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw. There are custom camera profiles available for different camera brands namely Canon, Fuji, Leica, Nikon, Olympus, and Sony. This VSCO film plugin has many presets that come in packs, each pack based on a particular theme. These presets have very versatile saved settings, that give a perfectly shade to the photo, make bright colors, and soft tones.
Mastin Labs plugin comes with products that make your photos look like film. This one is similar to VSCO Film. It comes in packs and include presets that enhance your picture and be in its very best. As it is similar to VSCO Film, it comes with a price as well.
Lastly, Grain and Film plugin adds that retro film feel to your photos. It has the vintage film, black and white, grain and noise, and cinematic effect presets that somehow give off a nostalgic feel to the exteriors or interiors of the house. There is also the Kodachrome Film preset available. This is a tremendous preset that adds a movie style and drama looks to your masterpieces presented to the clients.
Lightroom helps you organize and edit the images you took. The introduced plugins and presets are very useful for real estate photographers to create exceptional and high-quality images of buildings, houses, and rooms. With these, the editing process will surely be very much easier for you.
Hi Lance,
You are great. Thank you for all the good info. I started real estate photography with you lightroom Enfuse video. Now I am thinking to switch to Photomatix but still think that Enfuse is more natural. Is there some particular reasons to use Photomatix. I have not tried it yet. I would love to hear your comments first.
Hi Lance i notice that when you export full jpg for photomatix processing you do not alter the size and resolution is set to 72dpi. Does this mean the export is in low resolution does it not matter? Cheers. Gary.
Hi Lance, if you wanted to fix the color cast in the image above you can rerun photomatix and change the wb to 5200 or whatever it is outside, then blend the two in photoshop. A little extra work, but your wood floor would be brown again on the left.
Hi Lance thank you very much for your wonderful tuto, but perhabs i miss it, i didnt see the link for the real estate preset you used for photomatix and lightroom.
Dis you put it somewhere in the description ?
Thank you very much for your help.. .
I would bet if you set lightroom to pull down the highlights 100% on all the raw files before running enfuse you would find the final result improved over what you have above. It seems to have no downside. Also, I have found that pulling up the shadows on raw files before processing can also make for an improvement depending on certain images
If I migrate to Raw as my primary first processor, is there any way to jump to Photoshop CC? I have a large investment in third-party Lightroom CC and Photoshop CC plugins from numerous companies like Alien Software, Photomatix, Aurora, etc, etc. I still want to use them.
Thanks,
Jim Hodder
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Check out the very detailed study in Charles Cramer's article below on the use of Lightroom4/ACR7's Process 2012 on single exposure HDR scenes whose highlights and upper mids have higher amounts of light compared to shadows which is the real definition of an HDR scene: -landscape.com/techniques/tonal_adjustments_in_the_age_of_lightroom_4.shtml
If you want a natural extended dynamic range image with the minimum of fuss, choose LR Enfuse or Bracketeer. If you have lots of time on your hands then try Photomatix! The Photomatix plugin for Lightroom is very good, particularly in Exposure Fusion mode, and I much prefer this to the tone mapping options.
As Mike mentions, the upcoming LR 6 makes the plugin obsolete and 32 bit processing will be even easier when using Lightroom. Hopefully this will catch on and grungy, noisy HDR photos with ugly halos will become less prevalent as simple, inexpensive, high quality HDR processing is available without the learning curve of Photomatix Pro and Photoshop.
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