Since I started working in a full time job in 2008 I didn’t really spend much time taking pictures. Last June I decided that I should change that again. I had mainly two reasons. First, I really like taking pictures, second it’s healthy to have some sort of creative hobby other than programming.
After not following the market for digital image processing software for two years I first went through some research regarding which software suites my needs best. After much testing and playing around with trial versions I’m now pretty happy with the ones I list below.
The Basics
RAW developement: I first tried Bibble 5 for developing my RAWs because a colleague recommended it but I didn’t really like the work-flow. After throwing Bibble away, I quickly fell in love with Adobe Lightroom 3. It’s quick, has amazingly useful editing features, efficient noise reduction and supports lens corrections for many models. Lightroom is available for Windows and Mac OS X. Linux users come away empty-handed.
Manipulation: Gimp is the often mentioned free Adobe Photoshop alternative. It requires a bit of effort to get started but it’s well invested time. There are plenty of plug-ins for Gimp out of which I find the following most useful:
- G’Mic: An excellent collection of filters which I highly recommend to install.
- UFRaw: Raw Converter for Gimp. By far not as powerful as Lightroom, but it does its job. Useful for Linux users who can’t benefit from Lightroom.
- Exposure Blend: Exposure Blend supports you in creating HDR / DRI images out of a series of photos with different exposures. I’m not using it much but during testing it did what it promised.
Check out the Gimp Registry for more plug-ins.
HDR Photography
HDR is short for High Dynamic Range and is essentially a method to increase a photo’s contrast range. Thus dark and light areas of an image will be equally well exposed. Use Google’s image search and search for “HDR” or search for the same on flickr, in order to get an impression.
The right software support to create such images you’ll find in Photomatix. Photomatix is totally foolproof while offering a wide range of options. You’ll have your first tone mapped photo within minutes!
Panoramas
I think I haven’t tried to create a panorama for at least 5 years and I remember back then the stitching process was a real pain. Nowadays, software like PTgui let’s you create awesome panoramas in very short time; at least if the source images are usable. PTgui pro even combines panorama with HDR awesomeness. Quite an impressive combination. Check out Christian Maier’s photos on fotocommunity.de for some examples which take it to the maximum.
Macro Photography
I never used any special software for macros, but I recently found Helicon Focus which takes several photos with different depth of field and combines them into one photo. They have a video on their page demonstrating the process. It’s like HDR, but instead of increasing the contrast range, it’s merging depth of fields.
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