Photo Editing: Adobe Camera Raw and Photomatix

Anyone working with Photoshop evolves as they learn new skills. My evolution is slower than most!

I started editing images in Photoshop, then discovered Camera Raw.

Wow, what a miracle! Now I edit all images in Camera raw.

I was looking for content for a lesson at school, wanted to introduce the kids to HDR, stumbled onto Photomatix HDR software, and gave it a try.

Being a teacher, the program was free. I looked into buying it for the school, and got 32 licenses for about $450, so now all my students have it to use.

I love the ease of the program. I have been using it by starting with one raw file, saving different exposure value-versions of the image, and then merging them into one image using Photomatix.

Here are two examples, first the unedited jpeg file, then a version edited with Adobe Camera Raw, and on the right, a version edited with both Camera Raw and Photomatix. Photo Editing: Adobe Camera Raw and Photomatix.

and another set from the same evening:

I find that the Photomatix SW works best with images that have a good bit of detail, especially texture.