If you have ever photographed a high contrast scene, you know that even the best exposure will typically have blown out highlights and flat shadows.

The solution is High Dynamic Range (HDR) Photography processing:
• Take multiple photographs at varying exposure levels
• Merge the photos into an HDR image that reveals highlight and shadow details
• Adjust the settings to get the look you want: from natural-looking with Exposure Fusion to painterly or surreal with Tone Mapping

Features:

• Merge of bracketed photos into HDR (High Dynamic Range)
• Tone Mapping with Details Enhancer
• Advanced Details Enhancer settings
• Tone Mapping with Contrast Optimizer
• Fusion / Natural
• Fusion / Real-Estate
• Finishing Touch (sharpening, contrast, saturation)
• Undo Tone Mapping / Fusion
• Fusion from a single RAW file
• Automatic alignment of hand-held photos
• Automatic ghost removal
• Adjustment options for Automatic Deghosting
• Selective Deghosting tool
• Thumbnails of built-in presets
• Thumbnails of custom presets
• Display options for preset thumbnails
• Saving and loading of user presets
• Batch processing of bracketed photos
• Batch of single files
• Automatic reduction of chromatic aberrations
• Automatic noise reduction
• Unlimited Maximum number of photos per bracketed set
• Read/write in 32-bit HDR image formats
• Integration with Lightroom via free export plugin

Limitations: When used in trial mode, Photomatix Pro is fully functional and never expires, but adds a watermark to images produced with one of the two Tone Mapping methods and 3 of the 5 exposure fusion modes.

Photomatix comes in both Essentials and Pro versions, an Aperture plugin, and a Photoshop Plugin. See author's comparison page for details.

Requirements:
OS X 10.6+
Intel