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DESCRIPTION

Hydra + Aperture PlugIn (formerly known as Hydra) uses a number of regular photographs (up to four) with different exposures (darker and lighter) to create a superior one which is much closer to what one's eye can see. This is because a single photograph cannot represent the full gamut of light because of physical limitations in the sensor. This process is also known as a high dynamic range, or HDR, imaging. See the screencast tutorials for more information on how to acquire such images with your camera.

The output produced by Hydra is much closer to what your eye actually sees. You don't have to choose whether to have a beautiful sky or buildings, take 2 photos (or more) with perfect parameters for each of them, then combine them with Hydra.

The images that Hydra uses are not required to be taken with a tripod, as it is usually the case with HDR software. Hydra uses the same warping algorithm as Morph Age, which permits the alignment of images with offsets above a few pixels. This is a unique feature that means you can take photos anywhere without a tripod to later blend them in Hydra. This will change your way of making HDRs.

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WHAT'S NEW
Version 1.6.1:
  • Aperture plugin: Added image size check
  • Aperture plugin: check IPTC tags and EXIF
  • Aperture plugin: fix missing lens model
  • Aperture plugin: fix missing progress bar animation in import
  • Aperture plugin: fix import sheet freeze
  • Stand-alone: fix re-opening preferences window crash
  • Stand-alone: new option to choose 8/32-bit depth for TIFFs
  • always display computed EV offset in import panel
  • fix missing ISO information
  • make more robust handling of ISO / exposure time / FNumber (Zero, fractional numbers, missing info)
  • keep camera model unchanged (add hydra as another tag)
  • choose better tone mapping default values
  • moved to Karelia's media browser v1.1.1
  • accelerated final rendering processing speed
  • German localisation
REQUIREMENTS
PowerMac G5 or any Intel Mac. Mac OS X 10.5 or later, graphics card with 64MB VRAM or more.


SCREENSHOT

Developer:Creaceed
Downloads:3,310
  - Version d/l:343
Multimedia & Design:Image Editing
License:Demo
Date:25 Aug 2008
Platform:PPC/Intel
Price:$59.95
RATING
***½.
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Hydra + Aperture PlugIn User Reviews (10 posts)Write A Review
May 22 2008
***..

CAPTSALTYJACK  I didn't care for Hydra, to be frank. I took different shots, some of them with 3-bracket ranges, others with 5-bracket ranges. The results that Hydra spit out were poor, weirdly saturated (kind of a "candied" look to it), or underexposed.

I took the same exact photo sets and ran them through Bracketeer (GUI frontend for Enfuse), and the results were stunning. With some tweaks, they looked even better.

Can't recommend Hydra. Go for Bracketeer, save a few bucks, and get a better performer too.  (Version 1.5.2)

[ Reply ]
May 14 2008

JOHAN ELZENGA  The Aperture plugin (1.5.2) works fine on my MacBook Pro, but on my Quad G5 I still get an error that the plugin didn't load.  (Version 1.5.2)

[ Reply ]
May 14 2008

JOHAN ELZENGA  The Aperture plugin (1.5.2) works fine on my MacBook Pro, but on my Quad G5 I still get an error that the plugin didn't load.  (Version 1.5.2)

[ Reply ]
May 12 2008
****.

DAMPEOPLES  Well, they didn't lie, it now has tonemapping as well as an Aperture plugin! The plugin is in beta, and will expire in June or July, but it's been working for me so far. I want to say that it's more like an automator action, where it loads aperture, then imports your rendered image into a folder/project you select, but that's fine with me too! Been playing with this a bit tonight, and it sure is fun. I really need to start bracketing more of my shots, I did it for a while, but got out of the habit. The regular HDR images were great out of this app, it did what it was supposed to do. I suppose the best compliment to get for a HDR picture is that someone doesn't 'see it'. The tonemapping I am still experimenting with, and have had interesting results so far. Gotta love it.  (Version 1.5)

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