Hydra

Hydra lets you create beautiful high-dynamic-range (HDR) images by merging multiple exposures, effectively capturing both dark and bright subjects to make it more natural, or to enhance scene drama. A single photo cannot represent the entire dynamic range of light in a scene, due to the physical limitations of the sensor. The picture is either too dark or too bright, or both. Hydra allows you to overcome this limitation by merging a number of photos with different exposure settings, and to create a natural image that is much closer to what your eyes actually see. Alternatively, Hydra can also artistically push contrasts to increase drama and emotion in your pictures beyond reality. This new release of Hydra has been optimized for latest macOS enhancements, and it provides native Metal support with maximum performance, in addition to a more modern and simpler user interface.

New and Improved Features

• Optimized for Metal
• Elegant and easy-to-use translucent user interface
• Automatic or manual image alignment with high-precision live positioning and fine-tuning
• Manual removal of ghosting artefacts using region delineation tool and per-region output contribution
• High-precision, 128-bit internal format
• Much improved tone mapping including presets, and live, full-resolution preview
• Advanced comparison tool of result against original pictures
• Single or multiple input photos of various formats (JPEG, RAW, HDR, EXR)
• Blazingly fast rendering to various output file types (JPG, TIFF, HDR, EXR) and color spaces (sRGB, Pro Photo, AdobeRGB...)
• Accurate color processing, including support for Deep and Wide Color displays (30-bit, DCI-P3 display of latest iMac 27’)
• Integration with Apple Photos app (input / output)

• New color grading - With version 4.1, we've taken feedback into account and developed a new color grading technique for Hydra; the new color grading technique provides more vivid colors by default
• New color grading technique
• New Vibrancy color control available in the tone mapper
• Improved local contrast that will now reveal more details in the image
• Fixed a crash occurring on Macs with older discrete GPUs
• Finer-grained GPU memory allocation limits to accommodate with a wider range of Macs