Retail Price: $99.95

New Year’s Offer: $49.95

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Save bad shots and make the good ones awe inspiring!

With HDR Reactor you get the benefits and looks of High Dynamic Range Imaging without the hassle of having to take several pictures at different exposure levels.

HDR Reactor uses a specialized version of the tone mapping algorithms used in multi-exposure HDR systems to create a wider dynamic range from a single picture.

Simply load an image into HDR Reactor and let the program run its magic.

Whether you need a subtle enhancement to bring details out from the shadows or an extreme look for artistic purposes, HDR Reactor will get you there fast.

Recover lost detail

Some pictures are impossible to take. There is no exposure level that will keep the ground bright and the sky colorful. With multi-exposure HDRI you can solve the problem at the expense of time and effort. With HDR Reactor you can approximate a multi-exposure shot, and compensate for difficult lighting.

Take a look at the following images. The original has a blown-out sky , excessive darkness in the grassy area, and to make any adjustment more complicated, the water is shining brightly almost clipping to white.

As a challenge, put this image into your favorite image processor and try to adjust it so that you can clearly see the grassy area in vivid green color, the sky with nicely defined clouds on a blue background, and the water with detailed ripples and no clipping. You are not likely to succeed, and if you do, it will take you lots of time of hand tweaking and possibly masking. With HDR Reactor, this task takes only 1 click (just to select the proper preset).

And the results are incredible with virtually no clipping!

Lighting Compensation

Even if you put the waterslide image through a regular HDRI tone-mapping, you will not be able to get the same results, and that’s because HDR Reactor goes beyond the HDR tone-mapping process. HDR Reactor uses propietary processing algorithms to better equalize the tones in your pictures. The lighting compensation tool (adaptive local tonal compensation) will subtly bring out the detail in over exposed or under exposed regions, while keeping the well exposed areas looking good.

Color Contrast

Additional sharpness and color contrast enhancement tools let you add sharpness and color, from the subtle to the extreme.

Post Adjustments

All the products in the Reactor series come with a powerful post adjusment panel complete with tone mapping curve adjustment, saturation control, a digital tinted lens, and a softening filter to reduce noise or harshness.

Fast with Instant Feedback

Reactor software is optimized to provide real time feedback as you adjust the controls, no more clicking and waiting for the filters to process. The filter algorithms in Reactor are so fast that you see the changes as you move the sliders, even for the most complex processes. There is simply no faster application than the Reactor line.

No other software required

All Reactor applications are stand alone software that do not require other imaging products to operate, and can integrate with imaging applications by copying and pasting in and out of the software.

Technical Specifications

Input Formats: JPEG, PNG, PSD, BMP

Output Formats: JPEG, PNG, BMP

Requirements

• Win XP, Win Vista, Win 7
• 700MHz PC or better
• 512 MB or better
• An internet connection to activate the software

Includes

• Software donwload
• 25 page print-ready User Manual
• HDR presets
• Tone mapping curve presets
• Updates for all 1.x releases
• Customer support

Retail Price: $99.95

New Year’s Offer: $49.95

Try HDR Reactor for Free!

The term HDRI stands for High Dynamic Range Imaging, and refers to the techniques used to capture images where there is a wide range of lighting levels in a scene.

Human Vision = Wide Range

The human eye has a very wide light perception range. We can clearly see the details inside a room, and simultaneously see the clouds and bright sky outside the window.

Imaging Device = Narrow Range

An imaging device, such as a film or digital camera, cannot do this. If we take a picture of the same scene, we will either get a clear room interior with a washed out sky through the window, or a detailed sky with a very dark room detail, but not both. The problem resides in that the camera’s film or digital sensor cannot accomodate the bright outside with the dim inside at the same time. This is what is called a narrow dynamic range.

In order to obtain an image that reproduces what we observe with our own eyes, we would need to compress or re-map the light levels of the real world down to the small range of the device, such that all light levels are given sufficient luminous range.

The series of techniques used to accomplish this feat, are called HDR or HDRI.

Multiple Exposure HDR

One way of doing it is to take several pictures of the exact same scene but using different exposure levels so that in each picture we focus on a segment of the whole light range. This process is commonly referred to as bracketing.

Imagine we first take a dark picture in which the sky through the window can be seen in full detail, with a nice saturated blue color and well defined clouds. Then we take another picture which is bright, where the room details are clearly visible. Finally we take those two pictures and through the use of sophisticated algorithms we combine the illumination levels of both so that we obtain an image where both the sky, clouds and room details can be seen with nice color saturation, contrast and detail.

The problem is that multi-exposure methodology is seldom practical for everyday use, as it entails a tedious process  requiring a tripod, and then manipulating the images in the computer, aligning them and adjusting the tone mapping. It is also a process that is not suited for pictures that involve people, as most likely they can’t stand still long enough for the several pictures to be taken (in such case we would have to further refine the pictures to avoid ghosting when the images are composed).

HDR Reactor: single image pseudo HDR

This is why we developed HDR Reactor, so that you can apply the HDR technology to your everyday photos without the need of several exposures. HDR Reactor, uses specialized tone mapping algorithms to bring out the details lost in your image, enhancing contrast, color and overall image quality.

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