HDR Darkroom Pro - The HDR Software for Photogs on a Budget!

*UPDATE* – A new software from the same company Great Photo Pro 2 has been reviewed here. Check it out!

A few weeks ago I was given a promotional copy of HDR Darkroom Pro. This program seems to be sold exclusively through the Mac App store and is actually no where to be found on everimaging’s website. The app store reviews aren’t all that good, but I thought I’d review it for you anyway.

I currently use Photomatix for my HDR photo processing, however, it is to be noted there are a lot of great pieces of software out there that will enable you to achieve similar effects and results and it’s really up to you to determine which software works for your own needs.

So how does HDR Darkroom Pro stack up against the professional level HDR conversion tool? Continue reading!

HDR Darkroom Pro Overview

The Good

Stylish and clean display – Stylish and simplistic display that gets the job done.
Relatively easy to use – It’s fairly typical to any other photo editing software on the market with sliders to adjust your levels. Some key pro features are missing however, which we’ll get into later.
It Does the Deed - But you get what you pay for. This is a budget option for those not willing to fork over the extra cash and it shows. I’d like to say that I’d hoped for more from them, and maybe down the road features will be added, but for the current $9.99 price it’s not a complete waste of money.

The Bad

No manual ghosting removal – Unless I’m missing something there doesn’t seem to be any option to remove the effects of ghosting created by moving trees or swaying ropes. This is a huge knock in my book as far as HDR processing goes, because things move, and if you’re taking multiple exposures there is going to be movement in almost every set of shots.
Limited Alignment Options – You’re only given the option to align the images or not align them. With Photomatix there are a few ways to choose to align your images as well as having Photomatix apply a crop (though I typically will do that myself after I’m done processing).
Limited to “Single File” or “Open Folder” for opening options – Strange that they wont let you open a set of bracketed photos as almost anyone doing HDR photography is going to want to load their bracketed set of photos and not a folder that contains 1000′s of photos or one single file.
Processing algorithms are not up to par – It’s to be expected that a program that is selling for 10% of the total cost of the pro level options is going to have some issues. Will you get an HDR like photograph? Sure you will. Will it be as nice as those from Photomatix or onOne? No.

Photomatix

HDR Darkroom Pro

Rating

Overal Rating – 3/5

Quality of HDR Processing – 2/5

Ease of Use – 3/5

Features – 2/5

Price (At time of review $9.99) – 4.5/5

Final Thoughts

HDR Darkroom Pro is a good enough piece of software for anyone looking to get their feet wet with HDR processing. However, my expectation is that you will outgrow it’s capabilities fairly quickly and want more powerful software sooner rather than later.

As I wrote above, I prefer Photomatix, but if you’re new to photography and are looking for a piece of software to get started with head over to the Mac App store and give HDR Darkroom Pro a shot it’s currently under $10, which in terms of things isn’t that bad, and if you don’t have anything else it’s better than nothing. However, if the price were to rise and you were to pay any more than $20 I’d say that you should either wait for another sale or go straight for Photomatix.

I hope this review was helpful! Feel free to comment below with your thoughts!

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