Merging bracketed photos for indoor photography

[style121]

I've started taking a lot of photos of various apartments we rent out, and the infamous shots of overexposed windows and underexposed interiors really bring me down. I started doing bracketed photos instead of trying to use a flash, since the flash isn't wide enough for my wide angle lens.

Now I see there is an option to merge photos to HDR in Photoshop, but PS doesn't use the RAW files for some reason, only the Jpegs. Plus the fact i'm not too familiar with PS, it seems quite tricky to get the photos looking just the way I want. I tried another program called Photomatix, which seems to do a good job right off the bat, and uses the RAW files to do it. But it's trial software, and i'm not sure if it's the way I should go. Don't want to make the purchase, when there are better options out there.

Should I stick it out with Photoshop, or can anyone recommend software to merge my bracketed photos?

[Dave_]

I saw an amazing demo with Photoshop extended doing exactly what you want, it was using "stacks". You expose for as many different parts as you need, and then merge the stacks together. It was really amazing, almost like watching photoshop "turn on the lights" in each area. The different images are kept in different layers btw.

Only works in Extended though.

p.s. I am not sure why you say photoshop doesn't use RAW files? You most certainly can use RAW files with ACR, perhaps I am missing something?

[style121]

Thanks Dave, I'll try see if I can find the tutorial via YouTube. I'll also post the error message that pops up when I try use raw files in PS. I'm currently using CS3 extended.

[style121]

Decided to take the plunge and go with Photomatix Pro. Seemed to be the most user friendly of the lot, and gets quite good feedback. Images look a bit soft though even when using a tripod, so have to try figure that one out. Also seem to be getting a lot of noise in the images, so hopefully that's user error

[Dave_]

Would be nice to see a demo shot, can you post one?

[SteveG]

Photomatix doesn't actually use the raw data when merging photos. It converts your raws to 16-bit tiffs for you before doing the merge. The trouble is it that it might not be doing a good enough job for your tastes. I find it really important to get rid of all chromatic aberration first before merging, as the process seems to accentuate it. So, personally, I need to take control of the raw conversion to get best quality. I also like to align the images first in PS before running them through Photomatix. Photomatix's alignment is not always close enough.

Here's a Photomatix merge. 8 shots stacked and merged. A bit of processing in PS afterwards, but not much.
Very careful shooting and processing is the key to decent results from Photomatix.

http://www.outdoorphoto.co.za/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=256221&title=in-the-cracks-again&cat=500

[kappaj]

This is nice guide that might help....
http://www.outdoorphoto.co.za/forums...tutorial/page8