HDR Process Trick – Tone Map Twice in Photomatix

This fun HDR trick will help create a little extra pop and detail when processing HDR photos with Photomatix. I’ve also found this trick to be helpful when the image exposure will just not look good in the histogram. After running the Tone Map process a second time, the histogram will often snap right to the center indicating a properly exposed image.

Here are the steps I follow to use this trick:

1. I use Adobe Lightroom to export and process in Photomatix. When the export dialog box pops up, I uncheck “Automatically re-import into Lightroom library”. This is the trick to ensure the option to Tone Map a second time. If left checked, Photomatix will automatically close and re-import into Lightroom without having the option to Tone Map. In this example, I shot the 3 selected images without a tripod so I also selected “Align Images”. I typically leave this unchecked when using a tripod.

2. Click on “Tone Mapping” to begin the HDR processing.

3. After adjusting the appropriate sliders, select “Process” to Tone Map the image for the first time.

4. When the processed image appears, select the “Process” menu > “Tone Mapping” to process the image a second time.

5. Adjust the HDR settings again. It’s often required to reduce the luminosity and saturation when processing a second time but in this example I didn’t have to adjust much at all.

6. The resulting double processed image will appear. Notice the subtle extra pop and detail in the image.

7. Close the image and save. If using Lightroom, the image will close in Photomatix and the Lightroom import window will pop up.

Thats all there is to it. Try it out and let me know how it works for you! If you have any other HDR processing tips, please share!

Good luck shooting!

Ken Snyder