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Review: SNS-HDR Pro. It rocks!
August 21, 2011I'm just coming from a review marathon of 20 HDR programs for the upcoming book revision. Turned out that one application really stood out from the crowd. I figured it would be mean to not share this with you right away, because you can most certainly use it for some great photography in the meantime.
This software with the somewhat cryptic name is written by the Sebastian Nibisz, a photo enthusiast from Poland. Without big company backing he put together a very impressive tonemapper, that deserves my personal newcomer award. It’s super-intuitive due to full-on realtime feedback and extremely halo-resistant.
Parameters like Microcontrast and Microdetails mimic the classic settings in Photomatix, but in addition there are separate controls for Highlights Protection and Midtone Contrast. These two sliders really make a difference, in other programs these can only be affected indirectly by getting a bunch of conflicting sliders in a delicate balance.
SNS-HDR also includes excellent hue/saturation equalizers. These color tools are not completely unique by themselves, but are rarely implemented with such a simple interface and so much flexibility. No other tool will let you fine tune the color range affected by each equalizer control point, or setup a separate equalizer curve that affects only the highlights. In fact, most parameters can have a separate value for highlights, indicated by a little H button. This extra bit of highlight control is super-useful in practice and is very easy to use. Thumbnail presets, history, white balance tool with color picker, color management with monitor profiles—all the important features are there and implemented with excellence.
A unique treat is the Series Processing function, which is exclusive to the Pro version. Series is just like Batch Processing, except that it stops for each set and lets you adjust the toning parameters. Makes it faster than manually digging through an entire folder of brackets, but puts you back in control of the result. Very cool.
So what’s missing? Well, there is no HDR or EXR output. Which might be fine considering this is a purely photographic tonemapping software. The HDR merge function is very good, but can’t be top of the class without more RAW options and manual control over alignment and ghost removal. Sharpen, noise removal and chromatic aberration correction would be nice to have as well. But this is really just nitpicking, it’s actually hard to find a serious flaw in this fine program.
There are three editions: a free command-line version, which is just a fire-and-forget tonemapper and may be interesting for setting up an automated workflow. The Home and Pro edition are really what I was talking about here, priced at $42 and $120. Both are largely identical, except the Pro edition includes batch processing and is licensed for commercial work. For the casual hobby HDR shooter I would recommend the $40 Home edition in a heartbeat. Sebastian is nice enough to grant my readers an exclusive 30% discount,so you can pick up your Pro edition for $85 here.
If you’re a former Photomatix user, and want to ramp up your game in the tonemapping department, SNS-HDR is an excellent companion app. The separate highlight treatment and tendency to produce a natural appearance makes it the real estate photographer’s best friend. In fact, it was my good friend Michael James who turned me on to it, another victim was Jay Burlage who used it for many of his HDR timelapse videos. For a full-on introduction check out Michael's video tutorial (on a slightly older version).
Probably the only thing that keeps SNS-HDR from overtaking the world is that the website is only available in Polish. And Google's auto-translation looks a bit scary. Have no fear, head straight to the download button on www.sns-hdr.com
PS: Please - won't some volunteer jump in and properly translate that website for Sebastian? I really don't want him to get distracted from adding selective ghost removal or other awesome stuff to SNS-HDR, so please somebody keep this monkey off his back…
This software with the somewhat cryptic name is written by the Sebastian Nibisz, a photo enthusiast from Poland. Without big company backing he put together a very impressive tonemapper, that deserves my personal newcomer award. It’s super-intuitive due to full-on realtime feedback and extremely halo-resistant.
Parameters like Microcontrast and Microdetails mimic the classic settings in Photomatix, but in addition there are separate controls for Highlights Protection and Midtone Contrast. These two sliders really make a difference, in other programs these can only be affected indirectly by getting a bunch of conflicting sliders in a delicate balance.
SNS-HDR also includes excellent hue/saturation equalizers. These color tools are not completely unique by themselves, but are rarely implemented with such a simple interface and so much flexibility. No other tool will let you fine tune the color range affected by each equalizer control point, or setup a separate equalizer curve that affects only the highlights. In fact, most parameters can have a separate value for highlights, indicated by a little H button. This extra bit of highlight control is super-useful in practice and is very easy to use. Thumbnail presets, history, white balance tool with color picker, color management with monitor profiles—all the important features are there and implemented with excellence.
A unique treat is the Series Processing function, which is exclusive to the Pro version. Series is just like Batch Processing, except that it stops for each set and lets you adjust the toning parameters. Makes it faster than manually digging through an entire folder of brackets, but puts you back in control of the result. Very cool.
So what’s missing? Well, there is no HDR or EXR output. Which might be fine considering this is a purely photographic tonemapping software. The HDR merge function is very good, but can’t be top of the class without more RAW options and manual control over alignment and ghost removal. Sharpen, noise removal and chromatic aberration correction would be nice to have as well. But this is really just nitpicking, it’s actually hard to find a serious flaw in this fine program.
There are three editions: a free command-line version, which is just a fire-and-forget tonemapper and may be interesting for setting up an automated workflow. The Home and Pro edition are really what I was talking about here, priced at $42 and $120. Both are largely identical, except the Pro edition includes batch processing and is licensed for commercial work. For the casual hobby HDR shooter I would recommend the $40 Home edition in a heartbeat. Sebastian is nice enough to grant my readers an exclusive 30% discount,so you can pick up your Pro edition for $85 here.
If you’re a former Photomatix user, and want to ramp up your game in the tonemapping department, SNS-HDR is an excellent companion app. The separate highlight treatment and tendency to produce a natural appearance makes it the real estate photographer’s best friend. In fact, it was my good friend Michael James who turned me on to it, another victim was Jay Burlage who used it for many of his HDR timelapse videos. For a full-on introduction check out Michael's video tutorial (on a slightly older version).
Probably the only thing that keeps SNS-HDR from overtaking the world is that the website is only available in Polish. And Google's auto-translation looks a bit scary. Have no fear, head straight to the download button on www.sns-hdr.com
PS: Please - won't some volunteer jump in and properly translate that website for Sebastian? I really don't want him to get distracted from adding selective ghost removal or other awesome stuff to SNS-HDR, so please somebody keep this monkey off his back…
