Version history

easyHDR PRO software updates and new features

2.00.1 - 08.05.2010: This is the next major version of easyHDR PRO software. License valid for version 1.xx is not valid any more starting at this point. New features and improvements in respect to version 1.70.4 Completely reworked tone mapping algorithms (better quality and easier control). New image display system - faster and much less memory consuming. Improved RAW loading (faster; added control over noise reduction provided by dcraw). Presets - faster way to use predefined tone mapping settings. Improved workflow.

1.70.4 - 08.05.2010: Bug fixes and changes vs. version 1.70.3: Corrected problem with "Local contrast" not working properly if there were big, plain surfaces in the tonemapped image. This problem only occured in case of very big photos. Corrected problem with histogram display - the problem was that it could have gone all white. Corrected calculation of histogram clipping points in case when the size reduction is enabled. Repaired problem with the splash screen not closing properly. Updated DCRAW to version 8.99.

1.70.3 - 13.11.2009: Bug fixes and changes vs. version 1.70.2: Corrected bug in auto and manual alignment. It could have happened in some cases that the aligned image data was corrupted, which prevented HDR to be generated (problem was introduced in version 1.70.1). Corrected bug in HDR generation - Smart Merge method. Trying to process very small images resulted in an error (actual minimal size was depending on the "smoothness" parameter).

1.70.2 - 06.11.2009: Bug fixes and changes vs. version 1.70.1: Changed default "Mask->Strength" - from 1.00 to 0.60. The results at the default settings are now looking more realistically. Modified "Local Contrast->Level" setting. Now it's more useful as it controls how the Local Contrast shall influence areas of different global brightness. Corrected bug in Post Processing that was causing that only half of the photo was actually processed (problem was introduced in version 1.70.1). Corrected bug in TIFF loader that was preventing some specific TIFF formats to be loaded (i.e. some big-endian encoded 16-bit TIFFs from DxO). Repaired bug in Manual Alignment tool that was preventing 48-bit images to be aligned (problem was introduced in version 1.70.1).

1.70.1 - 26.10.2009: New features Chromatic aberration correction tool. White and black histogram clipping points can now be also selected with an eyedropper tool. Improvements Tone mapping: improved "Mask" operator. It is now better preserving contrast and color in dark areas, while still attenuating highlights. Tone mapping: improved "Local Contrast" operator. Now it gives sharper, more detailed and less desaturated results. Improved performance of many functions - faster image loading and processing. Improved anti-aliasing in manual and auto alignment. Faster and less memory demanding manual align tool. Batch processing task-list creation: possibility to apply settings to many tasks at once (multi-selection). Automatic selection of the base photo in auto alignment. EXIF is needed to detect the middle exposed photo. TIFFs compressed with PackBits method are now supported. Updated dcraw to version 8.98. Corrected bugs Corrected detection of CPU core count on Windows XP SP2. Additionally added possibility to manually override the detected maximum core count to be used. Repaired transferring EXIF in the batch mode in case of saving in TIFF format. Added a possibility (Program Options) to disable automatic enlargement of open/save file dialogs. Useful to override a problem when running the program under Wine in Linux. Corrected bug in JPEG and TIFF save dialogs that could prevent EXIF to be transferred. Corrected some problems with GUI when non-standard screen DPI is used. Repaired scrolling of the toolbox panel. Now it's possible to use it even when the screen resolution is lower than 1024x768 (i.e. in netbooks).

1.60.3 - 17.01.2009: Bug fixes and changes vs. version 1.60.2: Repaired bug that was causing removal of easyHDR's own temporary files when the program was running for more than one hour. Corrected automatic result file name generation. Corrected German translation. Repaired bug that could lead to crash when non-valid FITs or Radiance RGBE files were loaded (reported by Stefan Cornelius, Secunia Research). Added new feature: Memory Usage Reduction Mode (in Settings menu). When enabled it is possible to load and process much bigger photos, however at the same time the Alignment and Post-Processing are disabled.

1.60.2 - 17.12.2008: Bug fixes and changes vs. version 1.60.1: Corrected bug in "Add Directory" function in the Batch Processing. Image files without archive attribute are now recognized. Windows Vista: corrected detection of the number of CPU cores. Added *.rw2 extension to the list of supported RAW formats.

1.60.1 - 13.12.2008: New features New HDR generation method - "Smart Merge". Generates a pseudo-HDR image that contains best exposed details taken from the input photographs. This method can produce very realistic results. Also the results look good just with the default settings, so less tweaking is needed. Support for multicore CPUs. It is possible to select the maximum number of cores to be used in the normal or in the batch mode separately. New translation: Brazilian! Improvements The program works much faster (even when using single CPU core). The highest improvement in performance has been achieved in case of image loading (JPEG, TIFF & RAW), and in case of LDR enhancement (3-5x faster). However other functions like tone mapping, alignment, image transformation and HDR generation are now also at least several percent faster. New format (XML) for tone mapping settings files, batch job lists and project files. XML means more flexibility and that the files could be edited with a simple text editor - like Notepad. Completely redesigned batch processing window. Zooming with mouse wheel. Recently used tone mapping settings file list is saved when the program is terminated. Possibility to use both: dot or a comma as a decimal separator. Prevoiusly only one of these characters was allowed, regarding the regional settings of the Operating System. Updated dcraw to version 8.89. Exiftool has been added to the installation package. Corrected bugs Corrected bug that was causing the histogram to become all white. Scanline error in manual alignment tool. Error in curves tool, when two knee points were created at the same position, by double clicking on the graph. It's now possible to load JPEGs from read-only media. Corrected problem with automatic JPEG rotation.

1.50 - 28.05.2008: New features New tone mapping option - Local Contrast. The function allows to create much more 'dramatic' results, by strongly amplifying local contrasts. It is useful especially in case of scenes with cloudy sky or fine detailed textures. It is very sensitive, so making the effect too strong can bring out noise or JPEG compression artifacts, especially on flat surfaces like blue, cloudless sky. Full EXIF data transfer from JPEG, TIFF and RAW formats to JPEG and TIFF (installation of an additional program: EXIFTOOL is needed). Color tone adjustment in post-processing. Possibility to tweak color saturation selectively for highlights and shadows as well as possibility to adjust color temperature. Russian translation! Improvements Improved histogram tool. Extended capabilities of the cropping tool. Improved image selection creation. Possibility to move the selection with the mouse while holding the Shift key. Choosing the preview in manual alignment: buttons instead of a combo-box. Hiding mouse cursor while moving pins in the manual alignment. After a cursor key is pressed while moving a pin in the manual alignment, the following mouse movements are not used for updating the pin position. Easier pin position fine tuning with the keyboard. Gamma correction when LDR enhancing RAW photos. Most recent version of DCRAW was added. Possibility to break batch processing. Extended capabilities of the 'Add Directory' feature in the batch processing. Possibility to manually edit the 'save to' path in the batch processing. Automatic tone mapping settings loading in the batch processing - when a task is selected on the list. Improved toolbox switching when the multi-tool option is selected in the 'Program Options' - useful in case of high resolution computer screens. Corrected bugs Repaired bug with the Open Picture Window and thumbnail view - on some PCs (only 2 cases were known) the program just crashed when the 'Open' button was hit. Corrected problems with the main progress bar. Repaired a compatibility problem that prevented from running the program on Win95/98.

1.42 - 11.02.2008: New features FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) image format support. The format is used i.e. in astrophotography. Automatic JPEG rotation (on load) upon camera tilt sensor data stored in EXIF. HDR image generation size reduction. Allows faster generation of a HDR image if full resolution is not needed. Can be also used for faster previewing. Drag and drop functionality. Photos that are dropped on the program window are automatically loaded. Possibility (set in the Program Options) to register the program as default for opening Radiance RGBE (*.hdr) image files. Saving the last settings of the HDR Generation window. Improvements Improved workflow - auto alignment as a separate tool, saving aligned photos at any time, possibility to undo alignment. Twice faster automatic alignment with rotation compensation. About 20% faster tone mapping. Possibility to choose photos to be involved in the Image Stacking. Possibility to select photos to be aligned manually or automatically. Improved curves tool. Adding knee points with left mouse button click. Removing with right mouse button. More powerful White Balance tool. User defined selectiveness - stronger effect for brighter or darker areas. Showing an effect strength map for White Balance as well as Sample/Target Balance tools. Image Stacking now possible also in the batch processing mode. Corrected bugs The "Add directory" option now correctly adds directories that have an "archive" attribute. Repaired copying to clipboard.

1.41 - 04.12.2007: New features Image stacking - calculation of simple average of input photos instead of generating HDR. This feature shall be used with noisy photo sequences taken at the same exposure settings, however could give good results also with bracketed shots. Additional option in the Manual Alignment tool - possibility to compensate for shift and rotation only, without scaling. Possibility to move the pins in the Manual Alignment tool with keyboard arrows. Click with the mouse on the pin and while still holding the mouse button use the arrows. The program warns if the user tries to save the result photo when the size reduction is enabled. Possibility to turn off some of the confirmation dialogs, i.e. when a new project is started. Improvements The memory usage is smaller, so bigger photos can be processed. With the /3GB switch enabled it is possible to process photos even bigger than 50MPix. The program windows don't pop up during the batch processing any more. So, during the batch processing, other applications can be used without interruption. Corrected bugs The program will finally work on systems with /3GB switch enabled. Default values in the tone mapping settings are now written with the proper decimal separator - as defined in the Regional Settings in Windows. Corrected bugs in the RAW loader and converter - long paths or filenames (not in 8.3 format) shouldn't be a problem any more. DCRAW should work on Windows Vista. Temporary TIFFs created by DCRAW are now properly deleted during the batch processing. TIFFs saved with AutoPano software will now load without problems. The "Maximal image dimension" setting in the "Program Options->Automatic size reduction" is now working.

1.40 - 09.10.2007: New features Saving the HDR image in Radiance RGBE (.hdr) file format. Completely new manual alignment. Compensates for shift, rotation, scale and perspective. Automatic histogram clipping. "Add directory" button in the batch processing. Automatically adds tasks of files groupped in directories and subdirectories. Creation and saving HDR files in the batch processing mode without applying tone mapping. "Before processing" and "after processing" preview buttons allow easy and fast possibility to compare the input photos with the result. Free hand panning - move the mouse over the photo while holding the right button down. Improvements Modified tone mapping mask calculation procedures - faster and more universal. Windows XP theme support - new, modern look. Modified anti-blooming "slight" setting. No more long program window freezing while image loading and RAW conversion. Faster image loading and saving. Redesigned batch processing window. Opacity setting in the white balance and sample/target balance tools. Help hints for the most important settings. Corrected bugs Possibility to run many instances of the program (i.e. two easyHDR's running in batch processing mode to more efficiently use the multi core processor capabilities). Loading RAW files from root directory (i.e. "C:\"). The program crashes no more when HDR is regenerated and the size reduction is other than 1x. Corrected sample tool in the white balance and sample/target balance. Possibility to process *.hdr photos in the batch processing mode.

1.32 - 24.06.2007: Possibility to break tone mapping and HDR generation. Automatic size reduction and preview calculation after HDR is generated (configured in the 'Program Options'). 3-channel or luminance only histogram (click in order to change). Resizeable open and save picture windows. Direct raw photo loading with DCRAW. Reading the EXIF tags from TIFF (and RAW). Better tone mapping sliders. Underexposed and overexposed areas marker (blinking). Bug correction: Now it is possible to convert many files with the RAW converter in one batch. A dozen other, but minor modifications. New language versions: Portuguese and Italian!

1.31 - 21.04.2007: More sophisticated auto-alignment feature - now there is an option to compensate rotation between the images. May be useful with hand-held photo sequences. Crop tool. Corrected window behavior. No freezes during HDR generation, no problems with using other applications during photo loading and HDR generation, no half-destroyed windows that cannot be closed. Better noise reduction capability when the "normal" anti-blooming is chosen. Corrected bug - wrong EXIF data if "Remove" button was used. Corrected bug - spin edit control in the slider popups. Corrected bug - now it is possible to do LDR enhancement in the batch processing. New version of dcraw (program that is used to convert RAW to TIFF) - it should work with photos taken with more recent cameras. Corrected bug with BMP or JPEG saving - occurred on Windows 2003 Server and there has been one report that also on Windows XP. Corrected auto file name suggestion. Correction of the photos loading order. Corrected German and French language versions.

1.30 - 08.02.2007: New HDR generation and tone mapping algorithms - more realistic results, anti blooming feature. About 30% lower memory usage, so now it should be possible to load much bigger input photos. Image transformations (rotate and mirror). Automatic histogram clipping (white and black point). Auto alignment (for now translational only). Much improved toolbar and extended abilities of settings sliders. Preview size reduction - it is possible to process a resampled version of the HDR during tone mapping settings tuning instead of the entire photo. Possibility to hide the right panel, go back to the default settings, revert settings...

1.24 - 21.12.2006: Bigger open and save picture windows. Bigger and more handy sliders. Real saturation parameter instead of the "old saturation" tool that is since now called "compression". New language version: easyHDR in French.

1.23 - 06.12.2006: Additional language versions (German & Spanish). Added JPEG EXIF headers transfer capability. Corrected auto-preview feature. Some other minor changes like progress window showing up when photos are loaded.

1.22 - 11.11.2006: Much faster (3-8x) tone mapping with the Gaussian and bilateral shadows/highlights mask. New tone mapping method - combination of results created with the Gaussian and bilateral masks. Automatic preview option. The preview area is updated automatically when one of the tone mapping parameters is changed. Also, a bug preventing RAW conversion has been repaired. The bug concerned cases when there were spaces in the RAW file path name.

1.21 - 19.10.2006: JPEG error #36 issue has been resolved. Two bugs that were causing crash in Sample/Target Balance have been repaired. Result saving settings (like JPEG quality or TIFF compression) are now saved and restored as program starts.

1.20 - 28.09.2006: The 'Step 3' tab has been redesigned and two new tools have been added to it. The new tools allow color tone adjustment to the tone mapped image. More on that can be found in the tutorial. Also DCRAW integration with easyHDR has been improved and the DCRAW converter has been updated to the most recent version (which finally works fine also on Windows 2003 Server). Some additional minor changes like: new cursors, '1:1' and 'fit to screen' zoom buttons.

1.19 - 13.08.2006: Added Radiance RGBE (*.HDR) file format support and a built-in RAW image converter (to 48-bit TIFF). Tone mapping (especially bilateral method) is much faster. Now it's possible to load many images at once (by multiselecting them). Some other, but minor changes and bug fixes.

1.18 - 06.07.2006: Batch processing, project save/load, tone mapping settings save/load.

1.17 - 13.06.2006: No crash during processing if "Auto Add" is checked before the first image is opened. Status of "Auto Add" and "Shadows/Highlights Mask" checkboxes is saved on exit and restored when the program starts.

1.16 - 05.06.2006: Two bugs corrected - crash when bilateral tone mapping was applied at low edge value and a crash on loading some TIFF images i.e. saved in PTGui).

1.15 - 14.05.2006: TIFF format support added. You can load 24, 48 or 96-bit (HDR floating-point) uncompressed or compressed with "deflate" method TIFF images. The tonemapped result can be saved as 24 or 48-bit TIFF (with or without compression).

1.14 - 04.05.2006: If you have purchased or you are going to purchase easyHDR please be sure that you have downloaded at least v1.14. A small bug that could occur on some computers has been repaired. This error affected only a licensed version.

1.12 - 30.04.2006: The most time consuming procedures as tone mapping and filtering are executed in a thread that works in the background so the application window does not freeze during processing. The median filter functionality has been improved (opacity and threshold parameters added).

1.11 - 12.04.2006: Bug correction. Now the program can be used at other screen dpi resolutions (eg. 120 dpi), not only at 96 dpi.

1.10 - 07.04.2006: New tone tmapping algorithm (shadows/highlights mask) - allows much greater contrast reduction between bright and dark areas, but preserves local contrasts, so the images look really neat. Corrected filters (gauss, bilateral and unsharp mask) - now they are faster and have greater functionality (opacity, amount values). Auto add feature (can be used if there is no shift between images to be stacked).

1.04 - 25.02.2006: New stacking and tone mapping method that does not loose color information and allows higher contrast. Corrected gamma adjustment and some minor bugs. (LAST FREE VERSION).

1.03 - 08.02.2006: No image size limit, image alignment with a mouse, contrast enhancement - setting points on the histogram.

1.02 - 04.02.2006: Two errors in image shift procedures corrected.

1.01 - 03.02.2006: New compilation (for 6MPix images).

1.00 - 03.02.2006: First release.

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