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Photo editing enables real estate photographers to blend real estate pictures with different exposures to form a single real estate image with a dynamic range. This is why I'm sharing the best HDR software for real estate photographers to ensure you can perfectly capture every detail of your interior and exterior HDR photos.
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Considering filters, photo editing functions, and interface, Lightroom is my top HDR photo editing software to help real estate photographers edit professional and clean-looking real estate photos.
However, since real estate photographers have different photo editing skills, styles, and budgets, I'm also giving you a comparison of other runner-ups for the best HDR software.
Adobe's Lightroom is our best software among real estate photographers, mainly because of its batch editing, presets, and HDR Merge tools.Its user-friendly toolset also includes a gradient filter, brush tool, and HSL sliders. These are beneficial for real estate photo editing when you want to edit specific parts of real estate images and dial in the finished look.
This software has come a long way since its inception and has quite a few helpful tools for real estate photo editing, including creating HDR images. Like Adobe Elements, much of your editing functions would come from the HDR Merge Preview.
From there, real estate photographers can choose the Auto Tone tool to produce an evenly-toned merged image right away. Another option in this photo editing software is the Auto-Align tool, which is helpful if your exterior real estate shots have slight movements like vehicles passing or people walking.
Similar to Photoshop, users can choose either a monthly or yearly subscription. This way, you have at least 30 days to decide if this is the right tool for your real estate editing needs.
Born out of collaboration with photographer Trey Ratcliff, the Aurora HDR Enhancing Program offers an array of editing tools for real estate photo editors who want to produce composites with fine details.
The Aurora HDR software's primary editing functions include Exposure Stacking, Tone Curve, and Graduated HD Filter. After loading your real estate photos, the Aurora HDR system will let you choose if you need auto-alignment, auto-ghosting, or chromatic aberration removal.
When editing, you'll start with the Structure panel for detail and clarity adjustments in an image. Using the slider controls, you can achieve realistic-looking edits by adjusting temperature, lighting, and shadows.
One of the Aurora HDR software's unique functions is the Top & Bottom Lighting, which lets you modify the exposure levels of an image's top and bottom portions. Unlike LR, Aurora HDR software fails in having diverse presets. The Aurora HDR software tends to have 'overcooked' and heavily saturated filters.
However, this real estate photo editing software does have advanced artificial intelligence tools that analyze the real estate photo before applying HDR smart structure filters to make your edits look extra realistic. Finally, the Aurora HDR software has an incredibly intuitive interface that improves the overall responsiveness and speed.
Photoshop Elements 2024 is one of the most regularly updated real estate photo editors. Similar to LR, Elements uses Photo Merge Exposure as its basic image composite editing tool to combine various exposure brackets to form a single real estate image.
There's also a Panorama feature that enables you to compose two or more real estate photo files. You can apply Tone in ACR to make adjustments in the exposure, add warmth, boost clarity, and eliminate shadows due to variable lighting.
Toning can make dull photos pop. If your shots don't stand out for some reason, this feature allows you to apply effects to boost luminance and make your image more vibrant. Meanwhile, denoise can remove noise or unnecessary elements so real estate clients can only focus on what matters in your real estate shots.
Moreover, there's a Group Shot function that allows you to move objects and people. This feature is time-saving when you need to add a lifestyle vibe for clients to visualize what it's like having people and things in a given space.
This is an ideal platform for users who want to enhance existing images with colors, levels, and lens correction tools. Like Photomatix Pro, this HDR software has everything you'd require to edit, enhance, and change any aspect of your photographs.
Since Adobe Photoshop is a photo editing software, users can remove some elements from one real estate photo and replace them with another. Hence, PS is the ultimate editing platform for alterations and adding 3D work on multiple layers.
Among the things you could do with this software are cropping out objects, adjusting color balance, or working in layers. You can edit menu commands for Fill, Transform, and Stroke commands.
Real estate photographers can also avail of the Adobe Creative Cloud
Featuring significant upgrades from the older Photomatix versions, Photomatix Pro 6 helps produce breathtaking real estate edits by combining exposures, applying presets, and using color adjustment tools. It's challenging even for real estate professional photographers to add as much detail as possible without making scenes look too staged, overprocessed, or downright unrealistic.
When you launch Photomatix Pro, you have two ghost reduction options, global or selective ghost reduction. Each of the rendering methods has a unique adjustment set for the technique. Similar to LR, Photomatix Pro also offers automatic alignment of hand-held photos.
Photomatix comes with robust HDR photography rendering methods to customize and make adjustments in a real estate photo. This toolset includes exposure blending, edge-aware brushes, enhanced color controls, and distortion and perspective correction tools.
With these functions, you can adjust the hue, saturation, contrast, sharpness, and brightness levels of every real estate photo. What's also notable about Photomatix Pro is its ability to produce timelapse videos by batch-processing bracketed JPEG images.
Furthermore, this Photomatix Pro version offers a Tone Balancer. This tool is a new contrast optimizer that finetunes shadows and highlights to achieve more realistic results, making the sky or background appear more realistic.
Photomatix Pro also provides editing presets that work best for interior and exterior photography. Likewise, users can change the display of preset thumbnails and save custom presets.
Unfortunately, the interface of Photomatix looks a bit dated if you compare this real estate photo editing software with other new photo-enhancing and editing tools. This is because Photomatix has been in the industry for a long time. However, the functionality and effectiveness of this HDR software remain solid.
One of the main reasons you should consider Oloneo HDRengine is its real-time tone mapping and processing capability. This means that as you adjust sliders and make changes, you can instantly see the results on the real estate photo without waiting.
The application can handle large file sizes without a significant slowdown, which is beneficial when working with high-resolution images. Like Adobe Lightroom, the software has a batch process feature, allowing you to process multiple HDR sequences at once.
However, unlike the other applications on our list, this software is for Windows users only. Also, updates and new features are less frequent when compared to Adobe applications such as Lightroom.
If you are a beginner photographer, the EasyHDR software is your best bet due to its user-friendly approach to the complex HDR editing process and tone mapping. The user interface is clear and straightforward. You can even use the software as a plugin for Adobe Lightroom.
The program uses artificial intelligence algorithms and automated tools to align images and blend them without introducing unwanted artifacts. The HDR image alignment feature compensates for rotation, shift, and perspective.
Usually, this helps in preserving the inherent sharpness of the source images, even if you didn’t use a tripod when shooting. The main limitation of this program is its lack of advanced post-processing and retouching tools.
HDR photo editing is generally a post-processing editing that combines multiple exposures of the same scene, each captured with different exposure settings. Typically, there will be an underexposed photo capturing the highlights, a correctly exposed image capturing the mid-tones, and an overexposed photo capturing the shadows.
You then combine these multiple exposures into a single image using HDR software. The software pulls the best parts from each exposure:
Considering that you want to produce high-quality images where both shadows and highlights have sufficient details, here are some reasons you might need an HDR application.
| Photo Editing Software | Photo Editing Capabilities | Minimum System Requirements | Subscription |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lightroom | Photo Merge Auto Align and Auto Tone Create Stack | Windows 10 macOS Mojave, Big Sur, Catalina | Monthly, yearly |
| Aurora HDR | Exposure Stacking, Tone Curve, Graduated HD Filter | Windows 7, 8, Vista macO Catalina, Mojave, High Sierra, El Capitan, Yosemite | One-time payment, bundle option |
| Photoshop Elements | Photo Merge Exposure | Windows 10, macOS 10.14 through 10.15 | One-time payment |
| Photomatix Pro 6 | Merge Photos to HDR, Ghost Removal, Tone Mapping, Exposure Fusion HDR | Windows 7, 8, 10, XP Mac OS X, Sierra, Big Sur, Catalina | One-time payment |
| Oloneo HDRengine | HDR merge, Noise reduction, Ghost removal, Batch process feature | Windows | One-time payment |
| EasyHDR | HDR merge, Auto Align, Batch Processing | Windows 7, 8, 10, 11, MacOS 10.12 | One-time payment |
Most HDR programs, such as Lightroom, need a faster processor like an Intel Core i7 or i9 processor, an AMD Ryzen 7 or 9 processor, and a large RAM of around 16GB. Although the computer specs required for HDR software can vary depending on the specific software, a high-resolution display with good color accuracy is vital for more color-accurate results.
Yes, many smartphones have built-in HDR capabilities that allow you to capture HDR pictures by simply enabling the HDR mode in your camera app. However, the quality of HDR photos captured by phone may be lower than those captured with a professional camera and processed with professional software such as Photoshop Elements.
HDR photography best suits scenes with high contrast, such as bright highlights and deep shadows. For instance, you can use it to capture the details inside the room while preserving the details outside the window or exteriors with bright skies and darker foregrounds.
Getting the best software is essential to produce high-quality images that can outshine competitors and attract clients. Using any of the HDR editing software options I've recommended, real estate photographers can offer premium photoshoot and editing services to realtors and sellers to boost real estate business sales this year.
