Hydra 2.0.1 HDR images in Aperture and beyond

By: Erik Vlietinck - Last Updated: Thu 05 February 2009

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Creaceed Hydra 2 is a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image editor. It competes directly with Photomatix, the reference in this market. Although it's not yet as good as Photomatix, it starts getting close. It's easier to use and the results can be pretty much what you want.

HDR technologies are—together with panoramas, for another reason—probably the technologies to keep an eye on for publishing high quality photographs and detailed photographic reports of important events. HDR images can be much more detailed in shadow areas than the ordinary one-shot image even the best dSLR can make.

Hydra 2.0.1 is a HDR image editor. This means you can load multiple photos in it, each one taken with a different exposure, and merge them to get an image where the highlights and shadows are all equally well detailed. A HDR image therefore matches better what the human eye sees than most photos with bright and dark areas.

The difficulty is merging the photos in such a way that the result looks natural and with enhanced detail. Shooting a bracketed image is easy when you have a tripod, but when you haven’t, it becomes a matter of a steady hand and arm. Even then, the camera may have moved slightly. Hydra compensates for this in a unique way, using technology Creaceed uses in its flagship application MorphAge.

The result is stunningly accurate alignment of the photos that will make up the HDR image. The Hydra alignment is in fact so good, that I could leave the images on auto-pilot at all times, provided the motion wasn’t too random—at which point the objects start deforming even.

Photomatix only a hair better...

In terms of the HDR image itself, Hydra has gained much in terms of adjustment control and better, more natural-looking—call it balanced if you will—results. Whereas Hydra 1 could easily lead to over-saturated HDR images, Hydra 2.0.1 is almost as good as Photomatix.

That’s quite a reference, because Photomatix must be the best HDR image application available for the Mac. Although it’s the best, it’s also not easy to master. In that respect, Hydra is a bit easier, with more intuitive controls (and a nice, well-working loupe), and real-time image updates that work, even on my G5 with stock video card. Still, even in Hydra you need to experiment to get the best result. The good news is that you’ll obtain the same high quality resulting HDR image as with Photomatix in a fraction of the time it takes to do in the latter.

Hydra also comes as an Aperture plug-in. It offers exactly the same capabilities as the stand-alone version. Even 32-bit TIFFs can be created in Aperture and saved in its Library. The Hydra plug-in therefore is a real asset, in contrast with the first version, which was more like a teaser.

Which to choose, Hydra or Photomatix, depends on what you want from a HDR application. If it’s ease-of-use, excellent alignment features, great output quality, and the choice to use it as an Aperture plug-in and/or a stand-alone program, then Hydra 2.0.1 certainly is the way to go. If you favour additional controls that can improve the output but only slightly so, then Photomatix remains the application to beat.

Personally, I don’t think the difference between the two is important enough to justify the steeper learning curve Photomatix forces upon you.