Operating Instructions

11Photomatix Essentials 3.2 User Manual
Section 3: Preferences
Photomatix Essentials oers Image
Alignment, Ghost Removal and Noise
Reduction. You can choose whether to
use these features and adjust some of
their options in Preferences. To access
Preferences, click on the Preferences…
button located at bottom left of the
window where you load your images
in Step 1 of the Photomatix Essentials
workow.
3.1 Alignment Options
Image alignment is an important feature of
HDR processing because bracketed photos
are always mis-aligned when taken with
a hand-held camera, and may even be
slightly mis-aligned when taken with the
aid of a tripod. Image alignment is turned
on by default, but you can turn it o by
selecting No on the Align images option.
You can also choose to be prompted
whether to align your photos each time by
selecting Ask me whether to align. Image alignment is recommended whenever you are processing bracketed
photographs, but there are a few cases when it should not be selected. One example of such case is when you
have derived dierent exposures from a single RAW le by adjusting the Exposure setting of your RAW converter.
Another example is when you are processing stitched panoramas.
There are two methods oered for aligning images:
• The By correcting horizontal and vertical shifts method is fast, but only corrects for translation
movements. This method is recommended when your bracketed photos were taken on a tripod.
• The By matching features corrects for rotation, translation and scaling dierences, as well as perspective
distortion.
The Crop aligned images option removes the unused borders that appear when the images are shifted to
correct for mis-registration. Leave this box unchecked if you need the resulting image to have the same width
and height as the source images.
3.2 Ghost Removal Option
The Remove ghosts option addresses the problem of artifacts that appear when combining images of a
dynamic scene. For example, if people are walking through the scene while you capture your bracketed photos,
multiple faint images of the people will appear multiple times in the combined image as if there were “ghosts”.
This is why artifacts arising from movements in the scene are commonly referred to as “ghosting” and the
attempt to eliminate them is referred to as “deghosting”.
After you have loaded bracketed photos and have then clicked Next… , Photomatix Essentials shows by default a
prompt asking whether you would like to remove ghosts. If you prefer not to show the prompt, uncheck the Ask
me whether to remove box.