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2026-07-03 FocusGuide’s Photoshop Complete Guide to HDR

    Having a box full of photographic magazines to read through, this magazine—FocusGuide’s Photoshop Complete Guide to HDR—was a bit of a revelation. In 130 pages and eight plus chapters the magazine thoroughly covers creating and working with High Dynamic Range images using Photomatrix Pro 3.2.6 (Merging program), Ozone 2.5 (Colour and Tone adjustment) and FDRTools 2.3 (Tone Mapping and more!). These programs are included in trial form ( on a CD) but, as well you are coached on multiple other ways to work with HDR images with programs you may already own (Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw). Barely visible on the cover is a price tag asking $25.95. The back cover has an English price of £7.99. The magazine was printed back in 2009.
    

    If anything the information is too dense to comprehend. For example they introduce nine Icons they will be using in sidebars. This sounds handy, but then they almost always have two such sidebars a page.
    












    Most subjects are two-page spreads—as are chapter introductions—but some are a page and some are three pages. Combined with multiple illustrations of both the file and the program’s display of the control being adjusted and you have your attention severely taxed!

    The CD has a lot more surprises in store including—
  • 60 minutes of video training
  • a version of Ansel Adam’s Zone System called Ozone’s Digital Zone System
  • HDR Shop, a program that allows you to manipulate HDR images “with floating point accuracy” It supports scripting and user-written extensions
  • and finally Picturenaut 3.0, a program that has exposure detection using the EXIF data, image alignment and ghost removal tools
By the time you finish this magazine, you will know what all those programs can do for you!

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