Creaceed Hydra 2.0 creates HDR images w/o tripod

View this article at: http://www.macnn.com/articles/09/01/07/creaceed.hydra.20/

Wednesday, Jan 07, 2009 2:00pm

Creaceed Hydra 2.0 creates HDR images w/o tripod

Creaceed (booth S-332S) this week unveiled version 2.0 of Hydra, its HDR photography application. According to the company, Hydra creates an High Dynamic Range (HDR) image which is "much closer to what one can actually see." The program is available as a Mac application or as the "the only" HDR plug-in for Aperture. Version 2.0 offers a new "Perceptive" default tone mapper for improved and more natural results and "Homography", the new default alignment technique that is very useful for small distortions. It also adds "The Loupe," a new tool for real time 1:1 full quality preview.

In addition, Ceaceed said that the Aperture Plug-in and the stand-alone application now share the same interface and that the there more Pro Options for tuning every step of the image processing pipeline.

It requires Mac OS X 10.5.4 Leopard or later and an G5- or Intel-based Mac with at least 64MB of VRAM (GPU). Hydra 2.0 includes both a stand-alone application and a plug-in for Aperture It is now available for $80, while upgrades are $20.