Most of my friends and acquaintances in the photography world know that I work with HDRsoft who makes Photomatix software.  Photomatix is used to combine and render bracketed images for high dynamic range scenes.  This same company is also a sponsor of Photofocus, just to be clear about that.

But for quite a few Linux users that I’ve been in contact with, it’s a big deal that HDRsoft has just released ‘Photomatix for Linux.’  This means the HDR workflow is now supported on 3 platforms (Linux, Windows, and Mac).

This isn’t ‘Photomatix Pro’ since the Linux versions doesn’t contain *all* of the features of ‘Pro’ however it does have the most important features.

With Photomatix for Linux you can combine bracketed images, render them with the popular methods of Photomatix including Tone Mapping and Exposure Fusion.  The powerful alignment algorithm is in the Linux version as well as automatic deghosting and even batch processing.

You can of course process single images and most popular cameras’ RAW formats are supported.

Currently, supported distributions include Ubuntu and Linux Mint.  So if you are using one of these Linux distros, please try it out from here:

http://www.hdrsoft.com/download/photomatix-linux.html

There is even a launch promotion of 50% off of the regular price which is set at US$49. The promotion is valid until 31st August.

Linux users are just getting their hands on this software, so watch for reviews coming a bit later on.

If you want to learn more about HDR in general, be sure to check out the Photofocus HDR Learning Center.