It’s a sunny, windy day. You’re shooting architecture and using bracketing to ultimately capture an image that’s exposed perfectly. But you forget about the flag on the building, and how it’s waving in the wind.

Putting your three or five bracketed shots together will create a blurry flag. All hope is lost, right?

Wrong.

Earlier this year I highlighted some of my New York photos from last fall, in showing how to use Photomatix Pro to create realistic HDR images. One of the photos I stumbled upon had an American flag front and center. It was a windy day, and the flag was moving.

By utilizing the newly-released Photomatix Pro 6, you can fix the ghosting in your HDR image, creating a sharp look for what would have otherwise been a blurry mess.

Remove Ghosts with Photomatix Pro

When you first bring your bracketed images into Photomatix Pro, you’re presented with a few options. One of those options is “Show options to remove ghosts.” Make sure this is checked — by default, this is turned off.

You’ll then be presented with a window that will allow you to select the ghosted areas of your image. In this case, I drew around the flag, just like I would draw a lasso in a Photoshop file.

There’s also an option to automatically de-ghost your image, which could also work depending on the complexity of your image.

Once you select the area of your image, right click on it and select “Mark selection as ghosted area.” From here, you can preview what the ghosted area will look like.

Once you’re happy with the edits, hit “OK” and go about further editing your HDR image.

But…How?

The way this works is that Photomatix pulls the ghosted area from only one of your photos — instead of three — and applies that area to your HDR image. The exposures and other settings are kept in tact, so that the area seamlessly fits in with your final image.

What would’ve taken me a lot of time in Photoshop to fix, is adjusted in a matter of seconds with Photomatix Pro! If you’re regularly finding yourself with ghosting in your bracketed images, take note.

Get started with Photomatix Pro 6 today!