11Photomatix Essentials 3.2 User Manual
Section 3: Preferences
Photomatix Essentials oers 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 workow.
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 in 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
dierent 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 oered 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 dierences, 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.
3.3 Noise Reduction Options
Noise Reduction is often useful when using presets such as Painterly, Surreal or Grunge, because these
presets enhance local details, which has the drawback of accentuating noise. Noise reduction is particularly
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