easyHDR combines several photographs of the same scene into one image with a wider usable brightness range. The usual input is an exposure bracket: the camera records the scene more than once, changing exposure so that one frame retains bright detail and another records the shadows. easyHDR aligns those frames, merges their data, and tone maps the result into a file that an ordinary screen or printer can display. It can also improve one RAW or JPEG, but a single file cannot recover scene information that the camera never captured.
Building the merge
The input stage accepts camera RAW files as well as JPEG, TIFF, PNG, HEIF, FITS, and dedicated HDR formats. Automatic exposure bracketing gives easyHDR the most consistent sequence because the camera takes the frames close together. A tripod becomes more important when the camera lacks automatic bracketing or when nearby objects make a small viewpoint change visible.
easyHDR has separate merge choices. True HDR builds a high-dynamic-range image from the exposure data. Smart Merge blends the inputs with a different weighting strategy, while image stacking targets a set that needs averaging rather than an exposure merge. The choice affects color and local contrast before tone mapping begins. For a single image, RAW input leaves more room for white-balance and exposure work than a compressed JPEG.
Ghosts and alignment
Alignment corrects camera shift, rotation, scale, and perspective. Automatic alignment can handle many hand-held brackets, but it cannot make two different viewpoints identical. A fence, branch, or other close object may shift against the background through parallax. Low-detail areas can also leave too few reference points. The manual alignment window uses matching pin pairs when the automatic result misses the scene.
Movement needs a different correction. A person who crosses the frame, changing water, drifting clouds, or leaves in wind can appear several times in the merged result. easyHDR detects likely ghost regions and assigns an input frame to each colored mask. The mask remains editable because the automatic choice may preserve the wrong person, edge, or water pattern. Large movement requires more painting than a small isolated subject, and parallax can create ghost areas even when the objects themselves never moved.
Tone mapping
Tone mapping compresses the merged brightness range and controls how the final picture looks. Presets establish starting points, while sliders change global and local contrast, color, and related rendering choices. Layers and masks can limit a correction to part of the image. Lens correction can address distortion, chromatic aberration, and vignetting before the final export.
Post-processing adds sharpening, blur, noise reduction, and color adjustments after tone mapping. This stage has one undo step, so a long sequence of changes is easy to lose. Returning to the tone-mapping tab resets the applied post-processing. An EHPX project keeps aligned inputs, merge settings, the ghost mask, layers, and tone-mapping values, but it does not keep the Step 3 post-processing. Save the finished image before closing if those last corrections matter. A 16-bit TIFF retains more editing headroom than a standard JPEG.
Batch grouping
Batch processing can turn folders of brackets into repeated tasks. easyHDR tries to group the exposures automatically, then applies selected processing settings across the queue. That grouping needs a visual check. Similar capture times or an irregular bracket can place photographs in the wrong task. The task menu can split a mistaken group or combine frames that belong together. Fixing the groups before starting the batch avoids a polished result assembled from different scenes.
