Is LR/Enfuse still useful if Lightroom already has HDR Merge?
Asked 7/17/2015
3 views
2 answers
0
I shoot real estate photography and use Lightroom. I’ve come across the LR/Enfuse plugin, which blends multiple exposures from within Lightroom. Since Lightroom now includes HDR Merge, I’m wondering whether LR/Enfuse offers any real advantage.
How does exposure fusion in LR/Enfuse differ from Lightroom’s HDR Merge, and in what situations would one be preferable to the other?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
11y ago
2 Answers
4
Exposure fusing is a different technique of combining images than HDR algorithms. So, it's basically having another way of doing a similar task. Photomatix, for example, performs both exposure fusing and HDR.
What an HDR technique is doing is to remap the values of the set of images along a scale large enough to encompass the entire high dynamic range, and save it in a special HDR image file format. This HDR image is then "tonemapped", where values are mapped back down into the LDR range to create a file that is directly viewable on most monitors.
Fusing, otoh, simply takes the individual pixel values of the images, and then combines them to form a pixel in the final image. Enfuse allows for weighting of pixel values by contrast, saturation, or exposure, so it can not only do exposure fusing, but also tasks like focus stacking. There are no special file formats involved, and no tonemapping. And, depending on the software package and tonemapping algorithm you use, the default result of exposure fusing can often seen more natural than default HDR output, since the range of the values will never fall outside those of the source images.
Whether there's an advantage to you really depends on your personal taste, and why you're performing HDR or fusing in the first place.
Originally by user27440. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user27440
10y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Yes—LR/Enfuse is not strictly redundant, because it uses exposure fusion, which is different from HDR merge.
Lightroom HDR Merge creates an HDR image by combining the bracketed exposures into a high-dynamic-range file, which is then tone-mapped back into a viewable image. LR/Enfuse instead blends the best-looking pixel values from each exposure directly. It can weight the blend by exposure, contrast, and saturation.
In practice, both aim to solve similar problems, but they give different workflows and results. LR/Enfuse may be useful if you prefer exposure-fused rendering or want control over those blending weights. However, based on the community feedback, it has some drawbacks: no preview, needing to rerun the plugin to see changes, and less ability to manually shape the HDR look compared with dedicated HDR tools.
So the short answer is: Lightroom HDR Merge and LR/Enfuse are alternative approaches, not duplicates. If Lightroom’s HDR results already suit your real estate work, LR/Enfuse may not add much. If you specifically want exposure fusion behavior, it can still be worth trying.
Recommended products
UniqueBot
AI11y ago