When Amazon is out of stock on an item, sometimes they offer the item for a lower price until it comes back in stock. Although Amazon is out of Photomatix Pro 4 at the moment (regularly $99), it is available for $77.52 and will ship when in stock.
Photomatix Pro - temporarily good price
- Thread starter hark
- Start date
BackdoorArts
Senior Member
I know Photomatix Pro has its fans, but with Nik HDR Efex Pro 2 available with the entire Nik Suite at 50% more I find it hard to justify that price for Photomatix alone.
Browncoat
Senior Member
Google owns Nik. They could give it away for free. 
Back when I was shopping for HDR software, Efex Pro was little more than a filter and not true HDR. Wasn't even really worth a look. It's a lot more powerful and useful now than what it was. I still use Photomatix and have gotten used to its quirkiness. With all of the other available tools I have, the Nik suite just seems unnecessary.
Back when I was shopping for HDR software, Efex Pro was little more than a filter and not true HDR. Wasn't even really worth a look. It's a lot more powerful and useful now than what it was. I still use Photomatix and have gotten used to its quirkiness. With all of the other available tools I have, the Nik suite just seems unnecessary.
BackdoorArts
Senior Member
I hear you, Browncoat. After Lightroom and PSE the Nik tools were the first I'd seen that seemed somewhat intuitive. I was at the PhotoPlus show last October and they were demoing the newly revised suite, back before Google bought them, and the control point stuff knocked me out. I think if I'd invested time and money in other tools I might have never even stopped to look at them, but I'm awfully glad I did.
Well here's the thing--when I checked to see if Nik Efex Pro would work with Photoshop Elements 10, what I found indicated it wouldn't work. Is Efex Pro a stand-alone type of program? I don't know enough about it.
Browncoat
Senior Member
Need the following for it to work:
Windows:
The other Nik products will work with Elements 10, but HDR won't. And no, Nik isn't standalone...they're plugins.
Windows:
- Windows Vista®, Windows 7, Windows 8
- Adobe Photoshop CS4 through CS6
- Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 through 11 (apart from HDR Efex Pro 2, which is not compatible with Photoshop Elements)
- Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 through 5
The other Nik products will work with Elements 10, but HDR won't. And no, Nik isn't standalone...they're plugins.
WhiteLight
Senior Member
I like both photomatix and Nik HDR efex..
Can't really say which is better cos each have produced some second results AND some horrible ones.
Each has it's own sweet spot I guess where it performs best
Sent from my HTC Incredible S using Tapatalk 2
Can't really say which is better cos each have produced some second results AND some horrible ones.
Each has it's own sweet spot I guess where it performs best
Sent from my HTC Incredible S using Tapatalk 2
BackdoorArts
Senior Member
Do you have Lightroom or just Elements? You can invoke it from Lightroom. Unfortunately the Nik stuff won't work alone and relies on having either Lightroom, PS or PSE (in the case of the other tools) to run on. I suspect it has something to do with what Elements cannot do with multiple images and layers. I just tried to see if I could invoke it somehow from both Elements 11 and the Organizer and no dice. Didn't know that.
I have both Lightroom 4 and PSE 10--looking to buy PSE 12 when the price comes down. The full version of Photoshop just isn't in my budget at this time. I do make use of both my programs so I will stick with Photomatix for now; HOWEVER, even after I get Photomatix, I'm sure I will continue to drool over your images created with Nik's software.
BackdoorArts
Senior Member
All of the Nik filters can be invoked directly from Lightroom 4. They are first converted to PSD or TIFF files (your choice, PSD tend to be smaller in size) with all LR adjustments applied, and then they are saved back to your LR catalog, combined as one in the case of HDR Efex Pro 2. No need for full blown Photoshop.