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Brief Instruction
The program allows to enhance the details and increase local contrast in digital photos.
The best result can be achieved when you process multiple images of the same scene taken at different exposures.
The program also allows processing of single photos in RAW, TIFF or JPEG formats.
Merging of exposures and processing can be done by one of the operators: HDR or Summation With Priorities.
Batch processing allows to process series of photos in an automatic mode by applying the same parameters to each merge.
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Toolbar buttons description
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 - Add input photo. Added input images appear in the list in the left part of the application window (A screenshot above shows six input images added). Use checkboxes to define which input images will be included in the processing.
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 - Remove selected input image.
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 - Automatic alignment. Photos need to be aligned before processing, especially if you did not use tripod. If you press the button, the program will try to align input images automatically. Normally automatic alignment works quite well, but the quality of alignment may vary depending on input images.
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 - Scale. 100% scale displays an image at its actual size; 50% scale; the last button fits an image in the preview window.
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 - Summation Operator. Images have to be aligned before you use the operators. Use the Automatic Alignment button, if necessary.
The summation operator has two options. The first - simple averaging – can be used for mixing of various processing results.
The second option is the summation based on Exposure Fusion algorithm where you can define your priorities and the program will automatically choose the best parts of input images and blend them together.
The Tone Splitting parameter allows to get intermediate exposures.
It also can be used for splitting of RAW images into several different images for subsequent processing.
The next group of sliders allows to assign weights to different parameters (sharpness, contrast, color saturation, exposure), where 1 means high importance and 0 on the contrary means that this parameter is not important and the program will not take it into account when blending images together.
Exposure has two additional parameters: center of tone and radius.
If Exposure Center is 0.5 then the best exposure can be found in the middle of exposure interval and areas that have exposure which is close to this value will get higher priority. Values higher than 0.5 assign higher priority to the lighter areas and values lower than 0.5 give higher priority to the darker areas.
The priority will smoothly decrease up to zero on both sides from the center on distance of radius.
The Smoothing parameter helps to raise contrast of details, or to lower halo defect. Small values of this parameter provide higher contrast of details, but introduce a greater risk of a halo defects. Increasing the value will help you to get rid of halo defects, but may also decrease the details contrast.
Bottom group of sliders allows to make additional corrections. The program calculates the histogram bounds automatically, but it is also possible to modify left (shadows) and right (lights) bounds manually.
Additionally you can also manually correct brightness, contrast and saturation.
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 - Tone Mapping Operator.
By pressing, program create the High Dynamic Range (HDR) image in computer memory and open the operator screen.
Parameters description:
Details character, radius and a halo level - define character of action of the operator.
Compression - degree of reduction of the general picture contrast. Local contrast sliders increases contrast of image details in shadows, lights and middle tone areas.
You can also correct the histogram bounds, middle tone and color saturation. This operator have three modes, which differ in algorithm of processing.
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 - Result of processing. Use this button if you need to display the most recent result. Click on one of input images in the left part of the window if you want to view one of original images.
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 - Save result in a file. Possible formats - JPEG, TIFF, BMP.
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Menu
Menu items have the same functions as the corresponding toolbar buttons. There are several additional menu items:
Processing / Batch processing. The batch processing operator allows to process series of images in a batch mode by applying the same parameters to each merge.
In the operator window you can set source and destination directories;
input and output file types; number of images in each merge; method of processing.
Batch Processing uses the current processing parameters.
Processing parameters are saved at exit from the appliation and restored at the next start.
Current parameters can change:
- when you process images using HDR or Summation operator.
(Note that new processing parameters become current only after pressing button OK. If you press Cancel button current parameters will not change);
- when you open saved fusion (Menu - File / Open fusion);
- when you load saved parameters (Menu - Processing / Load parameters);
Processing / Options. You can set the size of preview image and some other processing parameters.
It is possible to set different sizes of preview images for Summation and HDR operators.
When you decide on the size of preview image please remember that smaller sizes will result
in better processing speeds, so it is recommended to find a compromise between size of preview
and speed of processing.
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