If you've never heard of it, High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging allows photographers to achieve perfect exposure no matter what the luminosity is. Normally, it's restricted to professional tools but you can have a go yourself thanks to Photomatix.
Note that you should make sure you're working with plenty of RAM and a decent processor because Photomatix takes quite a bit of processing power. There is an auto and manual setting in Photomatix depending on your expertise - most are advised to use automatic as it does the processing for you. Photomatix offers two ways of bringing your photos into greater contrast.
The first is 'Exposure Blending', which allows you to merge differently-exposed photographs into one image with increased dynamic range. The second is 'Tone Mapping', which helps reveal highlight and shadow details in an HDR image created from multiple exposures. The result of both is that your images should look much sharper afterwards.
Unless you've got a trained photographic eye, you may have problems distinguishing any difference, however. It's hard for general users to at first to notice any distinct changes that have been made after Photomatix has finished processing them. However, it's generally a lot easier than trying to use a professional application to perform such image processing.
Photomatix is a powerful photo tool that brings professional HDR processing to the general user.
