Making an HDR image typically requires that you capture a number of different exposures of the same scene with difference camera settings. So Hydra uses a hybrid concept of being both a shoebox app and a document-based app at the same time to better handle its specific workflow.
We still wanted a way to allow saving projects anywhere in the file system, we qualify them as “reference” project type, for the case where it makes sense: a valuable project that you want to archive because you know you’ll be working on it again at later time. Finder interactions are mostly removed (no more open panel), and this makes the experience more straightforward. These “internal” projects are stored within the app sandbox. But the file-based approach of document-based apps that show an open panel is a bit awkward here, and it does not suit very well this workflow.įor these reasons, we opted for a document-based app where documents (projects) are mostly managed by the app, with optional names.
We considered removing the document part of it, but an editing session can last for more than a couple hours, on multiple projects, and re-editing after a few days should be possible too. Users typically have an HDR project, work on it for some time, but then what matters is the rendered image. But unlike text-based or other image-based documents, Hydra documents are more ephemeral by nature. Hydra is a document-based app, its documents are the projects you create to edit your photos.
The new merging and tone mapping workflow uses a 128-bit pipeline internally to preserve all the details from the input pictures.
We wanted full-size scrolling and image editing at full speed that is identical to the rendered output. Our goal was to avoid the small pauses (typically 500ms to 1s) that were needed to compute the full-size preview, as those made the editing experience less accurate and less enjoyable. It’s the first version of our tone mapper that performs all computations on the GPU. Like with previous versions of Hydra, we opted for a tone mapper that wouldn’t exaggerate HDR effects and instead focus on natural looks as the primary target. Scoped settings specific fine-tuning New Tone Mapper