Camera Raw Converter Workflow

HDR Darkroom can be used for16-bit Camera Raw Conversion with our innovative HDR tone mapping technologies.

Step 1: Open HDR Darkroom

Enter the working area of HDR Darkroom by double-clicking on the application's desktop icon or entry in the Start menu if the application has been installed. The working area of HDR Darkroom is shown as below.

Step 2: Open files

Click File, select Open Single File, (or click icon at the left side), then choose the Camera Raw file you need to process.

HDR Darkroom will use a simple global tone mapping engine (Fast Tone Balancer (FTB) ) using the default settings to convert the 16-bit camera raw file format to 8-bit integer values for display so as to give users a first impression in the working area what is the image.

Step 3: Tone Mapping. Here is the magic

In order to obtain high quality images, Please use Tone Mapping option.

Next, click Processing, select Tone Mapping (or click the icon on the left hand side) and the tone mapping preview window will be displayed. In the window you have three Tone Mapping Engines to choose from to process images.

Local Tone Balancer (LTB): This is a patented Local Tone Mapping Engine, which is aimed at balancing tones in the photo and reveal detail in both shadows and highlights:
- Strength: Adjusts the local contrast of the image
- Local lighting: Adjusts the brightness of the image
- Saturation: Adjusts the color saturation of the image
Local Tone Enhancer (LTE): This is a patented Local Tone Mapping Engine, which has the strong power of extracting details in the photos:
- Strength: Adjusts the color saturation of the image
- Brightness: Adjusts the brightness of the image
- Saturation: Adjusts the color saturation of the image
- Fill Light: Used to reduce the contrast of a scene and provide some illumination for the areas of the image that are in shadow
Fast Tone Compressor (FTC): This is a Global Tone Mapping engine. The following helps to explain the meaning of the different options:
- Strength: Adjusts the global contrast of the image
- Brightness: Adjusts the brightness of the image
- Saturation: Adjusts the color saturation of the image

Also, HDR Darkroom provides color balance and black/white clip functions in the post processing area.

Once you are satisfied with your settings, click OK. Next, the full size image will be processed and the results will be displayed on the working area. At the stage, you can choose to save the image in a number of different formats.

Batch Processing

If you have a large amount of Camera Raw file to be converted, you can use our batch mode. We have made large efforts in adapting the default parameter setting of each Tone Mapping Engine to process various image contents automatically and nicely. Thus, our batch processing feature can convert large amount of Camera Raw files without your interaction and automatically deliver batches of well-processed images to you. To use batch mode to convert Camera Raw files, Click Batch, select Batch process, the following window will be displayed for you. Then specify different options and click Run to start batch processing. For converting single Camera Raw files in batch mode, please make sure to "Select 1 image at a time" and select "No Alignment".