I just discovered this and thought I'd share. HDRtist is a freeware HDR application. I was intrigued, so I thought I'd test it out.
Compared to my copy of Photomatix, HDrtist is somewhat lacking (no real surprise when you're comparing freeware against commercial software.) Most notably, there is only one control slider- strength. Apparently new in this update is the ability to align images, though this requires downloading and installing a second freeware application. Still, alignment is comparable to the best I've seen, if a bit slow. It took a full minute to align the three images I gave it.
Uploading images is a drag-and-drop process, and you get an almost instantaneous preview of the tone-mapped image.
To test this application, I gave it these three images:
and, after slider adjustment, it gave me this result:
For freeware, I'm impressed. So if you're looking for a quick easy (cheap, lol) HDR solution, give this a look.
link: http://www.ohanaware.com/hdrtist/
- Joe U.