Photomatix HDR Merge & Processing from the Command Line

PhotomatixCL is a Command Line Interface tool that lets you integrate HDR image processing into your application. PhotomatixCL runs on Windows and Linux.

PhotomatixCL takes a set of exposure bracketed photos as input, aligns and merges them to HDR, and further processes the image with tone mapping or fusion. The resulting image can be saved as JPEG or TIFF, and the 32-bit merged HDR image as EXR.

PhotomatixCL offers the same HDR methods and presets as the Photomatix Pro application which you can try for free.

PhotomatixCL can load images from your computer or local network, and can also fetch the contents of images on a web server.

Download PhotomatixCL for free from the links below. It will run as a trial until you register it with a PhotomatixCL license.

(The trial is fully functional but adds a watermark to the output images. A PhotomatixCL license disables the watermark.)

Download

Windows:

PhotomatixCL 8 for Windows

(Windows 7 through Windows 11)

Linux:

PhotomatixCL 8 for Linux Ubuntu

(Ubuntu 23.04 / Ubuntu 24.04 / Linux Mint 22)

If you are getting errors about missing libraries, or are installing PhotomatixCL on a distro other than the ones supported, try the statically linked version of PhotomatixCL for Linux instead.

Statically linked version PhotomatixCL 8 for Linux

Installation

If you are installing a license for a single machine, use the instructions below. Otherwise, see the full installation instructions.

Windows

Run the installer

Linux

Go to the directory where you want PhotomatixCL to be installed, and run this command:

tar xf <FolderDownloadedFile>/PhotomatixCL-8-U23.tar.gz

Where <FolderDownloadedFile> is the path to the folder where you downloaded PhotomatixCL.
To get EXIF data copied to output files, install the "exiftool" package using your system's package manager.
To get automatic lens correction for cameras and lenses that are supported, install the "lensfun" data package (it could also be called "liblensfun" or "liblensfun-data" depending on your system).

Merging a bracketed set with PhotomatixCL

A command line for merging one bracketed images sets follows this pattern:


		PhotomatixCL [Options] [Input Files]

[Options]:	List of processing and output options passed to PhotomatixCL
[Input Files]:	The path or URL of each of the input bracketed images (they are entered at the end of the command line and are not preceded by an option)

Sample PhotomatixCL command

The command below will align and merge three image files to HDR, tone map the 32-bit HDR image with the default preset and save the result as JPEG:

PhotomatixCL -a2 -x Detailed -h remove -s jpg -o <PathOutput>OutputImage <PathInput>Photo1.jpg <PathInput>Photo2.jpg <PathInput>Photo3.jpg

Let's look at the options passed to PhotomatixCL:

-a2: Align the input bracketed images

-x Detailed: Tone map the merged HDR image with the 'Detailed' preset.

After -x, you have two options to specify the HDR preset to use:

Option 1: Give the name of the Photomatix preset you want to apply (here 'Detailed', the default tone mapping preset). Other popular presets are 'Natural', the default fusion preset, and 'Interior' the default preset for real estate photography.
Option 2: Give the path to an XMP file containing custom Photomatix HDR settings (e.g. MySettings.xmp). You can use the Photomatix Pro trial for free to create and save HDR settings in an XMP file.

-h remove: Remove the 32-bit HDR image after tone mapping (if you prefer to keep it, then add the option -32 and replace '-h remove' with '-h exr' to save the 32-bit HDR image in OpenEXR format).

-s jpg: Save the tone mapped image in JPEG format (use -s tif to save as TIFF).

-o <PathOutput>OutputImage: Save the resulting image as OuputImage.jpg in the directory at path <PathOutput>. Note that the extension is automatically added.

Last arguments: The remaining arguments are the path names or URLs for the input bracketed photos and aren't preceded by an option.

Note: The input images must be supplied at the end of the command line. All other arguments can be supplied in any order, as long as they are before the input images.

Batching images with PhotomatixCL

PhotomatixCL takes one set of bracketed images as input. Merging multiple bracketed sets requires running PhotomatixCL in a loop that processes one set at a time.

The PhotomatixCL installation includes a command line utility that simplifies the process of merging multiple sets. The utility is called PhotomatixCL-Driver and is installed in a 'Batch' subfolder.

You can use PhotomatixCL-Driver to batch process a folder containing multiple sets of bracketed images, provided the images you are processing are on a computer or local network.

A command line for batching sets of bracketed images with PhotomatixCL-Driver follows this pattern:


 
	PhotomatixCL-Driver [Selection Criteria] [PhotomatixCL Command Line]

[Selection Criteria]

This refers to your choices for the directory to look in, the number of images in a set and any criteria that the file names must match. The criteria are given with the following command line options:

-n <num>	Merge <num> images to HDR, where <num> is the number of images per bracketed set (e.g. -n 3).
-s <dir>	Search the images to merge in <dir>, where <dir> is the directory of the input images.
-m <pattern>	(Optional) Filter the input files by processing files with names following the pattern given by <pattern> (e.g. -m "*.jpg" to process only JPEG files).

[PhotomatixCL Command Line]

This is the full command line you would use to process a bracketed set in PhotomatixCL, but with two differences:

You don't enter the path of the input files at the end of the command line. PhotomatixCL Driver will automatically add them before PhotomatixCL is run.
You need to use the -d option to specify the path of the output folder where the processed images will be saved (the -o option isn't applicable when using PhotomatixCL Driver).

See the PhotomatixCL command generator further down to generate a PhotomatixCL command line based on the options you enter in the form.

You can also find the full PhotomatixCL options reference and command examples in the PhotomatixCL Documentation.

Sample PhotomatixCL Driver Command

The command below aligns and merges to HDR the JPEG files in the folder specified by the '-s' option, in sets of three images each, then processes them with the 'Natural' preset, and saves the resulting images into the folder specified by the '-d' option.

(The part of the command line corresponding to the Set Selection Criteria is in orange color and the part corresponding to the PhotomatixCL Command Line in green color.)

Commands on a Windows OS

cd "c:\Program Files\PhotomatixCL" Batch\PhotomatixCL-Driver -n 3 -s "c:\Images\Sets" -m "*.jpg" PhotomatixCL -a2 -x Natural -d "c:\Images\Output\\"

Commands on a Linux OS

cd /home/<user>/PhotomatixCL/

Batch/PhotomatixCL-Driver -n 3 -s /home/<user>/Images/Sets -m "*.jpg" PhotomatixCL -a2 -x Natural -d /home/<user>/Images/Output/

If you've installed the statically linked version of PhotomatixCL, then replace '/home/<user>/PhotomatixCL/PhotomatixCL' with '/home/<user>/PhotomatixCL/PhotomatixCL-static'.

In case you get a permission error the first time you run the command, right-click on the PhotomatixCL-Driver file, select the 'Properties' option, click on the 'Permissions' tab and check the box 'Allow executing the file as program'.

PhotomatixCL Command Generator

The two boxes at bottom contain the PhotomatixCL and PhotomatixCL-Driver command lines automatically generated from the options selected in the form. You can change the selection to customize the command lines to your needs.

PhotomatixCL - Download & Command Samples