Every now and then you’ll come across a picture that looks too good to be true. The colors seem to burst forth in a way that doesn’t seem natural. You might think that it’s a simple Photoshop job, but there’s more to it than that. A lot of these images are created using multiple shots that were taken with different settings. The blending of these is what’s known as HDR photography. So what do you need, in order to make stunning images like this? Just a camera that you can manually adjust the settings on, and some helpful software, preferably free.

Picturenaut is a great piece of freeware that helps you combine the elements from several different shots, to create one fantastic picture. It will automatically align your images, in case they don’t line up perfectly. You’ll then have access to a variety of tools that will pull the best color from both images. These tools include color balancing, noise level compensation, and gamma adjustment. What’s really great is that it’s already compatible with plugins written for HDR Shop, which is a rather expensive piece of software for HDR photography. If you’ve wanted to spice up your photos, this might be a great (and free!) way to do it.