Company: Corel, Inc.
Year: 2006-07
Challenge
I was given the challenge of designing a high dynamic range (HDR) feature to stay competitive in the photography editing market. Most HDR applications are highly complex and technical but for Paint Shop Pro, I wanted to bring HDR to the masses.
Research and Design Methods
Competitive analysis
Sketching and wireframing
Heuristic evaluation
Iterative design
Think-aloud usability testing
Solution
The HDR Photo Merge feature for Paint Shop Pro went through several iterations beginning with a tabbed design providing technical photo information and tone mapping similar to competitive applications. The more I researched HDR and what great results could look like, the more I wanted this to be as simple as possible so that anyone with a bracketing camera feature could use it. More and more point-and-shoot cameras offer bracketing or manual exposure adjustments so it was important not to limit the audience to the advanced digital SLR user.
The result is a simple dialog that allows the user to select bracketed photos (it can even auto-select images shot within a short time range), auto-align photos if they were not taken with a tripod, and merge them quickly. Brightness and clarify (local contrast adjustment) were added to allow users to reach the level of detail and quality often seem from applications with complex tone mapping adjustments. If you are curious to see what HDR can do for your photos, have a look at Flickr's HDR group.
Results
- Positive feedback from industry reviewers
- Successful partnership with User Experience and Software Engineering teams
- HDR Photo Merge can be used by almost any amateur photo editor
- No need to understand technical jargon or complex workflows to make HDR images
Sample Wireframe
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