Collection of popular Photomatix presets

[updates on 2/2/2020 and 17/5/2017 since originally published on 20/4/2013, a lot of things happened in this area as new presets bundles exists, prices changed and website’s moved/disappeared, see remarks in italics below]

It is just a year ago when I wrote and published article about Stuart’s Photomatix Pro Presets. I know from Google Analytics that this article remains still very popular. But time in the meantime progressed and currently more Photomatix Pro presets are available. Some of them are  for free, some of them are offered for reasonable price. Below you will find collection of popular Photomatix Pro presets. If you know collection which is not listed here, please make comment below the article.

Free presets

FixThePhoto’s Photomatic Presets – There are for free 10 absolute stunning presets, each of them dedicated to particular type of photography – portraits, landscape, b&w etc. (added 2/2/2020)

Alik Griffin’s Photomatix Presets – 51 presets in 5 categories (Medium, Strong, Natural, Light, Fusion), recommend to make donation of few bucks during download, you will not regret it. (added 2/2/2020)

HDR1.com Photomatix Presets – you can download 42 free presets, there are also 3 presets together with dedicates photos to illustrate their effect. (added 2/2/2020)

Stuart’s Photomatix Presets – These 80 presets were made by Stuart Perry in 2009, the collection is still available for free on Deviantart forum. Thus to download, find ‘Download’ icon in left sidebar.

Moose Peterson’s presets – Moose Peterson published this basic set of preset available for free to all people interested in HDR photography (link to page has updated on 20/5/2017).

44 Free Presets for Photomatix – Richard Harrington has collected wonderful collection of free presets, some of them were made by him, some made by another photographers (added 20/5/2017, link to page updated on 2/2/2020 due to Photofocus site redesign).

Tim Martin’s Free Photomatix Presets – Tim Martin, founder of presetpro.com website is offering 5 Photomatix Presets for free. (added 20/5/2017)

Premium presets

PresetPro Premium Photomatix Presets – collection of 40 premium Photomatix presets made by PresetPro for creating amazing HDR images. It costs $9.99. (added 20/5/2017, price changed on 2/2/2020)

Tours Departing Daily’s Photomatix Presets – For price of $14.95 you get 30 Photomatix Pro Presets in a wide range of styles. Whatever the scenario, we’ve got you covered. With presets like “A Day in the Country”, “The Moldering Sanctum”, “Taming of the Shrub” and “The Road Less Traveled” a variety of looks are just a click away. (added 2/2/2020)

[remark on 2/2/2020 Unfortunately Trey Radcliff canceled possibility to purchase Photomatix presets as he is now using Aurora HD software for creating HDR photos. Therefore I removed his presets from list.]

Instalation tutorial

The installation of presets is pretty easy. Locate your directory where Photomatix Pro is installed. For my Win10 laptop the location is C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Roaming\HDRsoft\PhotomatixPro\PresetsHere is dedicated Photomatix FAQ for topic of preset locations.

I recommend to create subdirectories here, each one for one collection of presets. You unzip downloaded archive to the particular subdirectory. I also recommend to use short acronyms of presets collection for subdirectory names (for instance stuart, toman, aiken etc).

Now you can start Photomatix Pro application and proceed you bracketed raw images to create HDR image. Click Tone Mapping button on the left toolbar to make final tweak of image. The preset toolbar offers combo on the top, it contains list of subdirectories created above. Select one preset and you will see result of each preset application in the small thumbnail.