ColorForge vs HDR Merge Master

ColorForge is a browser-based RAW and HDR photo editor that processes images on the device. It supports camera RAW files including CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, DNG, RAF, ORF and RW2, with controls for exposure, tone curves, HSL adjustments, LUTs and presets. For HDR images, it can combine bracketed exposures, including RAW brackets, using GPU processing. Exports are available at full native sensor resolution as JPEG, PNG or TIFF, without watermarks; HDR output also includes 16-bit TIFF. ColorForge says photos stay local and are not uploaded to its servers. Editing, RAW decoding, HDR merging and exporting do not require an account. After the web app loads into the browser cache, it can continue working offline. It supports Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari, and the maker lists Windows, macOS, Linux, ChromeOS, iOS and Android availability. ColorForge is free: free, with no installation required. Presets are stored in an account database when signed in, or local browser storage when signed out.

HDR Merge Master is a free, GPL-3.0 open-source tool that uses Blender’s compositor to combine exposure brackets in batches. It outputs 32-bit OpenEXR or Radiance HDR files and creates tonemapped JPG previews alongside them. Multiple input folders can be added, with optional recursive subfolder processing and JSON batch import or export. Alignment choices include none, Hugin pre-alignment, and MTB alignment, depending on Blender version and mode. A headless command-line mode supports folder processing, JSON input, alignment, thread settings, and cleanup. Camera RAW processing requires RawTherapee, with adjacent PP3 profiles applied automatically. Documented workflows include Blender, RawTherapee, Hugin, Luminance HDR, and PTGui; a script can replace JPG paths with EXR paths in PTGui PTS projects. Blender 4.5 LTS and 5.1 LTS are actively tested, while older versions use a reduced-feature legacy script. The tool does not remove ghosting, so a steady tripod is advised.