ColorForge vs HDRMerge

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.

HDRMerge combines exposure-bracketed raw files, or bracketed frames within one raw file, to create raw images with extended dynamic range. It outputs DNG 1.4 images with floating-point data, drawing on less noisy input pixels to retain shadow detail. In its graphical interface, users can adjust the merge mask to address ghosts from objects that moved between exposures. The command-line interface supports batch processing of raw image sets. HDRMerge can align small translations and crop the output to the area shared by the inputs. Input images must match in size, orientation, Bayer pattern, and black and white levels; the manual says this usually means using images made with the same camera. Tone mapping can happen later in another program that supports high-dynamic-range raw DNG images. The maker identifies RawTherapee, darktable, and recent Adobe products as supporting the floating-point DNG output. HDRMerge is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later, and runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows. The maker describes it as a way to bring merged HDR images into a standard raw development workflow.