Our Review:

FDRTools Basic is the scaled down version of FDRTools. It offers the greatest ability to fine tune and tweak the finished product. For those familiar with using histograms and curve tools, this will not be intimidating.

Unique to FDR is the ability to control how much and what part of each image figured into the equation as opposed the the normal software that is only adjusting the output. This ability is not only just in the luminance, but in the saturation and contrast sections giving the devoted user quite the opportunity work ad infinitum on their image. The web site has a 80 page PDF file that details many of the deeper aspects of the program. The translation from German is occasionally rough.

FDR had problems with the alignment of my handheld photographs. There is a way to manually tweak the alignment; but this was not sufficient for my trial set. The results from FDR using default settings were often far from acceptable and I would spend more time fussing with FDR than the other programs. The more changes I made, the slower the preview became. In spite of the myriad of controls, my results with FDR were muddy and lacking definition. My overall impression of FDRTools Basic was that it had more potential than I was getting out of it. For the avid photographer/computer geek who really wants to get into the gritty detail, this program could be your ticket.

FDR will import all popular formats including RAW.