Just a quick word of thanks...

[Simms]

To all the development team for allowing me - us - to test and contribute to this great piece of software, it has become an integral part of my workflow for a lot of my newer nature work, and has finally allowed me to get out of that Photomatix mindset of accepting dark, foggy & cartoony images as `HDR`.

I believe I came into the development cycle quite early and can even remember the first version I tested was basically a window with 2 sliders to play with.

I know you guys are shortly going to release this to the paying public, and just thought I would take the opportunity to congratulate you all and look forwards to future developments.

All the best and good luck,

Mark

PS  - I would still love to see this as an app/plugin that can be called from within Photoshop, that way it would be truely integrated into my workflow.

[wukong dev team]

Hey Mark,

Looking back, the first decisive moment is we emailed our first user (guess who) who saw some value in the very primitive build. That is when we decided to go commercial some day so that we can sustain the R&D. Everything just sort of happened after that. It's the support and encouragement from our users lead us this far. It was your criticizes make the product more usable. So a big Thank YOU.

With the upcoming release Essential HDR will be in the hands of many more people and I am sure we will receive many more constructive criticizes. I also believe we will improve the product and provide more added-value to the digital photography community. If new users send compliments to this forum, don't forget you were part of the development and QA team!

EHDR was built on the belief that HDR tonemapping can be easier and the process can be faster and more enjoyable. There will always be a "Community Edition" that is free of charge for anyone who wants to try and see what a local tonemapping engine can do.

We will continue to publish beta versions on this forum so that people can try them out and provide feedbacks. We will continue to rely on the community to give us directions and help to make our job easier.

Your last sentence is a reality check for us. We still have many many features we owe our testers that will be added into the product.