Photomatix Pro processing: Hightlights & Shadows Auto Adjust, HDR Tone Compression. The HDR experiment continues. This is my first use of Tone Compression, which does not introduce additional noise into the image.
What I’m not understanding yet: images that look great in Photomatix Pro lose saturation when brought into Photoshop to be resized and saved as jpegs. That will be tomorrow’s exploration.
Here is a link to a larger example: hs-auto-ark-rose-tone-compression-copy.jpg
I applaud your effort to play with HDR, which is a powerful tool to use. The only thing I would say is that from my personal experience, the biggest benefit you gain with HDR is when shooting landscapes or scenes where you have a huge dynamic range. The figurine and the rose I can’t see as having the need for a huge range, unless I’m missing something. Try a landscape with a dark foreground and bright sky and you’ll see where HDR Processing shines.