Thanks mate - I liked yours, too. Shame there weren't more entries. I've got an idea for Stiney's "HO HO HO" battle, but I don't know if I can work it up into an actual entry.

Congrats buddy on the Surrealism battle... I knew that was your entry. I had an idea at first that I ended up slopping together last minute because I had let it slip by almost. Yours was clearly more clever and the better entry

That's ok. Since... I work a lot in LR... I started going straight from LR to Photomatix for HDR and tone mapping and back to LR and then to PS for final touches. Funny how we always seem to have totally different routines with same programs

To be honest, I only use the tone-mapping utility within Photomatix - I've never experimented with exposure blending, and have only tried out the HDR creation a couple of times. I prefer Photoshop's built-in Merge To HDR function to create my 32-bit images. Sorry I can't be more helpful - maybe you could ask Tony_photoplus; I know he's done a bit of experimenting with various HDR packages.

Ok... got a question on the Photomatix Pro for ya T. When is it best to use exposure blending vs. HDR image creation? I have yet to try the blending and wondered it may work better for certain images where HDR would be better for others? Any thoughts on the 2 processes?

Thanks T... sure I will have a few questions... I posted one my first Photomatix worked HDR pieces in the gallery. It needed a nice subject but this was best round of exposures I had for HDR at the time and just wanted to try it out.

That's great, Dean. I'm looking forward to seeing some of your HDR stuff. I would never call myself an expert with Photomatix (or anything else, come to that ), but if you have any questions, I'll be glad to attempt an answer.

I finally took the plunge and got the Photomatix software based on your recommendation, seeing your HDR work and seeing a couple tuts that covered the control possible in the app. So... now I just gotta get some good HDR subjects