Interesting that you use 1 image as I was wondering if that would work. Makes sense to me and clearly it works.
Thanks again Cullen - your input most appreciated.
Single image tone mapping can be very useful with some shots. Here's a single frame from an HDR series I shot last week. As you can see in the out of camera photo for the '0' exposure (metered correctly) you've got washout on the back wall and dark shadows elsewhere - a nightmare and not readily salvageable with the regular tools in PSE or PS.
In
less than a minute in HDR Efex Pro I can come up with this, and that's without using any of their Control Points to work specific areas and possibly fix it more. It's not done, but it's a far better foundation to start your edits.
From here I could spend additional time in Photoshop (or Elements, or Lightroom, or with Nik Viveza 2) and make it look prettry darned decent, particularly given the horrible lighting. All of the photos not labeled HDR
in this post used single image tone mapping to deal with the stark lighting conditions I had inside this old house. It's a good tool to have in the kit.
One thing to realize is that tone mapping can only work with the information your sensor makes available. The D600 used for these captures a remarkable amount of light information and allows for far more adjustment than other cameras I've worked with. DX sensors with smaller pixel sizes may not be as open to corrections like this. But if you can do this with one frame, imagine what you can do with a 3 shot exposure series!