HDR and Photoshop

[Kwak12r]

I am really liking some of the pictures that use HDR. I understand that most people are using Photomatrix to make the HDR image but then most people are saying that they continue to post process in Photoshop.
My question is can Elements to what is needed or do you really need CS4?

 

[JerryPH]

Neither. You really need a full HDR program like Photomatix. CS3/4 do not do HDR, they do tone mapping which is close to but NOT true HDR. Elements doesn't even do tone mapping.

 

[MikeBcos]

I've been trying to produce HDR images in CS3 and CS4 for a couple of months, so far I have got nothing that looks good. I'm sure a lot of it is down to my inexperience but I am more and more convinced that Photoshop cannot produce an HDR image like I see posted on here.

Now, I'd be happy to be proven wrong so I know it is possible!

 

[Arch]

There seems to be some confusion here. PS, CAN produce HDR images.

What photomatix does easily that PS doesn't, is give you the tone mapping option. This can also be done in PS but its alot more tricky.

You need to understand that a true HDR image cannot even be viewed on an average PC monitor, this i what tonemapping does, it makes the tone range viewable... so although HDR's may not look great in PS (especially if you are new to editing) they only look that way because they don't have the 'one touch, tone map my image' option that Photomatix has.

To answer the OP tho, if you are a beginner, you will get better resulats from Photomatix for sure.