image stacking options (exposure stacking, not focus stacking)

[cdd29]

I do a lot of night photography and often bracket & stack images to expand dynamic range (I believe it's called exposure fusion). I normally use Photoshop, but I've found it very problematic. Often when I use it, it either doesn't blend the photos, inserts the same image in different layers or sometimes goes totally wonky and skews images or even flips them. I've used File → Scripts → Load Files into Stack and File → Automate → Photomerge. I don't like using the HDR options or in camera as the results are often unpredictable and not to my liking. This did work fairly consistently for along time then basically stopped a few months ago, so not sure if an update messed something up or what (I've tried updated Photoshop to the latest version and same results.) I've been manually opening images, copy/pasting into individual layers, setting opacity & aligning if needed. This works but can be a bit cumbersome. Lightroom is hit and miss too. What other ways are there to do what I'm trying to accomplish?

 

[480sparky]

Luminance.

FDR Tools.

 

[Rickbb]

Ive only done a few stacks and found LRC image merge easier to use and give better results than PS. But I’m not an expert in stacking.