TEST IMAGES
............

For HDR 32bit floating point image:

3 RAW files taken on a canon rebel xti, Focal 18mm, ISO 100, shutter priority at 1/125

image 1= F/11; image 2 = F/22; image 3 = F/5.6
............

Why such strange settings? Because the image was a handheld HDR. I could of lowered the ISO to 200 and used the aperture priority setting but then

I would of chanced noise. Also by using the shutter priority with handheld HDR I get softer looking skys and still maintain detail in them.

Now onto the process.
...

HDR DARKROOM
...............

I load up HDR-D which at first seems to have an easy learning curve and very few buttons to fiddle with...a straight to the point tonemapper.
On the left panel are small buttons that are page-relative active, which helps coordinate the workflow, rather than tabbing through menus.

Though the initial create HDR window could have other options such as "remove aberration", Manuel input of levels, and different alignments (such as rotational variance, horizon shift, auto, and manual with alignment pins...[wish list]). In all the compiler is relatively straight forward and easy to use, especially for the beginner, though a good idea would be to bring in an expert mode where by the prementioned options could be available.
Loading up the images is rather quick especially in the fast alignment mode which loads 3jpgs in 9 seconds(guess exposure) and 8 seconds(exif), whilst 3 RAWs take 20 seconds (guess exposure) 21 seconds (exif).

A full table is given here:

image type  :  quantity  :  alignment  :  method  : time
.........................................................

   JPG     : 3   :  accurate   :  guess   : 48s
   RAW   : 3   :  accurate   :  guess   : 56s
   JPG        : 3   :    fast     :  guess   :  9s
   RAW   : 3   :    fast      :  guess   : 20s
   JPG        : 3   : no      :  guess   :  6s
   RAW   : 3   : no      :  guess   : 18s
   JPG    : 3   :  accurate   :  exif    : 46s
   RAW   : 3   :  accurate   :  exif   : 55s
   JPG     : 3   :    fast     :  exif   :  8s
   RAW   : 3   :    fast     :  exif    : 21s
   JPG        : 3   : no      :  exif   :  6s
   RAW   : 3   : no      :  exif   : 18s

Calculated on a Intel Quad Core 2.83ghz CPU having 4GB RAM.

I like the fact I can bring in a single image and enhance details too (all those jpgs that needed a bit more enhancement are certainly cued to HDR-D now).
...

Once the image is compiled
..............
A mean point version appears on the screen and can be rotated either way by clock or anti-clock, this helps a great deal as we all like to look at our images straight on when editing.

The settings are great and easy to use, but I feel the histogram should be a floating window, hidden away at the top right of the screen means that when scrolling down the editing panel the histogram disappears.

There is 3 tone mapping engines to choose from:
 Local tone balancer (LTB)
 Local tone enhancer (LTE)
 Fast tone compressor (FTC).

LTB is great for grunge work as it exaggerates detail though for the sacrifice of smoothness over plain areas and tends to render rather noisy images especially in grays and blues. Images are noisy and there tends to be colour artifacts occuring in white areas such as bright clouds etc. 

Some people enjoy this type of editing and can be great fun when trying to get even more detail from an image.  Scientifically it can be used to extract minor details for visual appeal, photographically it can be used to create an image to be masked into a not so heavily tonemapped version to bring out detail in wood, rock and other textured surfaces.
Settings include: strength (contrasting detail); Local light (controls light curve); brightness (overall exposure control); saturation (colour amount).

LTE is where the photographers want to be. Having control over strength of local contrast as well as brightness and saturation, one can also have control over the shadows exposure with a clever control called fill-light. The Fill-light function though controlling the global soft contrast tends to lighten up the darker regions just enough to pull out a little more detail without creating useless noise.  A superb feature to use.
Once you are somewhere near the image you want you will notice that the image is a bit washed out, this is where the B/W clipping on the lower panel comes into play though a live-histogram is needed for accuracy of bin clip.
Also what I found was the sliders are post-slide-view rather than live-view. It’s not a big deal but I like to shift the slider and watch the detail or contrast on the image shift at the same time, this helps coordinate things quicker.
The balance of luminance to contrast to saturation is very good indeed, in fact so much so that post-wise very little emphazize in the way of color balance and hue correction is needed, Which means a quicker final result.

FTC renders superb results quickly.  Its great for people who have a lot of images to get through.  Working basically the same as LTE except in FTC the fill-light function is lost.  Most FTC produced images might need a little colour balancing which you can either do with the provided colour balance panel or post with Photoshop etc. In all a great function that is neither brain taxing nor noisy.
...

Once done
.............

You have the choice to export to photoshop which is excellent, but I would like to see control over the PPi (pixels per inch) and File type, jpg, tiff, etc. and its BPC (bits per channel) rate, 8,16,32.
Saving the image allows you multiple options and formats to save at such as: jpg, bmp, png, tif-24bit, HDR, EXR, tif-48bit.
I recommend tif-48bit as you want to retain as much information as possible as the monitors and LCDs do not show all the available color space.
A great thing is you can reload your resulting image back into HDR-D and get more detail out.  One thing to note is the lack of irritating and surreal contrast halos...YES!!!---AT LAST!!!
...

Overall, as you can see from the 3 attached images HDR-D renders very well, though there is a little aberration that can be worked around without much difficulty.  The detail and preservation of contrast-to-detail is very well balanced.  Not much noise (LTE and FTC settings), no more than any other HDR tonemapper (a lot less than photomatix...whispers).

I enjoy global contrasting for tonemapping and so HDR-D works well with me as it gives me the results I am looking for.

I am yet to try batching and can't wait for when its available.
...

HDR DARKROOM could easily be my new tool of choice for tonemapping.

The resulting image can be viewed here: http://stuartperry.deviantart.com/art/Grand-Arch-143020387

stuart perry