HDR mani-ar take II

I tried the night scene from my balcony again for HDR. The results from HDR pro in photoshop are so-so, I still need more practice. I also plan to redo this scene "by hand" by using layers and masking. I need time for that, though!

This time, I used 1s, 2s, 4s, 8s and 20s exposure times. Here's the result, straight "out of the box". I didn't change anything; I just used the default settings.

Then I went crazy with the sliders, trying to create a "cartoony" kind of look. I've always wanted to live in a cartoon. So up all the way with saturation, down with the gamma, lower the radius and increase the strength.... and this is what I got.

Ummm.... still waiting. HDR pro runs seriously slow on my computer. So slow, in fact, that I hesitate to change stuff on it. Oh here it is, a day later.