So, I think I'm probably one of your haters...

First: imo there's a difference between HDR and tonemapped images, and there's a lot of people that confuse the two...

High Dynamic Range by it's very namesake is a process that allows for a larger dynamic range than is possible in a single exposure. The process is to take several images of a scene with varying exposures and combine them to create one image with a single optimal exposure. This means there are no blown highlights and no areas completely lost to shadows.

Since the contrast of an image is perceived by it's variation in luminance, and HDR images reduce some luminance values and increase others to even them out, the contrast of an HDR image is lower than that of a typical single exposure.

Tone mapping is basically the process of restoring the contrast lost when creating an HDR image. Obviously there can be different goals in tone mapping an image. One goal would be to restore contrast to an image to obtain a realistic scene, the other would be to maximize the contrast in an image... this is what I think is typically over done in the images touted on the web as being HDR.

Here is a 5 shot HDR image...



I took and processed that shot last year.
In reviewing it before posting here, it is obvious that there could be a little more shadow detail... something that tends to happen in my hdr images in an attempt to retain realism.

Another shot that is even older, but does a better job showing increased dynamic range.
It also shows the downfall of HDR images in it's lack of contrast...


Flame away.