I tried gtpfsgui and got some better results. But holy hell, that program is slow! And difficult to use. A lot of tweaking is necessary to get a decent image.

Photomatix does a much better job, though at $99 I'm a bit reluctant to purchase. A hundred dollars for software that does only one thing and will only be used occasionally seems a bit excessive.

I'm going to try Picturenaut and see what the results are. If they aren't great, I guess I'll bite the bullet and get Photomatix.

 

Nice engine bay. You might want to cut or dent in the hood bracing that is rubbing your strut tower bar.

 

Arron ,keep up your great work.

 

That surreal look you're likely talking about is horribly improperly done HDR.

Some people like horrible **** like this:
http://www.digitalcameratracker.com/.../hdr-truck.jpg

and it's sort of emerging as a fugly style of sorts, but that really isn't the point. HDR images allow you to show details in the shadows as well as highlights beyond the normal range of a single exposure. The point is to make an image appear more like you would see with your eyes. Closer to this:
http://mcsearcher.files.wordpress.co...our_sunset.jpg

if you had exposed for the sunset, the marina would be very underexposed, and if you had exposed for the marina, the sky would be terribly blown out. If you've seen many Ansel Adams photos then you've seen good HDR.

 

i dont even know what HDR is!

 

The first image was certainly not what I wanted, it was the 2nd image that I was going for. I did this as a bit of an experiment to see if it was worth doing all my build pics in HDR because it is often difficult to get proper exposures in a garage. The result was not what I had hoped, though more detail was captured.