Basically, if someone viewing an image says,"Wow, that's a good HDR!" then you have failed.
True HDR is just opening up the range to 10 ev stops(Roughly as the eye sees) instead of the camera's range,(latitude) of 5 stops. Most people abuse the reality and produce comic book images, as you have seen. You can get HDR from just two jpeg images, without all the mystique and comic book fluffing about.
Here's how it's done, properly:
(Camera on tripod )
Expose for highlights-take a shot
Expose for shadows-take a shot
Add highlight image to shadow image as a new layer (hold “shift” and drag move tool)
Select> Color Range, Click “highlights” check “invert”, click “OK”
Add layer mask.
Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur 250 pixels.
Flatten and save.
And that's true High Dynamic Range-Ken
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