Extreme HDR. How?

[Rupert]

How do people achieve those outrageously surreal HDR photos such as this:
Flickr Photo Download: Dark Hyatt
I tried both JPR and RAW, with 3, 5, 7 etc photos at different exposures using Photoshop 'Merge to HDR' and Photomatix. I've wanged the saturation up to 11, I've tried all sorts but it just doesn't happen. The only thing I seem to achieve is what I'd expect to, which is: bringing very bright and very dark areas of a scene together avoiding over and under exposure.
To be honest I don't really like the current overblown HDR examples that are currently everywhere on the Net but I would like to know how it's done.

[PhilUK]

I'm not a particular fan of the heavy HDR look myself, prefering a slightly more subtle approach. However, it's always worth exploring to see how it's done. This is the method that I've played around with that 'works' in that it creates that sort of effect. Choose your image - this'll work on a single RAW as well as several exposures. Crank strength and saturation right up to 100%. Luminosity goes right up to 10 as well. Next, choose a light smoothing button to taste, 3 or 4 in from the left seems to work well. Play around a little with the black and white point - mainly the black in my experience.

Microsmoothing needs to come right down to nothing, with contrast up to 9 or 10. Play around with the other settings to taste. Save as a .tiff and reopen, import into PS or PSP (I use the latter). Whack up the colour saturation to 40%, choose fill flash and increase saturation to 80%.

Play around with levels and curves a little bit and you'll hopefully find that you've got a really strong image. Bit too strong for my liking, but there you go.

[Rupert]

Thanks for the tips. I'll give it a go.