lol Thanks MGD for your effort on these :-)

im a little loss on it at the same time lol

ok I looked at the filters and from what I see photoshop will do all that stuff already..
is it like a one click kind of thing? where photoshop I might have to go through 10 steps to get the same look?

also my biggest goal is to get it right in the camera first .. with lights even to the point im using color lights to get the look im after..

my goal is to use as little photoshop as possible.. I want to be able to just tone map the image once I have it..

now what im learning from tone mapping is .. if the image is not correct first from lights to exposure and all that good stuff.. tone mapping just makes it worse tones of noise and hot spots so my goal is to get a great image in the camera

i went through a faze taking any kind of image I shot and doctor it up in photoshop
and the results I have come up with by doing that.. is im trying to add stuff that isnt there already
that could have been if i got a firm understanding of lights first.. and also when i find myself doing heavy edit in photoshop.. it tends to get over processed and no longer feels or looks like a photo...

if you look in my gallery at my older stuff and then compair it to my newer stuff
you will see what i mean.. my older stuff im getting ready to delete because now after seeing that what goes in the camera is more important then all the photoshop tricks in the world.
im finding im getting better results less damage to the image and more depth in doing a simple tone map...

before I would spend 4 hours in photoshop on one image and then ending results is always over processed. for me anyway.. but now that im learning lighting.. im spending 3 hours playing with lights (only because im new at it lol ) and i shoot 50 photos and move the lights 50 times lol to get one good shot ... but each good shot I take I then messure where all the lights are and right it down so next time it wont be 3 hours lol

and due to that i spend max 5 minutes in tone mapping and 15 minutes in photoshop lol

so  thats kind of my goal and im hoping im not on the worng path lol
grabbing all those filters are tempting to me you have no idea lol
but im really trying to do what the film masters had to do.. and that was get it right in the camera first.. at least thats what i think lol because they didint have the luxury of of photoshop and digital. film guys are true masters of a camera.. and that kind of what im chasing

hope your not offended :-)