Hello everybody,

for creating some nice HDR images i use the software Photomatix Pro (V 2.5.2).
Usually i am using the tone mapping option and play around with the different sliders until i get a nice result.
Below the sliders is a button which allows me to load a setting.
Unfortuantely Photomatix doesn't come up with some nice presets and so i save my own settings.

Now i've the idea if it wouldn't be nice to share some settings here at Renderosity.
Maybe we could use this thread to post some settings?

Here are some settings for landscapes with a dramatic sky:

Strength - 80 (you can set this lower if you want)
Colour Saturation - 60
Smoothing - very high
Luminosity - 5
White Point - about 1.4%
Black Point - about 2.8%
Gamma - Around the middle position
Temperature - 4 to 8 depending on how warm you want the image (higher values results in warm colors)
Highlight Saturation - 6
Shadow Saturation - 4
Micro contrast - 9
Micro smoothing - 9
Highlights smoothing - 28
Shadow smoothing - 70
Shadows clipping - 80

 Surely it is picture specific what settings you use?

for instance: are your 3+ images on the dark or the light side of things when you took them? 

I use the AEB-Function of my camera to create three different exposured images. I'm not sure but i thing the english word is exposure bracketing?

Is this what you mean?

 My question was based on the fact that even with automatic exposure the scene may be "darker" than a photo you take at another time and location...

In extreme terms, if you think of how a photo comes out if you point it towards the sun and then take the photo immediately behind you, the camera may expose both scenes "correctly" but they will be completely different in terms of lighting.  Therefore they should need a different setting when processing, even with HDR tonemapping and 3 exposures on AEB i would have thought...

TBH one very good way to go is:
Strenght: 100, smoothing max, saturation at middle. Max luminosity, max micro. Leave others at 0.

Then, create another exposure fusion pic. Import all exposures to photoshop as layers, then exposure fusion and then HDR.

Then mask or erase parts that dont look ok. Skies often come horrible with HDR and loads of noise when exposure fusion skies look damn lot better. Ghosts aka moving people etc can be masked from 0 EV shot etc.