Photoshop "HDR" tutorial

A tone mapped picture may be the RESULT of HDR manipulations but is not itself HDR, that is nothing that not Photoshop can handle. If something is missing from the original raw material just put it back again.. or add something entirely new, :)

For example Pawel Wewiorski aka bolandrotor professional photographer HDR expert par excellence got second place in a HDR competition with a picture that was done from only one image.  Where after one of his fellow competitors remarked, "It's interesting how a non-HDR image places in the top 3 in an HDR challenge!"
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1005&message=32166859

Adobe Lab color space

Just as tone mapped images is made up by manipulating HDR photos we can do something similar by manipulating Lab images.  Lab color space like HDR has a much larger dynamic range than computer displays, printers or even human vision. So the first thing we do is making a copy of your original and change the color mode to Lab. Then right-click on the new layer and choose "Convert to a smart object".