Photoshop Creative

Here are two copies of Vista wallpaper from Microsoft. The first is the normal "as it came in the 'puter" and the other has a faux HDR treatment. Bottom photo is done with Dane's Nine-One Effect.
Chas

Both images are beautiful. The faux hdr is pretty cool, but the towers look radioactive... they're glowing!

Courtney

Funny you should mention glowing......this area was downwind from the above ground nuke tests at the Nevada test site in the '60's. The effect is just coincidental.
Chas

Chas, some of my effects also produce glows/halos.
I try to lessen the problem area by cloning or painting with color from the adjacent area, -- or by painting in darker tone on the glow by using a masked brightness/contrast adjustment layer. However, I think the easiest fix is to put a black mask on the effect/HDR layer & paint white on the mask where I want the intended effect -- or vice versa (black on a white mask). Then use a little gaussian blur on the mask to smooth out edges.
The richer tones of your HDR layer are nice!

I've added a third rendering. This one using Dane's Nine-One Effect.
Chas

Chas - that's impressive!