HDR editing in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom

I discovered this technique a couple months ago, still surprised that it has received little attention.

Here is a video demo that I think is the best I've seen.

https://plus.google.com/101396087935203987162/posts/13sUxDXphkw

Some things I learned:

Feeding raw images to the HDR Pro merge is essential. Feeding 16bit tifs (or jepgs) that have already passed thru ACR will give significantly different (and worse) results.

When you feed raw images to HDR Pro for merging, it ignores all tone controls. Makes sense when you think about it, so don't bother to adjust exposure, highlights, shadows. Other ACR adjustments do get used by HDR Pro - camera profile, lens profile, sharpening, clarity, noise, etc.

The exposure adjustment inside HDR Pro is for preview only. Makes almost no difference in the final result. I say "almost no difference" because when I tested, slaming the exposure slider to either max range did make a difference, but it was very slight, almost invisible. That's still a mystery to me.

But for what it's worth, after playing with the technique for hours I still prefer and use the "real" HDR programs I have (Oloneo, DynamicPhoto, SNS, Photomatix). But for someone who does not want to invest the money and learning curve of HDR programs, using ACR to process 32 bit HDR Pro merges is a good alternative.