What program do you use to edit images very professionally?

to each his own.

NickRadford wrote in post #11805888
to each his own.

HDR is a slippery slope. I think that you can do a very tasteful HDR, which accurately depicts a scene that has too much dynamic range to be captured in one exposure (which would look identical to an exposure taken using a GND filter). At the same time, you can make a completely unrealistic looking HDR (which I don't always think is bad, sometimes I find it rather creative, most of the time, I think it just sucks). I'd like to think that most of the HDR that I have made have fallen more into the first category, but they probably haven't.

In any case, as you point out, each photographer chooses their own style. If you like really overdone HDR, that's fine, that's your choice. At the same time, there are definitely completely realistic HDR images. It doesn't really make sense to rule out a tool because some photographers use it in a way you don't like.

Fair enough.

I guess when i hear the term HDR my brian automatically fires off to some over-saturated overly-contrasty landscape photo.

Previous statement (about Photomatix) retracted.