Tone-mapping either HDR or MDR source images is something I've found relatively easy, but my approach isn't to dial all the controls up to 11 and create something so busy with fussy detail that it hurts my eyes to look for too long. My use of tone-mapping this year has almost exclusively been to make an image which better represents what the human eye saw at the time. The eye adjusts its sensitivity depending on what it is looking at, while the camera has one exposure across the entire frame that might lose detail in shadows and highlights when displayed on a screen.
