For those who are interested and/or use Artizen, version 2.9 has been released as a beta version. I've installed it (make sure you uninstall any previous version) and had a quick look with some test files.

My impression is that this is a substantial improvement. You can work on the HDR file itself, for example to sharpen, de-noise, alter colour balance before saving and tone-mapping. The tone-mapping algorithms appear to have been reduced to two: Dramatic and Natural; however, each now has about 20 pre-sets that you can click on, including some B/W options. Otherwise you can change the usual parameters to do your own tone-mapping. The beta version appears fairly robust in that it did not crash during any of my fiddling.

The site url is: http://www.supportingcomputers.net/

but you have to register, if you have not already done so, to access version 2.9.

Cheers

David