Best way to process an HDR image from JPEGs

Question

I use an older digital camera for landscape images. It delivers very nice image quality - at least I like how it renders images. The point is that I cant take any RAW images. So when I shoot a sunset I dont have any playroom in the files later on. Thats why I would like to take multiple exposures and blend them together. I merged the images to an HDR image using Lightroom but I dont like the result. When I drag the shadow slider to the right it introduces an fair amount of noise to my image.
I think I might need to use luminosity masks in photoshop to blend those images or something ...
What would be a way of blending those exposures to achieve an high quality output with a natural look?

Tetsujin · Answer

By far the simplest way is to use an HDR-specific app or plugin.
I've used both Aurora HDR & the old (used to be freeware) Nik Collection plugin HDR Efex Pro 2, both with reasonable degree of success. Both can take either a single input image or a bracketed set of exposures - even hand-held so long as there's not too much movement, as they will auto-align.
No doubt there are many alternatives to those you could try too.
Photoshop itself I've always thought to be quite poor at HDR compared to these dedicated apps. I don't use Lightroom, but I can't imagine it being a great deal better.

Best way to process an HDR image from JPEGs

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