[artmageddon]

If you mean photostacking to get HDR-style photos on a DSLR, I'm familiar with the concept but I don't have Photoshop to play around with. Most of the situations that I find myself dealing with high-contrast light, where I'd want to use HDR, tend to involve those which I don't have a lot of time to set up and capture multiple shots(i.e. selfies(yeah I know) with my SO in the shade of a tree with a great view behind us).

Not sure what you mean by star trace - are you referring to something like this? [0]

[0] http://www.dimijianimages.com/More-page1/star-trails-Botswan...

[Sanddancer]

If you have gimp, there are a couple ways of doing HDR there as well. For quick and dirty stuff, I found the exposure blend plugin [1] to work pretty decently. For more complicated stuff, doing the exposure masking yourself [2] also leads to real good results. As far as speed, there are a few apps out there that will let you bracket and do an automatic hdr sequence out there if you have a phone with an IR diode, yeah it means fumbling with two devices, but the results would almost certainly be well worth it.

[1] http://tir.astro.utoledo.edu/jdsmith/code/exposure_blend.php

[2] http://www.instructables.com/id/HDR-photos-with-the-GIMP/

[artmageddon]

Thanks for the links! I'll have to try them out. I've worked with exposure bracketing before so I get the idea, I just never really tried doing the parts thereafter in software. I'll have to give this a try soon.