About a year ago, I got some advice here about how to blend two shots with High Dynamic Range using layer masks to compress them together without the light flattening effects of HDR blends. I got some VERY useful tips here and did some research and put together my own tutorial that ends up being VERY quick....VERY easy on the processor of your computer....and highly effective in creating scenes that compress the dynamic range without loosing microcontrast....and therefore not loosing the precieved "Depth" of the shot.
Some is learned here...some learned on the internet elsware....and some just intuitivly tuned by me playing with it.
Good tutorial. That is great that you put that together. I must have been paying attention to the same tips as you were last year, because I pretty much do what you described, so that is cool to know!