I emailed one of the developers and while I'm sure most of you know what he
told me I thought I would share it with the group.:

In luminance you can create an hdr from a single image if you have saved it
in raw (raw files usually use 12bits or more for every channel so a larger
dynamic range than jpegs). Luminance can take advantage from that and of
course you can then use its tonemapping operators. So if you shoot raw just
open a single picture in luminance and play with the many operators
settings, all the alternatives are "fake"...


-- 
:-)~MIKE~(-: