Photomatrix software is a very good solution for the creation of an HDR raw and the following tone mapping. The latest version has a well designed interface and is very straight forward. On larger files, depending on your computer, you may need to create the HDR with the batch option. With vr3, they also seemed to get a better handle on the noise issues that I noticed in the older Vr 2 releases.
You can also still create the HDR in CS and then open that file with Photomatrix if you like to tone map.
In my HDR work, I have started letting Photomatrix open the raw files and create the HDR that way, instead of using Capture One or ACR to convert the raws into tiffs and then creating the HDR raw from the series of tifs.
I personally don't like to use the plugin, but instead use the full software which allows for two options on the HDR mapping, Detail mapping and tone mapping.
Paul C