The Photomatix plug-in does a great job.

While the few QTVR HDR panoramas I have published here over the past few days have used three images per constituent shot, melded in PhotomatixPro, the related Photomatix plug-in for Photoshop also does a very decent job of restoring highlight and shadow detail using but a single image.

It only works on 16 bit images, so you may first have to go to the Image->Mode menu to convert the image to 16 bit (the size doubles but no quality gain results) before running the plug-in. Remember to revert to 8-bit when done or waste storage space on your hard disc.

Here are two fisheye shots, straightened in ImageAlign, one reproduced without and the other with single image tone mapping. The effect is superior to the Shadow and Highlight slider in Photoshop.

The straight shot, exposed for the mid-tones

The same picture after using the Photomatix tone mapping plug-in

As you can see, the recovery of shadow detail is remarkeable.