I'm a little behind the times I guess, but I just noticed some HDR images the other day.
Can one produce these in PhotoPaint?
Yes, PhotoPaint has the capabilities.
You've got me interested - how do you create HDR images in PhotoPaint X3?
To genuinely create HDR in PhotoPaint, you need to begin with a 16 Bit Image.
HDR is composed of, typically, multiple bracketed exposures of a single scene: one over exposed, one exposed correctly, and one under exposed. Similar but not equivielent effects can be achieved by triple processing the same RAW file. More files can be used but three is generally the minimum.
Each of these exposures or RAW processed files is created as a 16 Bit Tiff and imported into PhotoPaint. The three exposures are stacked in PhotoPaint as individual objects with in the same file.
From here there are several methods which can include selective masking and erasing the throw-away portions of each image. Or you can set the blend interaction on the Object Properties to control how the various objects interact so that the highlights from the underexposed image, the shadows from the overexposed images and the correct exposure blend to give you the illusion of dyanmic range.
I highly recommend you use a dedicated RAW processor in conjunction with PhotoPaint as the results are generally more pleasing and much less work. There are several ranging from free to around a hundred dollars US. I personally prefer the Photomatix package from www.hdrsoft.com