bracket your photos (1 over exposed, 1 neutral, and 1 underexposed) then you use the details from the two bracketed photos to enhance the neutral one, gotta use a tripod or it wont look right, haven't fucked with it much myself but I think it's time
was that the neutral pic you posted as the before image? or did you do something different?
How do you tone map without merging? Only times I've been able to do it was after merging into hdr.....or is it cuz in photoshop you need tha bracketed photos?