A friend of mine shot some HDR real estate interiors yesterday, but is running into some troubles in post today.

Using a Sony A7R2, and shooting on High Res Jpg, he bracketed 2 stops in either direction, for 5 frames total.

He says the shots look good individually, but when he puts them through HDR in lightroom (Not sure exactly what he means by this, as I don't shoot HDR and use Capture One), the images have a dramatic colour shift towards yellow, and he noticed the images seeming to "break down" in places?

His goal (as far as I'm aware) isn't to create a hyper HDR scene. Just bring out some detail in the blacks and bring the highlights down a touch.

So...
1. Any ideas what might be going on?
2. Any tips for HDR on jpgs using lightroom?
2. Any Plugins plugins that might do a better job than lightroom?
4. Is he better off just combining these in photoshop with a bit of brush work? (Time is the problem here I think. He's busy AF, and was hoping to automate the post a bit.)

Thankyou.

First error, shooting in jpeg rather than RAW. He threw away most of the data his sensor captured when he did that and now he’s trying to invent data to make up for it.

I’ve never used HDR in LR. And HDR in PS is a weak suck. Either the Nik plug in or the Photomatix one are light years ahead of Adobe when it comes to HDR. But good luck recovering from the initial error of using jpegs.

I shoot high end real estate as well.

I work as an independent contractor for a specialized RE marketing company (RA companies are their clients) and they do their processing with my images.

However, I also do work occasional with private clients (via recommendations, or finding clients online through networking platforms) and here's my process:

I shoot only in RAW and I create 7 brackets from 7 stops.

My images are being combined in Photomatix Pro and I do my post processing with ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2018.

I am not certain if Lr has the correct program for bracketing... it may have, but I know that many use specialized programs for the bracketing and then work the photos in Lr or PS or whatever software.

Not sure what the dramatic color shit means... but if he did the correct white balance settings, he shouldn't have a problem. Maybe he applies some filter that increases color saturation?

What does he mean with break down of parts of the images...? Maybe his tripod is too flimsy and doesn't provide identical images because of vibrations?

+1 for a better tripod - or a tripod if he was hand holding
+1 for some different software - Image > Photo Merge > Ctrl+H has never made great results for me.... I met a guy at an ASMP meeting that was getting good results, so I believe it is possible....

As for the color shift...some of the bracketed images are not correctly exposed...  with out seeing them I would guess that the two that were over exposed... can you tell us if the color shift was for the whole image, mostly in the highlights or mostly in the shadows?

1. Shooting JPG is not shooting HDR.
2. Shooting JPG reduces the effective the Mpx resolution and DR of the image. You are practically turning 40mpx beast into 15mpx cheap thing. Additionally you add the post-processing issues of the camera firmware itself (which is the reason for your color shifts)
3. JPG is an export format, not a processing format and there is a good reason for that
4. Post-processing (software, pluggins etc) cannot replace photography, especially when shooting is technically incorrect

In other words - you can't get a right result if the approach is wrong. If you shoot raw and ETTR properly you may not even need to bracket.

HDR: Remember to always shoot in HDR (raw). You can always edit a raw and then turn it into a jpeg. But never the other way around.

HDR photography has three main parts to it that need to be done as well as possible;
1 image capture
Capturing the bracketed images can be done in 2 or more images that span the whole dynamic range you are capturing.  These can be saved in jpg, however, ideally you want raw images.  I bracket at least 3 images, each are 2 full stops apart.  Somtimes I'll bracket 5 images.

2 combining bracketed images
Various software can align and combine the images and create an HDR file.  Photomatix, EasyHDR, and SNS-HDR are among the best at this.  Photoshop and lightroom can do this process, but from my experience the results are not as good.   

3 tonemapping
To be able to view or print these HDR image files, a process needs to be applied called tonemapping.  Tonemapping is a conversion from HDR to LDR.  Some tonemappers use algorithms to mimic the human eye, while others crush the dynamic range and produce a high contrast image.  For natural looking tonemapping, I like Oloneo, SNS-HDR and EasyHDR.  Photomatix used to produce cartoonish looking photos, but have improved over the years and can produce reasonably natural looking HDR photos. Photoshop can do this process using their 32bit to 16bit conversion, that is just "OK".