January, 2024

About HDR Photos on my Website

HDR photos look brighter, more vibrant, and more realistic than SDR photos. HDR phtography exploits how good photos can look on modern HDR displays that shine several times brigher, and can reproduce more colors, than traditional (SDR) displays.

To see my photos in HDR you need a couple things.

1. An HDR display. Displays capable of 1000 nits or more peak brightness work best, but even displays with 400 nit peak brightness can look beautiful.
2. A web browser that can show HDR photo files formats. On Mac and Widows, try the latest Google Chrome.

Can You See this HDR Photo of a Sea Turtle Below?

If you can see a photo of a sea tutrle below, you should be able to see my HDR photos.

My site will show you HDR AVIF files if I can detect that you are using an HDR display and Chrome version 108 or later. Otherwise, it will display JPEG photos. The JPEGs include some extra HDR information, called gain maps, that some browsers use to show the HDR verions of photos.

Does the Photo on the Right Look Brighter?

Even if you can't see the sea turtle photo, above, if the landscape photo on the right looks brighter than the photo on the left, and brighter than the white border around the photo, then you'll be able to see JPEGs in HDR on my site.

Plain JPEG	JPEG with HDR Gain Map

As of January 2024, other browsers I've tested (Safari, Firefox, Edge) either do not support the AVIF file format, or they support AVIF but do not do a very good job displaying HDR AVIF photos. Edge does not yet support AVIF, but it can display JPEGs with gain maps in HDR. I hope I can support more browers soon.

How I do HDR Photography

HDR for still photography is relativly new. To create HDR versions of my photos I edited the photos using Adobe Camera Raw. Camera Raw has supported HDR output since December 2022 (version 15.1) as a technology. Full HDR editing and output arrived in Ocotber 2023 in Camera Raw and Lightroom for Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad and Android.

Want to Know More?

Here are some links to read more about HDR…

• DisplayHDR Certified displays.
• Apple: 14- and 16-inch laptops with Liquid Retina XDR displays.
• Adobe: High Dynamic high-dynamic-range Explained
• Adobe: About HDR Output
• Adobe: HDR Gain Map
• cnet: HDR Photography Blew My Mind. It's Glorious — and Complicated
• Greg Benz Photography
• Digital Photography Review: Adobe demos true HDR support in Adobe Camera Raw, giving a glimpse of photography's bright future
• Android Police: UltraHDR photos on Android 14
• The Verge UltraHDR support in Lightroom for Android
• HDR file format examples