Did I mention I couldn’t sleep?

Understanding HDR still images, though it seems easy, is hard. We’ve spent many years looking at SDR images, agonizing over SDR images. We pondered the colors, the sharpness, all manner of subtleties, but we didn’t give much thought to brightness levels, to the idea that we were working in an old, old, paradigm based on cathode ray tube TVs.

To help give people a sense of what HDR is and what it does I’ve prepared a brief and rather crude video, showing the same image as an SDR image and then again as an HDR image.

Obviously, you will need to be viewing this on an HDR screen—your iPhone will likely suffice though a bigger screen would be better.

Why a video? Because video has had HDR for a long time now and browsers support HDR view. The powers-that-be who have to agree on the standards for HDR still images have not yet done so, though I think we are close.

Each image in the video has been modified only by raising some of the highlight values. I made no attempt to make either the SDR or HDR image “look good” so in no case are we looking at the optimum image for any of the examples here. Despite this, you will see a profound difference in the images.

Note:

1) The shadows and the mid-tones of the images do not change from the SDR to the HDR image. HDR images are not “brighter,” they have more room to display highlight values. This is an important point.

2) Sometimes the HDR image can look garish. Of course, with a little work, you can correct this. I made no such attempt here.

3) Once you get accustomed to looking at HDR images it will be difficult to look at SDR images. They will mostly appear dull and lifeless. This was unexpected.

As I mentioned before, if you’ve been shooting in RAW or have been shooting with a recent model iPhone (recent as in the past four or five years) then look at your photos again in Lightroom, Pixelmator, or even Photos. You have to see it to really believe it.