What is HDR, anyway?
lux.camera
What is HDR, anyway?
1–10 of 352 posts
Re: What is HDR, anyway?
#2HDR is just a scene-referred image using absolute luminance.
Re: What is HDR, anyway?
#3HDR on displays is actually largely uncomfortable for me. They should reserve the brightest HDR whites for things like the sun itself and caustics, not white walls in indoor photos.
As for tone mapping, I think the examples they show tend way too much towards flat low-local-contrast for my tastes.
Re: What is HDR, anyway?
#4So, HN, are HDR monitors worth it? I remember ~10 years ago delaying my monitor purchase for the HDR one that was right around the corner, but never (in my purchasing scope) became available. Time for another look?
The utility of HDR (as described in the article) is without question. It's amazing looking at an outdoors (or indoors with windows) scene with your Mk-1 eyeballs, then taking a photo and looking at it on a phone or PC screen. The pic fails to capture what your eyes see for lighting range.
Re: What is HDR, anyway?
#5As a photographer, I get the appeal of (this new incarnation of) HDR content, but the practical reality is that the photos I see posted in my feeds go from making my display looking normal to having photos searing my retinas, while other content that was uniform white a second prior now looks dull gray.
It's late night here so I was reading this article in dark mode, at a low display brightness - and when I got to the HDR photos I had to turn down my display even more to not strain my eyes, then back up again when I scrolled to the text.
For fullscreen content (games, movies) HDR is alright, but for everyday computing it's a pretty jarring experience as a user.
Re: What is HDR, anyway?
#6HDR is just a scene-referred image using absolute luminance.
Not in the more general sense! It can refer to what its acronym spells out directly: Bigger range between dimmest and brightest capabilities of a display, imaging technique etc.
Re: What is HDR, anyway?
#7Note for Firefox users - view the page in Chrome to see more of what they are talking about. I was very confused by some of the images, and it was a world of difference when I tried again in Chrome. Things began to make a lot more sense - is there a flag I am missing in Firefox on the Mac?
Re: What is HDR, anyway?
#8So, HN, are HDR monitors worth it? I remember ~10 years ago delaying my monitor purchase for the HDR one that was right around the corner, but never (in my purchasing scope) became available. Time for another look? The utility of HDR (as described in the article) is without question. It's amazing looking at an outdoors (or indoors with windows) scene with your Mk-1 eyeballs, then taking a photo and looking at it on a…
For gaming, definitely. An HDR Oled monitor is so immersive.
Re: What is HDR, anyway?
#9HDR is just a scene-referred image using absolute luminance.
No, it isn't. Absolute luminance is a "feature" of PQ specifically used by HDR10(+) and most DolbyVision content (notably the DolbyVision as produced by an iPhone is not PQ, it's not "real" DolbyVision). But this is not the only form of HDR and it's not even the common form for phone cameras. HLG is a lot more popular for cameras and it is not in absolute luminance. The gainmap-based approach that Google, Apple, and Adobe are all using is also very much not absolute luminance, either. In fact that flips it entirely and it's SDR relative instead, which is a much better approach to HDR than what video initially went with.
Re: What is HDR, anyway?
#10HDR is just a scene-referred image using absolute luminance.
Ideally in the abstract it could be just that, but in practice it's an umbrella name for many different techniques that provide some aspect of that goal.