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What is HDR, anyway?

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Re: What is HDR, anyway?

#171

Post by flkiwi »

Did I miss something or is the tone mapper not released yet? I admit I'm multitasking here, but just have an exposure slider in the image lab (or whatever it's called).

Sidebar: I kinda miss when Halide's driving purpose was rapid launch and simplicity. I would almost prefer a zoom function to all of this HDR gymnastics (though, to be clear, Halide is my most-used and most-liked camera app).

EDIT: Ah, I see, it's a Mark III feature. That is not REMOTELY clear in the (very long) post.

Re: What is HDR, anyway?

#172

Post by mrandish »

mxfh wrote: post #134
sandofsky wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does anyone else find the hubris in the first paragraph writing as off-putting as I do? > "we finally explain what HDR actually means" No. Because it's written for the many casual photographers we've spoken with who are confused and asked for an explainer. > Then spends 2/3rds of the article on a tone mapping expedition, only to not address the elephant in the room, that is the almost complete absence of predictabl…

Maybe my response was part of the broader HDR symptom—that the acronym is overloaded with different meanings depending on where you're coming from. On the HN frontpage, people are likely thinking of one of at least three things: HDR as display tech (hardware) HDR as wide gamut data format (content) HDR as tone mapping (processing) ... So when the first paragraph says we finally explain what HDR actually means , it se…

> "The first HDR is the "HDR mode" introduced to the iPhone camera in 2010."

Yeah, I had a full halt and process exception on that line too. I guess all the research, technical papers and standards development work done by SMPTE, Kodak, et al in the 1990s and early 2000s just didn't happen? Turns out Apple invented it all in 2010 (pack up those Oscars and Emmys awarded for technical achievement and send'em back boys!)

Re: What is HDR, anyway?

#173

Post by altairprime »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #137
altairprime wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple’s method involves a good deal of what they call “EDR”, wherein the display gamma is ramped down in concert with ramping the brightness up, so that the brighter areas get brighter while the non-bright areas remain dark due to gamma math; that term is helpful for searching their WWDC developer videos for more details.

It still looks like how they say where its way too bright and makes formerly “bright” whites appear even neutral grey surrounding the hdr content. Personally I find it extremely jarring when it is just a frame that is hdr within the overall screen. It is much nicer when the hdr content is full screen. Imo I wish I could just disable partial screen hdr and keep the full screen implementation because it is that distrac…

Out curiosity — I don’t have Instagram to test and this is a perceptual question anyways — if you enable iOS Settings > Accessibility > Display > Reduce White Point (25%) and increase the screen brightness slightly to compensate for the slight dimness; does that reduce or eliminate the ‘jarring’ness?

Re: What is HDR, anyway?

#175

Post by frollogaston »

mxfh wrote: post #22

Does anyone else find the hubris in the first paragraph writing as off-putting as I do? "we finally explain what HDR actually means" Then spends 2/3rds of the article on a tone mapping expedition, only to not address the elephant in the room, that is the almost complete absence of predictable color management in consumer-grade digital environments. UIs are hardly ever tested in HDR: I don't want my subtitles to burn…

It's nonsense that an image/video gets to override my screen brightness, end of story. I want that removed, not even a setting, just gone.

The photo capture HDR is good. That's a totally different thing and shouldn't have had its name stolen.

Re: What is HDR, anyway?

#176

Post by xeonmc »

dahart wrote: post #123

It seems like a mistake to lump HDR capture, HDR formats and HDR display together, these are very different things. The claim that Ansel Adams used HDR is super likely to cause confusion, and isn’t particularly accurate. We’ve had HDR formats and HDR capture and edit workflows since long before HDR displays. The big benefit of HDR capture & formats is that your “negative” doesn’t clip super bright colors and doesn’t…

> It seems like a mistake to lump HDR capture, HDR formats and HDR display together

Reminded me of the classic "HDR in games vs HDR in photography" comparison[0]

[0] https://www.realtimerendering.com/blog/thought-for-the-day/

Re: What is HDR, anyway?

#178

Post by mxfh »

nfriedly wrote: post #34
the__alchemist wrote: post #4

So, 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…

A lot of monitors that advertise HDR support really shouldn't. Many of them can decode the signal but don't have the hardware to accurately reproduce it, so you just end up with a washed out muddy looking mess where you're better off disabling HDR entirely. As others here have said, OLED monitors are generally excellent at reproducing a HDR signal, especially in a darker space. But they're terrible for productivity w…

Avoid cranking up the OLED brightness over 70% for static content and absolutely never drive SDR-Reds into the HDR range by using fake HDR-modes when having brightness high.

I have a LG 2018 OLED that has some burnt in Minecraft hearts because of that, not from Minecraft itself, but just a few hours of minecraft Youtube video in those settings from the built in youtube client, but virtually no other detectable issues after excessive years of use with static content.

You only see them with fairly uniform colors as a background where color banding would usually be my bigger complaint.

So burn-ins definitely happen, but they are far from being a deal breaker over the obvious benefits you get vs other types of displays.

And driving everything possible in dark mode (white text on dark bg) on those displays is even the logical thing to do. Then you dont need much max brightness anyway and even save some energy.

Re: What is HDR, anyway?

#179

Post by munificent »

dahart wrote: post #161
munificent wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The claim that Ansel Adams used HDR is super likely to cause confusion That isn't what the article claims. It says: "Ansel Adams, one of the most revered photographers of the 20th century, was a master at capturing dramatic, high dynamic range scenes." "Use HDR" (your term) is vague to the point of not meaning much of anything, but the article is clear that Adams was capturing scenes that had a high dynamic range,…

Literally the sentence preceding the one you quoted is “What if I told you that analog photographers captured HDR as far back as 1857?”.

Yes, Ansel Adams was using a camera to capture a scene that had high dynamic range.

I don't see the confusion here.

Re: What is HDR, anyway?

#180

Post by frollogaston »

kllrnohj wrote: post #50
beachwood23 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. To me, HDR feels like the system is ignoring my screen brightness settings. I set my screen brightness to a certain level for a reason . Please don’t just arbitrarily turn up the brightness! There is no good way to disable HDR on photos for iPhone, either. Sure, you can turn off the HDR on photos on your iphone. But then, when you cast to a different display, the TV tries to display the photos in HD…

> To me, HDR feels like the system is ignoring my screen brightness settings. On both Android & iOS/MacOS it's not that HDR is ignoring your screen brightness, but rather the brightness slider is controlling the SDR range and then yes HDR can exceed that, that's the singular purpose of HDR to be honest. All the other purported benefits of HDR are at best just about HDR video profiles and at worst just nonsense bullsh…

"On both Android & iOS/MacOS it's not that HDR is ignoring your screen brightness, but rather the brightness slider is controlling the SDR range and then yes HDR can exceed that"

Doesn't this mean HDR is ignoring my brightness setting? Looking at the Mac color profiles, the default HDR has some fixed max brightness regardless of the brightness slider. And it's very bright, 1600 nits vs the SDR max of 600 nits. At least I was able to pick another option capping HDR to 600, but that still allows HDR video to force my screen to its normal full brightness even if I dimmed it.

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