Wow, I just got this setup as per this video and I'm going to lose many many hours going back over my old RAW photos. This is going to make my printing attempts even worse knowing what dynamic range can be had now on screen which I'll never get on paper. Finally, something to use my XDR display for. Thanks for the setup hints.
Thanks a ton Greg (and for your website additional content too!) - of all the guys out there explaining changes, you are always my go-to-guy. HDRO is something terrific, lemme tellya!
I watched this on my M1 MBP and involuntarily said "wow" at some of these examples. Particularly the neon lights in the fountain and the merged HDR image after it. Really cool.
I don't imagine that UA-cam is literally translating the HDR through the encoding process, but still it's surprising how much better this video looks on the laptop screen vs. the attached monitor.
i was waiting this for ages searching for this but never find this HDR concept! there is the printed photography limited by the capabilities of the paper but monitor hdr photography is other kind of interpretation of the light and shadows with the new monitor capabilities a new world opens for the photography and new sensors and digital photography!, thanks for your effort of showing this great feature! cheers!
Thanks. I agree that this is an exciting update. I tried it on one photo and the result was pretty extreme, but simply used the HDR sliders lower in the panel--as you showed--and that made the photo look quite good. Thanks again!
I have a M1 MBP and just updated my settings. I have the M1 MBP hooked up to an Dell 32" monitor and when I work on a photo in HDR and slide PS from my MBP to the Dell you can really see the impact. The Dell is not able to show the clouds as everything is all blown out. I took some photos kayaking in mid day against the sun and the HDR on the MBP recovers all the detail. Amazing. It also seems like halos disappear with this HDR setting.
One can only hope that it soon appears in the windows version as well. As it is I use Skulums Aurora to get similar results, but it would sure be easier to do it in ACR.
Wow this soo amazing! Now I don’t need to use capture one anymore since the main reason i used it was because the colors looked better, but I hated the interface and it sucked that I couldnt use my LR presets I made over the years in C1. So this new feature in Adobe Camera RAW is a god send. It’s just want I needed for my workflow! Thanks for making this video!
Thanks for the great lesson. I only edit images for printing on silver halide papers. Can there be any benefit HDR editing for making prints on Fuji crystal archival paper? Thanks again Rees.
It will not make better prints. However, you can easily do both print and get the HDR benefit for sharing on social, via text, etc. gregbenzphotography.com/hdr#printing There is also some very good knowledge to be gained by editing HDR. You’ll understand the RAW data better, can white balance more accurately, etc. So indirectly, you may find that helps you create somewhat better prints.
Finally having an HDR monitor its like a whole new digital world has opened up in front of me. Sadly windows is pretty limited as far as HDR and wide color gamut support goes. Its going to be probably a long while before we can even view HDR still images in anything that isn't the web browser but I'm still hopeful. I wish more people cared about proper HDR like this though. I've always felt like I was trying to tell people about an idea that never existed whenever I mentioned HDR photography in different photography communities. They would either say that its useless, or they would assume that I'm talking about the "old HDR" and it would be redundant. So hopefully this will change now that we are starting to get HDR capable displays built into consumer devices like laptops.
We’ve got browsing and editing, so that’s a great start. Obviously more ,complete support will be great. What other software would you find helpful for HDR photography? Which monitor are you using with Windows now?
@@gregbenzphotography At the moment its the Innocn 27m2v. I originally added it to my amazon wish list about a year ago at the price of $1129 CAD. It looked like a pretty good deal considering its a vesa displayHDR 1000 certified monitor, 1152 local dimming zones, 4k resolution 160hz refreshrate and displays both p3 and adobe RGB perfectly. I heard the factory calibrations weren't the greatest but I was just happy it did it good enough. However about a year later, the price dropped twice and I even found an available coupon for it. Snagged it for $550 CAD with free shipping. (roughly $400 USD). It seems the factory calibrations have even improved too. The average delta E is below 1 for sRGB, Adobe RGB, and P3. I think the last time I saw a monitor that could display colors this well was during a field trip to the profusion expo event in toronto, a benQ representative was there showcasing a 4k 10 bit monitor with a huge many-four figures price tag. A monitor that maxed out at 250 nits and had no local dimming or HDR capabilities at that, requiring you to sit underneath a monitor hood in order to see anything in the partly sunlit room. But then here I am, viewing HDR content in all its glory with magnificent 1500-1600 nit peaks on an awesome budget monitor snag from amazon, with the monitor sitting right next to a sunlit window half the time. In terms of software though, I use a free open source software called HDR merge to merge large amounts of camera RAWS into a single image, and then I edit it in luminar AI. Unfortunately neither of these supports true HDR, not even the new version of luminar. But its the software that I've used for years, and didn't require breaking the bank as a student. Also if you are curious, the computer I use is a framework laptop 16. (7840HS, 32GB DDR5, 1TB SN770. RX 7700S). its my work, school, and personal computer for everything I do. Probably my most expensive piece of equipment but I've made great usage out of it already. My old computer was some 2 in 1 slab of plastic that acer used to make, it could hardly handle editing photos but I somehow managed to use it for over four years. Editing all of my photos on its glorious, 1080P, 6 bit screen with terrible sRGB color accuracy. Looking back I have no idea how I thought that was even acceptable, but at least it wasn't as bad as the terrible 768 and 720p LCD screens in my school's commtech classroom. Oh how things have changed since then.
Thanks for the video, Greg! I'm trying to wrap my head around this as I'm definitely not as technically skilled as you. Why can't you just export what you see on the screen as a jpeg? You can obviously record your HDR screen a show us the result, so why is this screen-determined? I hope you understand the question, not sure I understood how to express it 😅
It is creating truly brighter pixels. If you compressed this tonal range on a standard display, it would look low contrast (which is why these RAW files look nearly white as SDR and show new detail as HDR). On the XDR display, the max SDR white can be at full brightness is 500 bits, but HDR can hit 1600. The extra detail here is at risk of banding in 8-bits. You actually could do that (and I have made HDR images in 8-bits), but the hack to do that is not supported by web browsers. Aside from that, the newer AVIF and JXL files we will use are actually smaller than JPG. So one or both will probably replace a lot of standard JPG use once the browser support is universal (AVIF is nearly there already for SDR images). If you did export one of these HDR images as JPG (without hacks), you’d find all HDR content clipped. The encoding of these files specifies much brighter values than standard encoding.
@@MadsPeterIversen @Mads Peter Iversen I've been going super deep on all of this, give me a shout if you have questions. It'll make more sense as you spend more time with it.
So just does what you would normally do with masks or layers to reduce exposure in the highlights. Still have to have the exposure correct so not fully blown out. Just a quick method if you don’t know what you are doing.
No, tthis is something completely different. It requires hardware. You can get a preview on SDR hardware with this video, but it's basically just a simulation. The experience on a true HDR display is hard to understand without seeing it in person.
so u are starting your processing in PS and ARW and not lightroom? But this HDR is only for the screen appearance not not printing., correct? So for print the HDR has no benefit??
Correct, PS got support and then ACR. No LR editing. This is a vastly better display (looks much closer to real world light), print technology isn’t getting brighter and therefore won’t benefit.
Hi Greg, I've tried to enable it and its not working...I've notice your files are 32 bit. I am trying to do it with my 16 bit raw files and the HDR button isn't showing. Does it have to be 32 bit files only?
Any file will work with this ACR feature. You need to enable the tech preview (as shown near the beginning of this video) for the feature to show. Only on Mac. If you see the button and it won’t turn on, go to the calibration tab and update the process version to v5 (v3 and later is fine, but any older v2 edits will need to be updated).
I am using windows and camera raw 15.00 and the technology box is not there. Both Adobe raw and photoshop are up to date. A bit sad My monitor doesn't support it but will it be there if I buy an new one.
@@gregbenzphotographyThanks Greg I have other software that can achieve something similar but I am curious. Can other monitors that don't support HDR see the HDR changes that are developed in ACR and also printers?
Software must be written to use HDR output. Non -HDR monitors will tonemap the content down to SDR (see gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/#hdrViewOnSdr). You should not print HDR content (you can convert, see gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/#printing)
Many RAW images won’t (only if you have very bright values in the image). If you don’t expose to the right, you won’t often see a change with just the button. Doesn’t matter, try increasing exposure, highlights, etc. The button is more about what you can do after you click it than about an immediate change.
Your video is well done Greg , but the problem I saw when I tested the new HDR on my Mac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020) , I edit an image with the HDR feature and was very impressed , but upon saving to Photoshop your left with a file that is pretty much useless unless you convert it back to 16 bit , at which point you loose all the dynamics from the ACR - HDR edit and are left with a flat file !
You need to make sure your RAW edit is in a 32-bit file. And if you're using a Smart Object, make sure the color space of the SO and the containing 32-bit document match. You cannot convert color spaces within 32-bits. There is a bug that makes the image look extremely bright (everywhere, not a clipped highlights issue). Having the SO render to something other than the 32-bit document will cause such a conversion and the results look awful. You also need to enable the HDR tech preview in PS, as shown near the start of this video. One checkbox for ACR, and one for PS to show ACR results properly in the 32-bit space. If you don't do this, highlights will clip in PS.
@@gregbenzphotography Ive done all this Greg above but no matter how you edit , once happy , then open it in Photoshop you have a 32 bit file , you can not save it as an sRGB , say for the web, or for a print , if you convert it to a 16 bit or 8 bit you loose all the luminosity and end up with a dull flat image , you can not print 32 bit or 16 bit files so what is the use of it all? If it's the Bees Knees , why as Adobe hidden it out far away and not just incorporated it into ACR standard version? Id just like to know what use it is other than looking pretty on my Mac screen! it seems at the moment it's just all smoke and mirrors for Adobe to keep with Luminar and many other image editing software programs .
@@keithfoster3831 You can export a Jpeg XL from within Camera Raw that you can view in applications that support it (ex, Chrome when you enable the beta support for it). Keep in mind this is basically the minimum viable product version of HDR, the feature isn't finished yet. Eventually this will work cross-platform and in all the Lightrooms, and you'll be able to export HDR JXL or AVIF files that will be supported on social media platforms in the future. None of that is here yet though. Hence why ACR's HDR mode is only wired up in the Photoshop plugin, and only on macOS, and only supports that one weird file export mode. That was enough to get an image pipeline working, which is what you need for a beta test. As someone who's been messing with HDR imaging for a few years now(it started as my pandemic eccentricity), I assure you, this is MASSIVE. It's probably the biggest change to ACR/Lightroom in years and is going to be very important to how photography is viewed in the future. I honestly still can't quite believe they actually built this. If you've ever seen the huge difference of a TV show in HDR, just know that what Adobe made here will allow you to export any image you process through Lightroom into the same format. The gallery and sharing tools will come in due time (actually, Apple's Photos app has been ready for awhile, just ACR doesn't currently export to any formats it accepts. Like I said, minimum viable product)
I have Macbook Pro M1 Max and just discovered this amazing feature. May I please ask 2 questions about this HDR? When I open TIFF (as you did) file from Photoshop to Camera Raw, there is no option for HDR. HDR button is not there. Would you advise what is the problem here and how to bring it back? Also, when I open RAW file in Camera Raw and then edit it as HDR image, I get amazing radiance in the image. How can I save it (as Psd, Jpeg or Tiff?) in such I way that it looks exactly like that? Thank you kindly sir.
The image in PS needs to be in 32-bit mode to see the HDR button in ACR. TIF or PSB ideal for working images. For sharing: gregbenzphotography.com/hdr-images/jpg-hdr-gain-maps-in-adobe-camera-raw/ gregbenzphotography.com/photography-tips/exporting-avif-files-from-photoshop/
Waited this for years now, at last! Its so cool, we have hdr movies from 2016, now its time for photos) Also Canon R camers can save in heif hdr. Now I want this feature in Lightroom for Windows as soon as possible
HDR +WCG image viewer APP for windows lets you view HDR images in HDR10 mode already i have used it for several years so its not something completely new that app is from 2018 btw
@@gregbenzphotography Affinity photo, Krita for painting all work in hdr for Windows, also games, you can capture hdr screenshoots in hdr using xbox game bar and nvidia experience in jpeg xr format
Thanks! I’d forgotten Affinity supports Windows. I’ve struggled to get Krita to export HDR (the PNG used a profile browsers won’t use) and haven’t gotten some other export formats to work when selecting HDR options, seemed like possible bugs to me - but I didn’t spend too much time on it.
I have an m1 pro-16-inch, and I must say, wow! I threw in a photo of a fireworks show and the HDR really brought out the detail and pop of the fireworks. Now if they could add this feature to Lightroom... Also, now that I have these HDR images, how do I display while preserving the HDR. I'ver heard you can display them fullscreen on chrome but how do I do that? Thank you
is there a way to render this image so that it looks basically the same for print? Or even looks the same on a non hdr monitor? I am viewing this video on a 2014 lcd monitor that is not even close to hdr, and I can see all of the dramatic difference represented in the video. So why is it not possible to somehow convert that hdr file to a sdr equivilant? In your finsihed hdr, the brightest bright is still pure white, and the blackest black is still pure black, what difference does it make? For example you could take a screenshot of the sdr image, then take a screenshot of the hdr image. And if people looked at the two images on a non hdr monitor would they not see the difference? Its just theat then the image would be a low resolution. But it seems there should be a way to render the HDR image to an SDR equivilant that approximates all the same detail and color of the extended dynamic range, with maybe just a slight difference.
The ideal is to have a gain map where we have full control over the SDR. That would allow exact encoding of the print-intended image and HDR. Please add your vote for it: community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-ideas/allow-full-user-control-of-the-sdr-rendition-in-an-hdr-gain-map-export/idi-p/14205440#M19464
You can see relative differences with HDR tone mapped to SDR, which is why you see that difference. But both are compromised. If all you have is the range of an SDR display, the old compromise of sacrificing highlights is the way to go. But with an HDR display, you no longer need that compromise and can get much better quality. See my site with Chrome on an M-1 or later MacBook Pro to see just how great it can be. gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/
HDR photo is truly amazing. I have a question regarding this: When I import a JPG photo into ACR and click the HDR button, I've noticed that the photo gains HDR-like qualities similar to those seen in RAW images. Interestingly, even animated illustrations seem to achieve a level of realism akin to real HDR photos when treated similarly. I am really curious about what's happening.
They’re expanding into the HDR range to give you a good starting point. It’s an alteration from the actual image encoding, and I find it’s very helpful - often very beneficial to the image.
I am probably asking a dumb question. I shoot a canon RP which creates .cr3 raw images at 16-bit. I am not seeing the HDR button in ACR. I am assuming it is because it is a 16-bit image? Can I change a 16-bit to a 32-bit image?
Your file is great. You could even process an 8-bit a JPG source file as HDR. If you don’t see the button, be sure you’ve updated to ACR v15.1, enabled the tech preview, and restarted PS.
This sounds like a great improvement. Now, if I could just find it. It is not showing up in the Preferences/technology previews, etc. I seem to have really bad luck lately.
It’s an option on any Mac, and I do use it with my external SDR screen. I can’t see the benefit there, but it’s still useful for blind editing, exporting JXL, etc.
I can see the HDR option in PS but the HDR side of the graph is a flat line and I do not see any changes in the image. I am guessing I somehow missed a step that enables the display on the HDR side. I have tried both RAW and PSD files. Doesn't seem to make a difference. I see the HDR button but nothing changes.
Depends on how your image is exposed for that first shift. Just increase exposure, highlights, etc to push into the HDR range. Many images won’t immediately show a shift until you edit.
The button is not expected to affect all images immediately when you click it (depends on brightness of RAW content). You can then change exposure, highlights, etc to push into the HDR range.
While I understand the true benefit is realized entirely on HDR-capable displays only, can processing an image with this provide any improvement when exporting for SDR or preparing for print?
Perhaps, I need more time with it. But I suspect no. RAW processing has been optimized from the start to get the best possible SDR tonemapping out of what is often a RAW file with wider dynamic range. Those algorithms are really good, and we've been able to blend these things manually the whole time as well. There may be some unexpected benefits (for example, it's really helped me better understand highlight data that was already in my files that I didn't fully appreciate).
@@gregbenzphotography - that's what I suspected as I've started playing around with it this morning. It is very cool to see on the MBP XDR display, though! Thanks for your wonderful information, as always.
@@jason.coward yeah, that XDR display is a game-changer. I can't wait for WebKit support to see HDR on the iPhone (2000 nits on the iPhone 14). HDR HEIC photos looks great, but I feel like I'm barely scratching the surface of what this screen can do.
Not really understanding the benefits of HDR. I have already merged several bracketing photos and edit with AUTO. It's almost the same & cannot see the difference. Can you comment ?
I'm seeing a lot of comments on this technique not being suitable for normal print to paper mediums, which I understand, as it's all about the screen you use, but could this tequnique be used for print to metal? It might be a suck it and see, I suppose. But I'd be interested in your thoughts.
Probably not, as highlights there probably already map to SDR white. But the higher the contrast the media can support, the better the print would match the HDR on screen. And that probably simplifies dual use of the image for print plus display.
Ive just set this up but when you click on the HDR button there is no change. Does the file your using need to be a particular format? Thanks for the video by the way.
It just allows HDR content, doesn’t mean your RAW needs it at default settings - but you can push it there via highlights, exposure, etc (you can do the same with non-RAW content and it’s very powerful).
I wonder if you could explain something... I get that you need an HDR monitor for this new feature. But it did look alittle better even on youtube and my old monitor. Had you prepared the images to do that, just to demonstrate the point? Or if not, and there is some kind of improvement, then how come its not available on windows just as an editing feature? Thanks
To help old monitors, UA-cam is tone mapping the HDR content to render within the limits of your SDR monitor. It will look much better on an HDR monitor, but at least you can get a sense of the content. Similarly, HDR still images will render on SDR screens, they just won't look as nice.
If you're on Windows, you're out of luck at this point. HDRO is MacOS only in ACR v15. But Windows also supports HDR, so hopefully we'll see it everywhere in due time. Given the installed HDR base for Apple is massively larger than what appears to be out there on the PC or external monitor side, this seems like the right starting point. I expect HDR evolves substantially in the coming year or so, it's all very new.
@@gregbenzphotography Thanks, lets hope windows user will get HDR option soon. Looks great and time saving. I know how to edit it but its a time consuming process. Cheers
No, you need an emissive media, not reflective, to get this level of contrast / dynamic range / brightness. You would therefore convert to SDR to print or create separate versions (which is easy to do), not print direct from the HDR (which would be clipped in the highlights).
it's exciting but at this moment there is no way you can save the edited file and view on your Mac which makes it useless. In the official document they say png is supported. However if I exported it as png with HDR enabled the image just looks very washed out.
You can export as JXL, which can also be converted to AVIF. There’s also an AVIF plugin for PS which has HDR support in beta to natively open and save such files. Both these file formats can be viewed in Chrome as HDR on both Mac and Windows. I would skip PNG. It’s hard to create and even when you do it correctly, not supported by browsers properly (as it’s uses an ICC profile and mechanism like CICP are the basis of HDR support for browsers, as it’s much simpler to support).
@@gregbenzphotography thank you but the jpgxl is almost the same size as the raw file which doesn’t make sense to me. My goal is to import it to the Photos app on mac while maintaining the hdr effect of course. Is there anyway to do that? It’s frustrating that you can shoot hdr photo with iPhone but can’t edit it with 3rd party app or otherwise it loses the hdr effect.
JXL (with proper settings) is actually much smaller than a JPG of comparable quality. I’ve seen images shrink by substantial amounts. Photos does not yet support HDR for these formats, sadly. It probably supports EXR and 32-bit TIF, as MacOS supports these generally. We’re early in the days of HDR, and I expect this will improve significantly in the coming year.
Just read your email about the addition of this process to Windows. Can this technique be applied to prints or used in photo books? Based on the video, my guess is that it can't be used directly but perhaps via the method you describe to manipulate an SDR image before exporting.
No, because the old SDR white is paper. Anything below that would get ink in a printing process. Printing HDR would imply values brighter than the paper (ie making the paper glow). So a direct print of HDR would clip and that's now how you should print these images. Ultimately, not that different conceptually from processing images with vibrant colors that need to be managed because they are gamut for the printer. There are ways to get great prints and take advantage of much better display offered by HDR. Please see gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/#printing
I am watching this video on an SDR display and the HDR improvement looks great but when you switch on the SDR preview it loses all its pop, can you help me understand why it's losing so much with the SDR preview on, remember I don't know what you are seeing with an HDR monitor I am just seeing the end result from UA-cam. Whereas if you did a screen grab of the hdr it would look great, thank you in advance : )
What do you mean “SDR preview”? If you mean the option in ACR, it will pretty much always look inferior to the HDR (since we are using HDR to get a better result). The SDR preview is “tone mapping” from HDR to SDR (squeezing its tonal range).
@@gregbenzphotography Thank you Greg for your answer, I think I didn't explain myself properly on why I am confused, I understand that on your HDR monitor the changes will be very noticeable. In your video at 10.02 I see a much more inviting image after you turn off the preview for SDR display, if I am watching on an SDR display, why do I see that change? I haven't seen the big changes you must see on an HDR display but in your video, I do see a reduction in image pop. If you process as HDR and save as a normal jpg will you have the popping image from image 10.02 or the flatter image from 10.00. The fact that your screen recorder can show me on my SDR Monitor the poping (HDR) I know it must be much more poping for you on a HDR monitor but the duller SDR preview image is confusing me. Thank you in advance.
The video you see on an SDR monitor is tone mapped, which gives a sense of the difference but isn’t showing true HDR and the real benefit. JPG would save as SDR (clipped or tone mapped depending on how you save it). AVIF is the best way to save and share HDR images on the web.
@@gregbenzphotography Thank you, Greg, I understand that but what I am saying is that although I am seeing your recording on my SDR monitor the image looks better before you touch the SDR preview button. On your SDR screen recording the image appears worse after you press the SDR preview. In short, is there any advantage in using the HDR function if you intend to output as a jpg, sorry for taking up so much of your time, and thanks in advance :)
JPG does not currently support HDR, you should use AVIF to share HDR. There is no real benefit to making an HDR and degrading it by converting to SDR (compared to just making an SDR from the start), but that capability is still helpful so that you can share both HDR and SDR versions of an image so that people can see the best version of the image supported by their monitor.
Print does indeed support outside sRGB colors, even in nornal CMYK. So yeah. As for HDR it mostly depends on what light illuminates the picture. Prints are not self-emissive.
HDR content really isn't printable, so you'd be creating a separate image for display vs print (we already do this now for best results, but the capability gap is larger with HDR).
I watched the video on an SDR display but still the difference when you turn on HDR is remarkable. How come I can see the difference? Wouldn’t it be helpful with this feature for adding more dynamic range to an image no matter where it will be displayed?
UA-cam tone mapping lets you get a simulation of the effect, see gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/#hdrViewOnSdr Watch the video again on an M1 MacBook Pro and you’ll really see what HDR can offer.
I plan to buy MB Pro M1 and PS for using ACR to edit and export to JXL, but from what I understand, I will not be able to view the hdr pictures on Photos app, only in Chrome or ACR/PS? I am not intrested in sharing the pics, only to start using this amazing hdr workflow for my private colection of photos and enjoy viewing them in a photo viewer app. I do not understand all the complaints about printing or things not working perfectly, if you love photography, you can only be amazed by the realism that the hdro higher dynamic range provides and appreciate others who are trying to help you with a workflow for this. Thanks for your dedication, this is a big step ahead in photo processing indeed!
That’s correct, and I expect those rough edges will improve. It is inevitable that the various software systems keep improving (as they have been steadily over the last year).
I discovered the benefits of hdr(hdro not the old hdr) on photos few months ago while using the 48mpx proraw photos with the iphone 14 pro. Although the size is 100mb/photo, I cannot go back now to heif or jpeg because I will lose those extreme highlights that make the images so real. As I mentioned, I planned to buy the MB Pro M1 to enjoy video and photos on that gorgeous hdr display, but unfortunately I tested today in a store and a proraw photo that I sent from iphone by airdrop to MB Pro M1 is not displayed as hdr in Photos app on macOS, but sdr. I do not understand this limitation and I can't figure out if I am doing something wrong or indeed this limitation exist. Do you know if this is the case? thanks!
It is my understanding that a HEIC from an iPhone can be HDR (with supported settings) and would show as HDR in the photos app, but I haven’t tested it. Please email me, this would be interesting to investigate further, there should be a solution. gregbenzphotography.com/contact/
Very informative Greg, will need to check my Apple 5k monitor to see if it supports the HDR function. When adjusting the image using the HDR function did you encounter the introduction of noise into the image?
I haven’t seen any noise issues The Apple Pro Display XDR is 1600 bits (best in class like the MacBook Pro), the 5k studio is 600 nits (great for HDR, just don’t push screen to max brightness).
correct term is HDR10 also can you control the Nits levels or can you see the actual Nits for the highlights in the histogram? How good HDR looks much depends on what display you use. higher Nit display and you get even more details in the highlights. And last how do you save these files and view them after? i use HDR +WCG image viewer APP for windows to view HDR images in HDR10 mode already and it works great.
That’s a specific implantation of HDR display. Adobe is using an Apple API for this output, not HDR10 - which may be used by MacOS (I don’t know, probably varies between XDR, external monitors, etc). I haven’t seen documentation as to whether they use HDR10 for internal displays. There are numerous standards in this space.
The nits would be a function of your display hardware and current brightness level. As you adjust brightness, you alter "HDR headroom", which is a measure of the HDR benefit. I've got a test (#8) on my site to help get an exact number for your display: gregbenzphotography.com/hdr#tests
Can export as JXL as shown in this video (though JXL support is limited - you can enable a developer flag in Chrome to see it there or use a test build of FireFox). A more useful HDR format right now is AVIF (Chrome supports HDR AVIF by default, other browsers support AVIF but not HDR versions yet). This will all change rapidly. See the e-book from my site (gregbenzphotography.com/hdr) for details on how to export now, it's tricky at the moment but will surely get better quickly as support is rolled out for these new formats.
@@gregbenzphotography great work on that HDR webpage! i dont know about any other sites that has real HDR images. im watching it in HDR10 mode right now amazing.
Thanks Greg! I am curious how this will play out on an EIZO Coloredge monitor? Probably not at all, since they're not HDR monitors. And then I wonder, since this workflow seems to be for display only and not print, what is it good for? Will we have to make separate edits for screen and print? Because in this case, this will be shut off on my systems.
I have an Eizo, and I’m seriously considering getting the Apple Pro Display XDR. The Eizo can’t do HDR and the XDR display in the laptop puts it to shame when you compare with such an image. The only Eizo that supports HDR (that I know of) is a $35,000 reference monitor. Its only a matter of time before we have cost effective options from the major players, HDR is already critical for video, exciting in games, and will be huge for photography. Asus has a $2500 external HDR monitor. The fact that Apple has built this into most of their screens is mind blowing to me. They have massively downplayed this. If they flip the switch to add HDR AVIF support in WebKit, every iPhone and iPad will immediately have incredible HDR support for images on the web.
HDR is definitely display only, but that’s critical and very useful. We’re already modifying images to optimize for print and I think HDR just creates more difference. You can easily get great dual versions, but we’ll be trying to figure out the optimal display + print workflow for a while.
Would it be possible to edit in HDR mode in ACR and double process smart object raws (shadow, highlights) to smartly compress the dynamic range for print?
@@gregbenzphotography I count on you on this one :) To me it looks a bit gimmicky tbh. Especially considering when one sells prints on the internet. I want my images to look the same across the board. All in all this seems like an Instagram filter that will never transport to a print.
Options are limited. Maybe something I’ve missed, but I don’t think you’ll find anything as powerful and elegant as this elsewhere. Adobe has created some truly stunning tools. Hard to fill appreciate them until you dive deeply into to all of it.
No, any HDR capable Mac (the option will actually show on any Mac, which allows use of JXL export even if you have say a very old Mac that won’t display the extra content).
You can actually post a few ways, including directly from LR: gregbenzphotography.com/hdr-images/how-to-share-your-hdr-photos-on-the-web-directly-from-lightroom/ There are a few good workflows for print + HDR: gregbenzphotography.com/hdr#printing
@@gregbenzphotography yeah with the new update on Photoshop it’s messing my whole workflow up I can’t even edit in Photoshop now I have to stay in capture one now🤦🏽♂️🤦🏽♂️🤦🏽♂️
@@gregbenzphotography yes, when I take it to camera raw and use a preset or make any type of adjustments and save it back to Capture one pro it makes the photo extremely brighter and the colors are off. I’m uninstalling the latest version of Photoshop and going back to the old version.
Probably simple math, the Apple installed base of HDR-capable devices is massively larger at this time. I also get the sense that developer support in MacOS makes it easier, but I don’t know that for a fact.
Chrome does a nice job tone mapping HDR to SDR. Anyone can see the image on a supporting browser. That leaves a lot of gaps today, but those gaps are going to close quickly. Chrome is key, as that's ~65% of the usage. The main gap right now is WebKit, as we can't see HDR images on any browser on an iPhone or iPad, and they also have excellent HDR screens.
@@gregbenzphotography 1st. thank you so much for your time, No sure what to get, I'm stuck for almost a year, I was about to get the MSI MPG321UR-QD for the wide color gamut, 600nits, but is only 16 zones. those cheap Chinese KTC and Innocn look like having many problems, I saw your recommendations or expensive or 16 zones too, I have about 1k,1,2k budget, I was looking also the Asus PA32UCR-k but seems like have blooming issues....I not a pro but I love photo/video as hobby
@kanedafx1 is take a good look at the PA32UCR-K. I haven’t seen it, but similar ASUS gaming monitors were already pretty decent when I viewed them. It has the same number of zones as the Pro Display XDR. I own that monitor and it has blooming. It’s obvious if you move the cursor over a black screen in a dark room or run a star field test, but you hardly ever see it under normal use. Only an OLED or something exotic would outperform that XDR. Blooming is going to affect any mini-LED to some degree, it’s a question of how much. If you can view in person or buy with a way to return, I think it’s definitely worth checking out.
Check that the tech preview is enabled and PS restarted. With that software, settings I showed early in the video, and that hardware it should be there.
@@gregbenzphotography I tried all you wrote! Thanks a lot! But even avif not showing correctly in latest macos 13 with HDR display. So, mayby in far future only :-(
Yeah, I see Ventura isn’t supporting it yet either for Safari. Chrome works there, but we really need Apple support (in particular so that all their great HDR iPhones and iPads have support).
Something does not compute. I was watching this video on my old LCD TV that was built in 2008. I don’t know exactly, but I’m pretty sure it does not even come close to supporting even SRGB. Still, I could clearly see the difference from the normal and the HDR version. Even if you turned on preview SDR. with zeroed out sliders there was a difference to the HDR. If this is just to take advantage of the capabilities of HDR screens in my book, I shouldn’t have seen anything on my old TV. So in my book this means that it doesn’t only expand the range, but actually make some adjustments to the values of color and luminance etc.
UA-cam tone maps the HDR to SDR. On a proper HDR screen, the resolution option at bottom right of the video will show HDR in red. Otherwise, you are getting a decent simulation of HDR, but not nearly as good as actual HDR display.
I don't get why pictures looks better when You turn on HDR. It's y2b video. And it is not HDR. It looks like that with some processing You can get better results from these images in SDR. Melia building example looks like in highlighs were added a lot of whites and vibrance and contrast to blacks but increased brightness in shadows. Is this the limitation of acr that it smushes all the whites? All would be clear if I were seeing this on HDR video with HDR display.
They are squishing the tonal range to fit what your monitor can handle. So you aren't seeing something truly impressive with an SDR screen, but you can at least get an idea of what HDR might do. Try watching this with Chrome on a M1 MacBook Pro, and it will be very clear what HDR can offer. Also, my website with test images: gregbenzphotography.com/hdr
FYI I played with this feature, then deactivated it as I decided not to use it for now. To do this I went back into Preferences and unchecked the items I previously had selected. Unfortunately now when importing an image from Camera RAW to Photoshop, the image is highly desaturated and I have very little latitude to recover the sauration. My workaround is to export the image as a .tif file, and then open it in Photoshop. I have uninstalled Photoshop and reinstalled it. I have also reinstalled the previous version of Photoshop. I continue to have this problem. I am running on a 2021 Macbook Pro M1 with 32GB RAM. I have submitted a bug report to Adobe. I will let you know what I hear from Adobe.
If you turn off the feature (or just don’t click the HDR button), it’s off. Look to see what color space is being used for new imports. That could explain some desaturation if defaulting to sRGB now.
@@gregbenzphotography Its is set to Adobe RGB. I only use sRGB on export to .jpg. I just tried to reactivate it and got the same result. Perhaps this is a bug?
Yo Greg - I heard back from Adobe and there is a fix for this. Quoting from their response: “When you turn on the HDR feature in ACR, it bumps ACR to support 32-bit editing. If you turn the HDR feature off, the 32-bit mode gets stuck ON. This will affect all images subsequently opened into Ps from ACR. The fix is to go into ACR preferences and select 8-bit on the workflow tab. Restart Photoshop, open the pref a second time, and things should work again from there.” I tried it and it works. It also works changing to 16 bit. Hopefully they will address the behavior in a maintenance release.
Is there anything holding Adobe back from implementing this in Lightroom as well? Wondering what I should do with all my photos, maybe batch export them all out again using HDR? @gregbenzphotography How do we get these images out from Photoshop and into Photos on MacOS while maintaining HDR like those iPhone photos?
The e-book linked from my site has more info on exporting JXL or AVIF images for the web: gregbenzphotography.com/hdr It's pretty easy to do batch JXL export but AVIF is tougher as it requires command line tools currently (which I cover in the e-book). Only a matter of time before multiple software applications solve this for us, these rough edges will get smoothed out.
@@gregbenzphotography Thanks! Yeah I agree, we are on the cusp of HDR editing becoming the norm. I am just very curious as to what to do with the 70,000 finished edited raws in Lightroom, and whats the easiest way to get them into MacOS Photos (my main organising and displaying app for slideshows etc). Seems Apple is not allowing jxl format, and Adobe is not allowing heif - so still stuck in-between. Oh and thank you for the most excellent overview and explanations of this world right now. You are truly gifted in understanding and teaching. Keep it up 🙂
Greg at 12:24 you made an HDR adjustment to an existing file using ACR 15 as a filter inside of photoshop.... now.... get it out. Show me how you got that file out of the CR Filter or our of Photoshop. I will give you a super chat or whatever you need to get me that. So far I am been using Bridge to convert my TIFFs to DNG so I can open in ACR (non-filter) and then try to save them, but it fails.
I've been waiting for this for last 4 years and it turns out it's Mac only... my day is ruined and my disappointment is immeasurable! Adobe plz... Although as much as I crave this it won't be truly useful until google photos adds avif support. Though I'm guessing this might be the kick in the but google needs to go and finally do it.
what's so frustrating to me is that if Adobe would release the slider constraints we could replicate this dynamic range in SDR. The highlight/shadow slider range is totally arbitrary and there's no reason why we can't have a range 5x greater than what we currently have. Or if they implemented adjustment stacking without constraints we could do the same. But no, 1-100 is all you get.
@@gregbenzphotography If we could stack adjustments as groups (or have larger ranges with sliders), it would be possible to almost replicate what we're seeing here. All the data is there, but the processing engine isn't designed for extracting all its potential. I've been fighting with them about this since 2007 and they refuse to budge. There's no technical reason why we shouldn't be able to stack adjustments or have more range than what's allowed... it's that they simply don't believe we should go beyond those boundaries.
@@eartho @eartho It is not possible without HDR, this is displaying pixels brighter than standard white. It's physically different at a hardware level. You can get much better SDR with those techniques, but it is definitely not the same as the HDR output. See on an M1 MacBook Pro and you'll understand.
So this is pretty much only usable to enjoy your own work on your own PC at this point....doesn't seem very useful beyond that I wish HDR was an industry and technology standard...but it seems the content we create will be stuck in the realm of SDR until that happens
I have printed at most 500 of the 130,000 or so images on my computer. I’ll gladly take an improvement which only applies to screens. The standards are coming together, hardware and software deployment will take time. But it’s already very good in the Apple ecosystem. Only a matter of time before this is the norm, new tech always starts from zero user base.
What with the Mac only stuff. Starting to act like Luminar did when it first came out. Took years to make it compatible with PC. I am a PC guy and will always be. I do not buy Apple Stuff. Any time reference for PC? In the mean time PC Users, Try out Luminar Neo HDR extension. Truly impressive and beat Photoshop to the draw again just like Sky Replacement.
It’s just simple math for any software developer right now. Apple is way, way ahead in this case. They’ve been putting out HDR hardware in volume for 4 years now. PCs will see more and more of this in time surely. Affinity supports HDR and might support it on Windows now, I haven’t tried to test that. Krita may also support now.
This looks great on screen, but this is going to make people's expectations and failures when it comes to printing even worse... The bust will be even worse than it was before with a SDR monitor and it was already a source of problems for lots of people. Now, the print and the screen will be so far different that it will be laughable.
@@gregbenzphotography Agreed. Some of us still print! Hahaha... For me that's what photography is. I print with inkjet, but I also make gravure and pt/pd prints from digital negatives. A hand-made print is the craft aspect of photography that I really enjoy.
I’m definitely still printing and totally hear you. I think everyone should make large prints - aside from the beauty, the learnings from the printing process make you a better photographer.
@@MarktrustingJesus How do you like dye sub vs Lumachrome prints? I've done a lot of metallic prints over the years for saturation (looks really interesting with WHCC's transfer to canvas), but metallic is a different animal
It is a shame that you didn't give a warning regarding downloading 16 bit picture and then automatically converting to 32 bit which means many of the processing parts done work and converting to 16 bit gives a horrible desaturated image. If I had known this I wouldn't have done this. I know know there is a 'fix' but hardly satisfactory. Please be careful in future as not all as IT software aware as you are.
You’re not seeing it, try on a real HDR display. You can still use masks, the point is not that button, but that you can display things are not otherwise possible with masks or any technique, it’s a difference in pixel brightness.
Finally! This is what i was hoping for for years! Higher output brightness Now hoping for .heif support for natural viewing on iOS devices And support in all browsers Chrome now supports displaying hdr photos in .avif codec
HEIF is supported in Safari with the latest Apple releases. Ultimately, a JPG (and eventually AVIF for better quality and smaller files) gain map is probably more likely to be the way to share HDR online. Unclear if HEIF support will make it to other browsers. An AV1 / AVIF video is a nice option (and possibly a useful hack for sites like Instagram which support HDR videos but not yet photos). However, such a format is inferior to a gain map as it means browser tone mapping for any SDR or lesser HDR viewing, vs the artist-created SDR version from a gain map.
You are fast! The updates just appeared the morning. Thank-you.
Thank you! I was searching for this for some hours, finally found a nice well presented video on it!
I’ve got several: gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/
Wow, I just got this setup as per this video and I'm going to lose many many hours going back over my old RAW photos. This is going to make my printing attempts even worse knowing what dynamic range can be had now on screen which I'll never get on paper. Finally, something to use my XDR display for. Thanks for the setup hints.
Thanks a ton Greg (and for your website additional content too!) - of all the guys out there explaining changes, you are always my go-to-guy. HDRO is something terrific, lemme tellya!
Thank you!
HDR is finally coming to still images. Great news ! Great video by the way. 👍
Thank you
Thanks a lot man!
I watched this on my M1 MBP and involuntarily said "wow" at some of these examples. Particularly the neon lights in the fountain and the merged HDR image after it. Really cool.
Yeah, it’s incredible on that hardware. Mind blowing.
I don't imagine that UA-cam is literally translating the HDR through the encoding process, but still it's surprising how much better this video looks on the laptop screen vs. the attached monitor.
If the laptop is an Apple, you’re probably getting HDR there and not the monitor. The different is dramatic.
i was waiting this for ages searching for this but never find this HDR concept! there is the printed photography limited by the capabilities of the paper but monitor hdr photography is other kind of interpretation of the light and shadows with the new monitor capabilities a new world opens for the photography and new sensors and digital photography!, thanks for your effort of showing this great feature! cheers!
Thanks. I agree that this is an exciting update. I tried it on one photo and the result was pretty extreme, but simply used the HDR sliders lower in the panel--as you showed--and that made the photo look quite good. Thanks again!
Thanks so much, Greg.
You the man, Greg 😎
I have a M1 MBP and just updated my settings. I have the M1 MBP hooked up to an Dell 32" monitor and when I work on a photo in HDR and slide PS from my MBP to the Dell you can really see the impact. The Dell is not able to show the clouds as everything is all blown out. I took some photos kayaking in mid day against the sun and the HDR on the MBP recovers all the detail. Amazing. It also seems like halos disappear with this HDR setting.
One can only hope that it soon appears in the windows version as well. As it is I use Skulums Aurora to get similar results, but it would sure be easier to do it in ACR.
That kind of HDR is totally different. Same name, which is confusing.
Wow this soo amazing! Now I don’t need to use capture one anymore since the main reason i used it was because the colors looked better, but I hated the interface and it sucked that I couldnt use my LR presets I made over the years in C1. So this new feature in Adobe Camera RAW is a god send. It’s just want I needed for my workflow! Thanks for making this video!
Awesome! Do you know when HDR is going to be available on Windows and Lightroom?
Haven't seen any Adobe announcement
Super helpful!
Thanks for the great lesson. I only edit images for printing on silver halide papers. Can there be any benefit HDR editing for making prints on Fuji crystal archival paper? Thanks again Rees.
It will not make better prints. However, you can easily do both print and get the HDR benefit for sharing on social, via text, etc. gregbenzphotography.com/hdr#printing
There is also some very good knowledge to be gained by editing HDR. You’ll understand the RAW data better, can white balance more accurately, etc. So indirectly, you may find that helps you create somewhat better prints.
Finally having an HDR monitor its like a whole new digital world has opened up in front of me. Sadly windows is pretty limited as far as HDR and wide color gamut support goes. Its going to be probably a long while before we can even view HDR still images in anything that isn't the web browser but I'm still hopeful.
I wish more people cared about proper HDR like this though. I've always felt like I was trying to tell people about an idea that never existed whenever I mentioned HDR photography in different photography communities. They would either say that its useless, or they would assume that I'm talking about the "old HDR" and it would be redundant. So hopefully this will change now that we are starting to get HDR capable displays built into consumer devices like laptops.
We’ve got browsing and editing, so that’s a great start. Obviously more ,complete support will be great. What other software would you find helpful for HDR photography?
Which monitor are you using with Windows now?
@@gregbenzphotography At the moment its the Innocn 27m2v. I originally added it to my amazon wish list about a year ago at the price of $1129 CAD. It looked like a pretty good deal considering its a vesa displayHDR 1000 certified monitor, 1152 local dimming zones, 4k resolution 160hz refreshrate and displays both p3 and adobe RGB perfectly. I heard the factory calibrations weren't the greatest but I was just happy it did it good enough.
However about a year later, the price dropped twice and I even found an available coupon for it. Snagged it for $550 CAD with free shipping. (roughly $400 USD). It seems the factory calibrations have even improved too. The average delta E is below 1 for sRGB, Adobe RGB, and P3.
I think the last time I saw a monitor that could display colors this well was during a field trip to the profusion expo event in toronto, a benQ representative was there showcasing a 4k 10 bit monitor with a huge many-four figures price tag. A monitor that maxed out at 250 nits and had no local dimming or HDR capabilities at that, requiring you to sit underneath a monitor hood in order to see anything in the partly sunlit room.
But then here I am, viewing HDR content in all its glory with magnificent 1500-1600 nit peaks on an awesome budget monitor snag from amazon, with the monitor sitting right next to a sunlit window half the time.
In terms of software though, I use a free open source software called HDR merge to merge large amounts of camera RAWS into a single image, and then I edit it in luminar AI. Unfortunately neither of these supports true HDR, not even the new version of luminar. But its the software that I've used for years, and didn't require breaking the bank as a student.
Also if you are curious, the computer I use is a framework laptop 16. (7840HS, 32GB DDR5, 1TB SN770. RX 7700S). its my work, school, and personal computer for everything I do. Probably my most expensive piece of equipment but I've made great usage out of it already. My old computer was some 2 in 1 slab of plastic that acer used to make, it could hardly handle editing photos but I somehow managed to use it for over four years.
Editing all of my photos on its glorious, 1080P, 6 bit screen with terrible sRGB color accuracy. Looking back I have no idea how I thought that was even acceptable, but at least it wasn't as bad as the terrible 768 and 720p LCD screens in my school's commtech classroom.
Oh how things have changed since then.
Thanks for the video, Greg! I'm trying to wrap my head around this as I'm definitely not as technically skilled as you. Why can't you just export what you see on the screen as a jpeg? You can obviously record your HDR screen a show us the result, so why is this screen-determined? I hope you understand the question, not sure I understood how to express it 😅
It is creating truly brighter pixels. If you compressed this tonal range on a standard display, it would look low contrast (which is why these RAW files look nearly white as SDR and show new detail as HDR). On the XDR display, the max SDR white can be at full brightness is 500 bits, but HDR can hit 1600.
The extra detail here is at risk of banding in 8-bits. You actually could do that (and I have made HDR images in 8-bits), but the hack to do that is not supported by web browsers.
Aside from that, the newer AVIF and JXL files we will use are actually smaller than JPG. So one or both will probably replace a lot of standard JPG use once the browser support is universal (AVIF is nearly there already for SDR images).
If you did export one of these HDR images as JPG (without hacks), you’d find all HDR content clipped. The encoding of these files specifies much brighter values than standard encoding.
@@gregbenzphotography thanks a lot, Greg. I think I understood it 😄
@@MadsPeterIversen @Mads Peter Iversen I've been going super deep on all of this, give me a shout if you have questions. It'll make more sense as you spend more time with it.
So just does what you would normally do with masks or layers to reduce exposure in the highlights. Still have to have the exposure correct so not fully blown out. Just a quick method if you don’t know what you are doing.
No, tthis is something completely different. It requires hardware. You can get a preview on SDR hardware with this video, but it's basically just a simulation. The experience on a true HDR display is hard to understand without seeing it in person.
so u are starting your processing in PS and ARW and not lightroom? But this HDR is only for the screen appearance not not printing., correct? So for print the HDR has no benefit??
Correct, PS got support and then ACR. No LR editing.
This is a vastly better display (looks much closer to real world light), print technology isn’t getting brighter and therefore won’t benefit.
Hi Greg, I've tried to enable it and its not working...I've notice your files are 32 bit. I am trying to do it with my 16 bit raw files and the HDR button isn't showing. Does it have to be 32 bit files only?
Any file will work with this ACR feature. You need to enable the tech preview (as shown near the beginning of this video) for the feature to show. Only on Mac.
If you see the button and it won’t turn on, go to the calibration tab and update the process version to v5 (v3 and later is fine, but any older v2 edits will need to be updated).
I am using windows and camera raw 15.00 and the technology box is not there. Both Adobe raw and photoshop are up to date. A bit sad My monitor doesn't support it but will it be there if I buy an new one.
The tech preview is only for Mac computers
@@gregbenzphotographyThanks Greg I have other software that can achieve something similar but I am curious. Can other monitors that don't support HDR see the HDR changes that are developed in ACR and also printers?
Software must be written to use HDR output. Non -HDR monitors will tonemap the content down to SDR (see gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/#hdrViewOnSdr). You should not print HDR content (you can convert, see gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/#printing)
Hi Greg. Followed the install instructions and I am on all the latest versions but when I click the HDR button the image does not change at all??
Many RAW images won’t (only if you have very bright values in the image). If you don’t expose to the right, you won’t often see a change with just the button. Doesn’t matter, try increasing exposure, highlights, etc. The button is more about what you can do after you click it than about an immediate change.
Your video is well done Greg , but the problem I saw when I tested the new HDR on my Mac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020) , I edit an image with the HDR feature and was very impressed , but upon saving to Photoshop your left with a file that is pretty much useless unless you convert it back to 16 bit , at which point you loose all the dynamics from the ACR - HDR edit and are left with a flat file !
You need to make sure your RAW edit is in a 32-bit file. And if you're using a Smart Object, make sure the color space of the SO and the containing 32-bit document match. You cannot convert color spaces within 32-bits. There is a bug that makes the image look extremely bright (everywhere, not a clipped highlights issue). Having the SO render to something other than the 32-bit document will cause such a conversion and the results look awful.
You also need to enable the HDR tech preview in PS, as shown near the start of this video. One checkbox for ACR, and one for PS to show ACR results properly in the 32-bit space. If you don't do this, highlights will clip in PS.
@@gregbenzphotography Ive done all this Greg above but no matter how you edit , once happy , then open it in Photoshop you have a 32 bit file , you can not save it as an sRGB , say for the web, or for a print , if you convert it to a 16 bit or 8 bit you loose all the luminosity and end up with a dull flat image , you can not print 32 bit or 16 bit files so what is the use of it all?
If it's the Bees Knees , why as Adobe hidden it out far away and not just incorporated it into ACR standard version? Id just like to know what use it is other than looking pretty on my Mac screen!
it seems at the moment it's just all smoke and mirrors for Adobe to keep with Luminar and many other image editing software programs .
@@keithfoster3831 You can export a Jpeg XL from within Camera Raw that you can view in applications that support it (ex, Chrome when you enable the beta support for it).
Keep in mind this is basically the minimum viable product version of HDR, the feature isn't finished yet. Eventually this will work cross-platform and in all the Lightrooms, and you'll be able to export HDR JXL or AVIF files that will be supported on social media platforms in the future. None of that is here yet though. Hence why ACR's HDR mode is only wired up in the Photoshop plugin, and only on macOS, and only supports that one weird file export mode. That was enough to get an image pipeline working, which is what you need for a beta test.
As someone who's been messing with HDR imaging for a few years now(it started as my pandemic eccentricity), I assure you, this is MASSIVE. It's probably the biggest change to ACR/Lightroom in years and is going to be very important to how photography is viewed in the future. I honestly still can't quite believe they actually built this. If you've ever seen the huge difference of a TV show in HDR, just know that what Adobe made here will allow you to export any image you process through Lightroom into the same format. The gallery and sharing tools will come in due time (actually, Apple's Photos app has been ready for awhile, just ACR doesn't currently export to any formats it accepts. Like I said, minimum viable product)
I have Macbook Pro M1 Max and just discovered this amazing feature. May I please ask 2 questions about this HDR? When I open TIFF (as you did) file from Photoshop to Camera Raw, there is no option for HDR. HDR button is not there. Would you advise what is the problem here and how to bring it back?
Also, when I open RAW file in Camera Raw and then edit it as HDR image, I get amazing radiance in the image. How can I save it (as Psd, Jpeg or Tiff?) in such I way that it looks exactly like that? Thank you kindly sir.
The image in PS needs to be in 32-bit mode to see the HDR button in ACR.
TIF or PSB ideal for working images. For sharing:
gregbenzphotography.com/hdr-images/jpg-hdr-gain-maps-in-adobe-camera-raw/
gregbenzphotography.com/photography-tips/exporting-avif-files-from-photoshop/
Waited this for years now, at last! Its so cool, we have hdr movies from 2016, now its time for photos) Also Canon R camers can save in heif hdr. Now I want this feature in Lightroom for Windows as soon as possible
HDR +WCG image viewer APP for windows lets you view HDR images in HDR10 mode already
i have used it for several years so its not something completely new
that app is from 2018 btw
@@thebossnocompetition8757 Are you using other HDR capable image software for Windows? Curious what all is out there.
@@gregbenzphotography Affinity photo, Krita for painting all work in hdr for Windows, also games, you can capture hdr screenshoots in hdr using xbox game bar and nvidia experience in jpeg xr format
Thanks! I’d forgotten Affinity supports Windows. I’ve struggled to get Krita to export HDR (the PNG used a profile browsers won’t use) and haven’t gotten some other export formats to work when selecting HDR options, seemed like possible bugs to me - but I didn’t spend too much time on it.
Any idea when it will be available for Windows, Greg?
No aware of any Adobe announcement
I have an m1 pro-16-inch, and I must say, wow! I threw in a photo of a fireworks show and the HDR really brought out the detail and pop of the fireworks. Now if they could add this feature to Lightroom... Also, now that I have these HDR images, how do I display while preserving the HDR. I'ver heard you can display them fullscreen on chrome but how do I do that? Thank you
See my content on sharing and exporting HDR gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/
is there a way to render this image so that it looks basically the same for print?
Or even looks the same on a non hdr monitor? I am viewing this video on a 2014 lcd monitor that is not even close to hdr, and I can see all of the dramatic difference represented in the video. So why is it not possible to somehow convert that hdr file to a sdr equivilant? In your finsihed hdr, the brightest bright is still pure white, and the blackest black is still pure black, what difference does it make?
For example you could take a screenshot of the sdr image, then take a screenshot of the hdr image. And if people looked at the two images on a non hdr monitor would they not see the difference? Its just theat then the image would be a low resolution. But it seems there should be a way to render the HDR image to an SDR equivilant that approximates all the same detail and color of the extended dynamic range, with maybe just a slight difference.
The ideal is to have a gain map where we have full control over the SDR. That would allow exact encoding of the print-intended image and HDR. Please add your vote for it: community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-ideas/allow-full-user-control-of-the-sdr-rendition-in-an-hdr-gain-map-export/idi-p/14205440#M19464
There are a few ways to manage both print and HDR now: gregbenzphotography.com/hdr#printing
You can see relative differences with HDR tone mapped to SDR, which is why you see that difference. But both are compromised. If all you have is the range of an SDR display, the old compromise of sacrificing highlights is the way to go. But with an HDR display, you no longer need that compromise and can get much better quality. See my site with Chrome on an M-1 or later MacBook Pro to see just how great it can be. gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/
HDR photo is truly amazing. I have a question regarding this: When I import a JPG photo into ACR and click the HDR button, I've noticed that the photo gains HDR-like qualities similar to those seen in RAW images. Interestingly, even animated illustrations seem to achieve a level of realism akin to real HDR photos when treated similarly. I am really curious about what's happening.
They’re expanding into the HDR range to give you a good starting point. It’s an alteration from the actual image encoding, and I find it’s very helpful - often very beneficial to the image.
thank u helped me a lot
I am probably asking a dumb question. I shoot a canon RP which creates .cr3 raw images at 16-bit. I am not seeing the HDR button in ACR. I am assuming it is because it is a 16-bit image? Can I change a 16-bit to a 32-bit image?
Your file is great. You could even process an 8-bit a JPG source file as HDR. If you don’t see the button, be sure you’ve updated to ACR v15.1, enabled the tech preview, and restarted PS.
@@gregbenzphotography I changed the profile on my monitor and it worked. Thank you.
Great stuff, great examples. What about the merge to HDR option that you can use on images with multiple exposure captured in camera
Yes! Those special DNG files can be used as well the workflow is the same, but you’d have more data and may be able to get a better result.
This sounds like a great improvement. Now, if I could just find it. It is not showing up in the Preferences/technology previews, etc. I seem to have really bad luck lately.
Need ACR 15 and a Mac (Windows not supported in this initial tech preview)
@@gregbenzphotography Bummer
Interesting. I don't have the option "Technology Preview" while i do have the Camera Raw Ver. 15. Any ideas?
MacOS only at this time
@@gregbenzphotography Oh, now i see ! Thank you.
Did you explain if you needed an HDR monitor or if the output file could only seen on on HDR enabled screens? or is this all available on SDR screens'
It’s an option on any Mac, and I do use it with my external SDR screen. I can’t see the benefit there, but it’s still useful for blind editing, exporting JXL, etc.
@@gregbenzphotography I’ve tried it on my side screen and I can see the benefits so I think there is some added value
I can see the HDR option in PS but the HDR side of the graph is a flat line and I do not see any changes in the image. I am guessing I somehow missed a step that enables the display on the HDR side. I have tried both RAW and PSD files. Doesn't seem to make a difference. I see the HDR button but nothing changes.
Depends on how your image is exposed for that first shift. Just increase exposure, highlights, etc to push into the HDR range. Many images won’t immediately show a shift until you edit.
Hi Greg, I'm trying to edit my recent photos but when I click the HDR button nothing change. Is it because I've shot 14-bit raw file (Sony A7-3)?
The button is not expected to affect all images immediately when you click it (depends on brightness of RAW content). You can then change exposure, highlights, etc to push into the HDR range.
While I understand the true benefit is realized entirely on HDR-capable displays only, can processing an image with this provide any improvement when exporting for SDR or preparing for print?
Perhaps, I need more time with it. But I suspect no. RAW processing has been optimized from the start to get the best possible SDR tonemapping out of what is often a RAW file with wider dynamic range. Those algorithms are really good, and we've been able to blend these things manually the whole time as well. There may be some unexpected benefits (for example, it's really helped me better understand highlight data that was already in my files that I didn't fully appreciate).
@@gregbenzphotography - that's what I suspected as I've started playing around with it this morning. It is very cool to see on the MBP XDR display, though! Thanks for your wonderful information, as always.
@@jason.coward yeah, that XDR display is a game-changer. I can't wait for WebKit support to see HDR on the iPhone (2000 nits on the iPhone 14). HDR HEIC photos looks great, but I feel like I'm barely scratching the surface of what this screen can do.
@@gregbenzphotography - it really is… and OMG! I just realized they added curves adjustment within masks and I'm freaking out a little! 🥳🥳🥳
@@jason.coward yep, pretty awesome updates! Good to see improved content-aware options in RAW too.
Amazing !!!
Not really understanding the benefits of HDR. I have already merged several bracketing photos and edit with AUTO. It's almost the same & cannot see the difference. Can you comment ?
Do you have an HDR display? See the tests here gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/
@@gregbenzphotography I use 2017 MacBook Pro version. Not sure whether it's HDR display or not. Let me check. Thanks
2018 was the first year for any Mac according to Apple’s support page
Is this carried over to Lightroom? To near my computer so can’t try it out
ACR only with today’s updates. LR got some great other features though.
I'm seeing a lot of comments on this technique not being suitable for normal print to paper mediums, which I understand, as it's all about the screen you use, but could this tequnique be used for print to metal? It might be a suck it and see, I suppose. But I'd be interested in your thoughts.
Probably not, as highlights there probably already map to SDR white. But the higher the contrast the media can support, the better the print would match the HDR on screen. And that probably simplifies dual use of the image for print plus display.
@@gregbenzphotography Thanks Greg.
Ive just set this up but when you click on the HDR button there is no change. Does the file your using need to be a particular format? Thanks for the video by the way.
It just allows HDR content, doesn’t mean your RAW needs it at default settings - but you can push it there via highlights, exposure, etc (you can do the same with non-RAW content and it’s very powerful).
I am not seeing update to ACR 15 in creative cloud its say all up to date v14.5
Takes time to roll out to all. Try restarting and checking again.
I wonder if you could explain something... I get that you need an HDR monitor for this new feature. But it did look alittle better even on youtube and my old monitor. Had you prepared the images to do that, just to demonstrate the point? Or if not, and there is some kind of improvement, then how come its not available on windows just as an editing feature? Thanks
To help old monitors, UA-cam is tone mapping the HDR content to render within the limits of your SDR monitor. It will look much better on an HDR monitor, but at least you can get a sense of the content. Similarly, HDR still images will render on SDR screens, they just won't look as nice.
I've just added a longer answer to your question at gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/#hdrViewOnSdr
Thanks for sharing Greg. Just installed ACR 15 but no HDR option??
If you're on Windows, you're out of luck at this point. HDRO is MacOS only in ACR v15. But Windows also supports HDR, so hopefully we'll see it everywhere in due time. Given the installed HDR base for Apple is massively larger than what appears to be out there on the PC or external monitor side, this seems like the right starting point. I expect HDR evolves substantially in the coming year or so, it's all very new.
@@gregbenzphotography Thanks, lets hope windows user will get HDR option soon. Looks great and time saving. I know how to edit it but its a time consuming process. Cheers
Excellent work Greg. Thank you. Will these expanded capabilities be available for printed images (lab printed or inkjet). Thanks again.
No, you need an emissive media, not reflective, to get this level of contrast / dynamic range / brightness. You would therefore convert to SDR to print or create separate versions (which is easy to do), not print direct from the HDR (which would be clipped in the highlights).
it's exciting but at this moment there is no way you can save the edited file and view on your Mac which makes it useless. In the official document they say png is supported. However if I exported it as png with HDR enabled the image just looks very washed out.
You can export as JXL, which can also be converted to AVIF. There’s also an AVIF plugin for PS which has HDR support in beta to natively open and save such files. Both these file formats can be viewed in Chrome as HDR on both Mac and Windows.
I would skip PNG. It’s hard to create and even when you do it correctly, not supported by browsers properly (as it’s uses an ICC profile and mechanism like CICP are the basis of HDR support for browsers, as it’s much simpler to support).
@@gregbenzphotography thank you but the jpgxl is almost the same size as the raw file which doesn’t make sense to me. My goal is to import it to the Photos app on mac while maintaining the hdr effect of course. Is there anyway to do that? It’s frustrating that you can shoot hdr photo with iPhone but can’t edit it with 3rd party app or otherwise it loses the hdr effect.
JXL (with proper settings) is actually much smaller than a JPG of comparable quality. I’ve seen images shrink by substantial amounts.
Photos does not yet support HDR for these formats, sadly. It probably supports EXR and 32-bit TIF, as MacOS supports these generally. We’re early in the days of HDR, and I expect this will improve significantly in the coming year.
Just read your email about the addition of this process to Windows. Can this technique be applied to prints or used in photo books? Based on the video, my guess is that it can't be used directly but perhaps via the method you describe to manipulate an SDR image before exporting.
No, because the old SDR white is paper. Anything below that would get ink in a printing process. Printing HDR would imply values brighter than the paper (ie making the paper glow). So a direct print of HDR would clip and that's now how you should print these images. Ultimately, not that different conceptually from processing images with vibrant colors that need to be managed because they are gamut for the printer.
There are ways to get great prints and take advantage of much better display offered by HDR. Please see gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/#printing
Oh so the windos version of ACR can do this too? Thank you.@@gregbenzphotography
@anno1942 yep! From ACR v15.1 onwards. Need to enable the tech preview.
Thank you so much!@@gregbenzphotography
Thanks for this very helpful video. Very exciting to see this. Do you know if it will also come to Lightroom Classic?
It's not there at this stage, I'm unaware of any Adobe announcement on future plans
@@gregbenzphotography Thanks Greg. I have to believe that it will come in a future version.
I am watching this video on an SDR display and the HDR improvement looks great but when you switch on the SDR preview it loses all its pop, can you help me understand why it's losing so much with the SDR preview on, remember I don't know what you are seeing with an HDR monitor I am just seeing the end result from UA-cam. Whereas if you did a screen grab of the hdr it would look great, thank you in advance : )
What do you mean “SDR preview”?
If you mean the option in ACR, it will pretty much always look inferior to the HDR (since we are using HDR to get a better result). The SDR preview is “tone mapping” from HDR to SDR (squeezing its tonal range).
@@gregbenzphotography Thank you Greg for your answer, I think I didn't explain myself properly on why I am confused, I understand that on your HDR monitor the changes will be very noticeable. In your video at 10.02 I see a much more inviting image after you turn off the preview for SDR display, if I am watching on an SDR display, why do I see that change? I haven't seen the big changes you must see on an HDR display but in your video, I do see a reduction in image pop. If you process as HDR and save as a normal jpg will you have the popping image from image 10.02 or the flatter image from 10.00. The fact that your screen recorder can show me on my SDR Monitor the poping (HDR) I know it must be much more poping for you on a HDR monitor but the duller SDR preview image is confusing me. Thank you in advance.
The video you see on an SDR monitor is tone mapped, which gives a sense of the difference but isn’t showing true HDR and the real benefit.
JPG would save as SDR (clipped or tone mapped depending on how you save it). AVIF is the best way to save and share HDR images on the web.
@@gregbenzphotography Thank you, Greg, I understand that but what I am saying is that although I am seeing your recording on my SDR monitor the image looks better before you touch the SDR preview button. On your SDR screen recording the image appears worse after you press the SDR preview. In short, is there any advantage in using the HDR function if you intend to output as a jpg, sorry for taking up so much of your time, and thanks in advance :)
JPG does not currently support HDR, you should use AVIF to share HDR.
There is no real benefit to making an HDR and degrading it by converting to SDR (compared to just making an SDR from the start), but that capability is still helpful so that you can share both HDR and SDR versions of an image so that people can see the best version of the image supported by their monitor.
So if I understand this correctly it is for sharing HDR content to your or other HDR displays? So as a print person this has really no value.
If you don’t care about sharing images on the web, social media, your phone, etc - then no. This content is not printable.
Print does indeed support outside sRGB colors, even in nornal CMYK. So yeah. As for HDR it mostly depends on what light illuminates the picture. Prints are not self-emissive.
The HDR sounds great but it looks like SDR is still the need for print since the printers work of JPEG, I that correct?
HDR content really isn't printable, so you'd be creating a separate image for display vs print (we already do this now for best results, but the capability gap is larger with HDR).
what version of Mac OS does this need to work?
Not sure, but you’ll need a Mac from the last 4 years, so you’ll be able to update if required
@@gregbenzphotography thanks. I’ll reach out to Adobe. My Mac is 5 years old.
I watched the video on an SDR display but still the difference when you turn on HDR is remarkable. How come I can see the difference? Wouldn’t it be helpful with this feature for adding more dynamic range to an image no matter where it will be displayed?
UA-cam tone mapping lets you get a simulation of the effect, see gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/#hdrViewOnSdr
Watch the video again on an M1 MacBook Pro and you’ll really see what HDR can offer.
Darn, any idea when it comes to Windows?
Aw, man. You got me to move my UA-cam window from my BenQ SRGB monitor to my MBP M1 and WOW! Now I need a new monitor, dang it!
Right?! My Eizo is looking very tired next to the MBP.
I plan to buy MB Pro M1 and PS for using ACR to edit and export to JXL, but from what I understand, I will not be able to view the hdr pictures on Photos app, only in Chrome or ACR/PS? I am not intrested in sharing the pics, only to start using this amazing hdr workflow for my private colection of photos and enjoy viewing them in a photo viewer app.
I do not understand all the complaints about printing or things not working perfectly, if you love photography, you can only be amazed by the realism that the hdro higher dynamic range provides and appreciate others who are trying to help you with a workflow for this.
Thanks for your dedication, this is a big step ahead in photo processing indeed!
That’s correct, and I expect those rough edges will improve. It is inevitable that the various software systems keep improving (as they have been steadily over the last year).
I discovered the benefits of hdr(hdro not the old hdr) on photos few months ago while using the 48mpx proraw photos with the iphone 14 pro. Although the size is 100mb/photo, I cannot go back now to heif or jpeg because I will lose those extreme highlights that make the images so real. As I mentioned, I planned to buy the MB Pro M1 to enjoy video and photos on that gorgeous hdr display, but unfortunately I tested today in a store and a proraw photo that I sent from iphone by airdrop to MB Pro M1 is not displayed as hdr in Photos app on macOS, but sdr. I do not understand this limitation and I can't figure out if I am doing something wrong or indeed this limitation exist. Do you know if this is the case? thanks!
It is my understanding that a HEIC from an iPhone can be HDR (with supported settings) and would show as HDR in the photos app, but I haven’t tested it. Please email me, this would be interesting to investigate further, there should be a solution. gregbenzphotography.com/contact/
Very informative Greg, will need to check my Apple 5k monitor to see if it supports the HDR function. When adjusting the image using the HDR function did you encounter the introduction of noise into the image?
I haven’t seen any noise issues
The Apple Pro Display XDR is 1600 bits (best in class like the MacBook Pro), the 5k studio is 600 nits (great for HDR, just don’t push screen to max brightness).
@@gregbenzphotography thanks Greg, look forward to trying it out
I'm interested to see how this performs with gamut considerations.
You can use HDR with any gamut your monitor supports. It's like changing brightness normally.
@@gregbenzphotography My primary monitor is a Benq 4k, I'm anxious to try out the new iteration of software, I'm on a pc system. Thanks Greg.
Most of today’s external monitors do not support HDR. I’ve got tests you can run via Chrome on my site gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/
correct term is HDR10
also can you control the Nits levels or can you see the actual Nits for the highlights in the histogram?
How good HDR looks much depends on what display you use.
higher Nit display and you get even more details in the highlights.
And last how do you save these files and view them after?
i use HDR +WCG image viewer APP for windows to view HDR images in HDR10 mode already and it works great.
That’s a specific implantation of HDR display. Adobe is using an Apple API for this output, not HDR10 - which may be used by MacOS (I don’t know, probably varies between XDR, external monitors, etc). I haven’t seen documentation as to whether they use HDR10 for internal displays. There are numerous standards in this space.
The nits would be a function of your display hardware and current brightness level. As you adjust brightness, you alter "HDR headroom", which is a measure of the HDR benefit. I've got a test (#8) on my site to help get an exact number for your display: gregbenzphotography.com/hdr#tests
Can export as JXL as shown in this video (though JXL support is limited - you can enable a developer flag in Chrome to see it there or use a test build of FireFox). A more useful HDR format right now is AVIF (Chrome supports HDR AVIF by default, other browsers support AVIF but not HDR versions yet). This will all change rapidly. See the e-book from my site (gregbenzphotography.com/hdr) for details on how to export now, it's tricky at the moment but will surely get better quickly as support is rolled out for these new formats.
@@gregbenzphotography great work on that HDR webpage!
i dont know about any other sites that has real HDR images.
im watching it in HDR10 mode right now amazing.
Thank you!
very very cool
Thanks Greg! I am curious how this will play out on an EIZO Coloredge monitor? Probably not at all, since they're not HDR monitors. And then I wonder, since this workflow seems to be for display only and not print, what is it good for? Will we have to make separate edits for screen and print? Because in this case, this will be shut off on my systems.
I have an Eizo, and I’m seriously considering getting the Apple Pro Display XDR. The Eizo can’t do HDR and the XDR display in the laptop puts it to shame when you compare with such an image.
The only Eizo that supports HDR (that I know of) is a $35,000 reference monitor. Its only a matter of time before we have cost effective options from the major players, HDR is already critical for video, exciting in games, and will be huge for photography.
Asus has a $2500 external HDR monitor.
The fact that Apple has built this into most of their screens is mind blowing to me. They have massively downplayed this. If they flip the switch to add HDR AVIF support in WebKit, every iPhone and iPad will immediately have incredible HDR support for images on the web.
HDR is definitely display only, but that’s critical and very useful. We’re already modifying images to optimize for print and I think HDR just creates more difference. You can easily get great dual versions, but we’ll be trying to figure out the optimal display + print workflow for a while.
Would it be possible to edit in HDR mode in ACR and double process smart object raws (shadow, highlights) to smartly compress the dynamic range for print?
You’d still be creating HDR. You can change a 32-bit image to 16-bit mode and use ACR to convert to a nice SDR (if your prefs specify use of ACR).
@@gregbenzphotography I count on you on this one :) To me it looks a bit gimmicky tbh. Especially considering when one sells prints on the internet. I want my images to look the same across the board. All in all this seems like an Instagram filter that will never transport to a print.
How does this show up in prints?
Unprintable, it would clip the bright HDR content. You would need to convert to SDR to print.
How does this translate to print?
gregbenzphotography.com/hdr#printing
a little more detail working between HDR and print
?
gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/#printing for details on what this means for printing
I wonder if there are free alternatives that do this, but I doubt it
Options are limited. Maybe something I’ve missed, but I don’t think you’ll find anything as powerful and elegant as this elsewhere. Adobe has created some truly stunning tools. Hard to fill appreciate them until you dive deeply into to all of it.
Greg - is this an Apple silicon thing only?
No, any HDR capable Mac (the option will actually show on any Mac, which allows use of JXL export even if you have say a very old Mac that won’t display the extra content).
It's great but you can't post or print them yet
You can actually post a few ways, including directly from LR: gregbenzphotography.com/hdr-images/how-to-share-your-hdr-photos-on-the-web-directly-from-lightroom/
There are a few good workflows for print + HDR: gregbenzphotography.com/hdr#printing
When I save the photo back to capture one Pro, it makes my photo looks totally different. I had to check for HDR mode off.
Because it does not support it, so you’re seeing a clipped version in their software. I’m sure they’ll add support in time. Affinity has it now.
@@gregbenzphotography yeah with the new update on Photoshop it’s messing my whole workflow up I can’t even edit in Photoshop now I have to stay in capture one now🤦🏽♂️🤦🏽♂️🤦🏽♂️
Some issue other than HDR not supported in CaptureOne?
@@gregbenzphotography yes, when I take it to camera raw and use a preset or make any type of adjustments and save it back to Capture one pro it makes the photo extremely brighter and the colors are off. I’m uninstalling the latest version of Photoshop and going back to the old version.
That’s probably something else other than a bug if you aren’t saving 32-bit files.
Why isn't this available on PC?
Probably simple math, the Apple installed base of HDR-capable devices is massively larger at this time. I also get the sense that developer support in MacOS makes it easier, but I don’t know that for a fact.
@@gregbenzphotography, thank you.
I love it, but I wonder how many will be able to use it if they cannot see it on their monitors? They had better bring it out for windows soon :-)
Chrome does a nice job tone mapping HDR to SDR. Anyone can see the image on a supporting browser. That leaves a lot of gaps today, but those gaps are going to close quickly. Chrome is key, as that's ~65% of the usage. The main gap right now is WebKit, as we can't see HDR images on any browser on an iPhone or iPad, and they also have excellent HDR screens.
Minimun nits to notice this?
600 with screen at half brightness is good, but 1000+ nits is the ideal
@@gregbenzphotography Any recommendation around 1200$ US, thank you
@kanedafx1 my general recommendations: gregbenzphotography.com/review-best-hdr-monitor-for-photography/
Anything in particular you’re considering?
@@gregbenzphotography 1st. thank you so much for your time, No sure what to get, I'm stuck for almost a year, I was about to get the MSI MPG321UR-QD for the wide color gamut, 600nits, but is only 16 zones. those cheap Chinese KTC and Innocn look like having many problems, I saw your recommendations or expensive or 16 zones too, I have about 1k,1,2k budget, I was looking also the Asus PA32UCR-k but seems like have blooming issues....I not a pro but I love photo/video as hobby
@kanedafx1 is take a good look at the PA32UCR-K. I haven’t seen it, but similar ASUS gaming monitors were already pretty decent when I viewed them.
It has the same number of zones as the Pro Display XDR. I own that monitor and it has blooming. It’s obvious if you move the cursor over a black screen in a dark room or run a star field test, but you hardly ever see it under normal use. Only an OLED or something exotic would outperform that XDR. Blooming is going to affect any mini-LED to some degree, it’s a question of how much.
If you can view in person or buy with a way to return, I think it’s definitely worth checking out.
The HDR button does not appear...:(
On a Mac using v15?
@@gregbenzphotography yes, M1 mbpro 13
Check that the tech preview is enabled and PS restarted. With that software, settings I showed early in the video, and that hardware it should be there.
@@gregbenzphotography Done and working now! Thanks alot Greg! Much appreciated!
The problem here is that I can't show my hdr results to anyone! Even macos can't display that 32-bit tiffs correctly.
HDR AVIF already works great on Chrome. gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/
It’s a modest start for sure, but support should expand significantly in time.
@@gregbenzphotography I tried all you wrote! Thanks a lot! But even avif not showing correctly in latest macos 13 with HDR display. So, mayby in far future only :-(
Yeah, I see Ventura isn’t supporting it yet either for Safari. Chrome works there, but we really need Apple support (in particular so that all their great HDR iPhones and iPads have support).
Something does not compute. I was watching this video on my old LCD TV that was built in 2008. I don’t know exactly, but I’m pretty sure it does not even come close to supporting even SRGB. Still, I could clearly see the difference from the normal and the HDR version. Even if you turned on preview SDR. with zeroed out sliders there was a difference to the HDR. If this is just to take advantage of the capabilities of HDR screens in my book, I shouldn’t have seen anything on my old TV.
So in my book this means that it doesn’t only expand the range, but actually make some adjustments to the values of color and luminance etc.
UA-cam tone maps the HDR to SDR. On a proper HDR screen, the resolution option at bottom right of the video will show HDR in red. Otherwise, you are getting a decent simulation of HDR, but not nearly as good as actual HDR display.
I don't get why pictures looks better when You turn on HDR. It's y2b video. And it is not HDR. It looks like that with some processing You can get better results from these images in SDR. Melia building example looks like in highlighs were added a lot of whites and vibrance and contrast to blacks but increased brightness in shadows. Is this the limitation of acr that it smushes all the whites? All would be clear if I were seeing this on HDR video with HDR display.
They are squishing the tonal range to fit what your monitor can handle. So you aren't seeing something truly impressive with an SDR screen, but you can at least get an idea of what HDR might do. Try watching this with Chrome on a M1 MacBook Pro, and it will be very clear what HDR can offer. Also, my website with test images: gregbenzphotography.com/hdr
@@gregbenzphotography I will try on my LG with laughable 450 nits and HDR capability :D
I've just added a longer answer to your question at gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/#hdrViewOnSdr
Works but most of it is blown out. Maybe I need to tweak something or maybe it is not possible with this display to see better result.
See my test page gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/
FYI I played with this feature, then deactivated it as I decided not to use it for now. To do this I went back into Preferences and unchecked the items I previously had selected.
Unfortunately now when importing an image from Camera RAW to Photoshop, the image is highly desaturated and I have very little latitude to recover the sauration. My workaround is to export the image as a .tif file, and then open it in Photoshop.
I have uninstalled Photoshop and reinstalled it. I have also reinstalled the previous version of Photoshop. I continue to have this problem. I am running on a 2021 Macbook Pro M1 with 32GB RAM. I have submitted a bug report to Adobe. I will let you know what I hear from Adobe.
If you turn off the feature (or just don’t click the HDR button), it’s off. Look to see what color space is being used for new imports. That could explain some desaturation if defaulting to sRGB now.
@@gregbenzphotography Its is set to Adobe RGB. I only use sRGB on export to .jpg. I just tried to reactivate it and got the same result. Perhaps this is a bug?
Haven’t heard of any such bug. I suspect some other explanation, but certainly could be a bug, especially with a new release.
Yo Greg - I heard back from Adobe and there is a fix for this.
Quoting from their response: “When you turn on the HDR feature in ACR, it bumps ACR to support 32-bit editing. If you turn the HDR feature off, the 32-bit mode gets stuck ON. This will affect all images subsequently opened into Ps from ACR.
The fix is to go into ACR preferences and select 8-bit on the workflow tab. Restart Photoshop, open the pref a second time, and things should work again from there.”
I tried it and it works. It also works changing to 16 bit. Hopefully they will address the behavior in a maintenance release.
Interesting, haven’t seen that. I’ve always been able to toggle HDR at will. Thanks for the info!
Is there anything holding Adobe back from implementing this in Lightroom as well? Wondering what I should do with all my photos, maybe batch export them all out again using HDR? @gregbenzphotography How do we get these images out from Photoshop and into Photos on MacOS while maintaining HDR like those iPhone photos?
The e-book linked from my site has more info on exporting JXL or AVIF images for the web: gregbenzphotography.com/hdr
It's pretty easy to do batch JXL export but AVIF is tougher as it requires command line tools currently (which I cover in the e-book). Only a matter of time before multiple software applications solve this for us, these rough edges will get smoothed out.
@@gregbenzphotography Thanks! Yeah I agree, we are on the cusp of HDR editing becoming the norm. I am just very curious as to what to do with the 70,000 finished edited raws in Lightroom, and whats the easiest way to get them into MacOS Photos (my main organising and displaying app for slideshows etc). Seems Apple is not allowing jxl format, and Adobe is not allowing heif - so still stuck in-between. Oh and thank you for the most excellent overview and explanations of this world right now. You are truly gifted in understanding and teaching. Keep it up 🙂
For now, you may to split. In time, I’d expect things get much more flexible.
Greg at 12:24 you made an HDR adjustment to an existing file using ACR 15 as a filter inside of photoshop.... now.... get it out. Show me how you got that file out of the CR Filter or our of Photoshop. I will give you a super chat or whatever you need to get me that. So far I am been using Bridge to convert my TIFFs to DNG so I can open in ACR (non-filter) and then try to save them, but it fails.
Covered in my e-book gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/
I’ll do a video on it soon. It’s quirky at this early stage.
I've been waiting for this for last 4 years and it turns out it's Mac only... my day is ruined and my disappointment is immeasurable! Adobe plz...
Although as much as I crave this it won't be truly useful until google photos adds avif support. Though I'm guessing this might be the kick in the but google needs to go and finally do it.
What kind of HDR display (nits) do you have? How have you been using it?
what's so frustrating to me is that if Adobe would release the slider constraints we could replicate this dynamic range in SDR. The highlight/shadow slider range is totally arbitrary and there's no reason why we can't have a range 5x greater than what we currently have. Or if they implemented adjustment stacking without constraints we could do the same. But no, 1-100 is all you get.
This is by definition not possible in SDR, which is a smaller range of brightness.
@@gregbenzphotography If we could stack adjustments as groups (or have larger ranges with sliders), it would be possible to almost replicate what we're seeing here. All the data is there, but the processing engine isn't designed for extracting all its potential. I've been fighting with them about this since 2007 and they refuse to budge. There's no technical reason why we shouldn't be able to stack adjustments or have more range than what's allowed... it's that they simply don't believe we should go beyond those boundaries.
@@gregbenzphotography Same goes for Curves inside of local. This is something we begged for since day 1 and the hurdle was never technical...
@@eartho @eartho It is not possible without HDR, this is displaying pixels brighter than standard white. It's physically different at a hardware level.
You can get much better SDR with those techniques, but it is definitely not the same as the HDR output. See on an M1 MacBook Pro and you'll understand.
Also, Nikon files 😋
They add some significant new file support or something for Nikon?
@@gregbenzphotography No I just noticed you were using Nikon files which are fantastic.
Yeah, love the D850! Still one of the best after all these years.
So this is pretty much only usable to enjoy your own work on your own PC at this point....doesn't seem very useful beyond that
I wish HDR was an industry and technology standard...but it seems the content we create will be stuck in the realm of SDR until that happens
I have printed at most 500 of the 130,000 or so images on my computer. I’ll gladly take an improvement which only applies to screens.
The standards are coming together, hardware and software deployment will take time. But it’s already very good in the Apple ecosystem. Only a matter of time before this is the norm, new tech always starts from zero user base.
What with the Mac only stuff. Starting to act like Luminar did when it first came out. Took years to make it compatible with PC. I am a PC guy and will always be. I do not buy Apple Stuff. Any time reference for PC? In the mean time PC Users, Try out Luminar Neo HDR extension. Truly impressive and beat Photoshop to the draw again just like Sky Replacement.
It’s just simple math for any software developer right now. Apple is way, way ahead in this case. They’ve been putting out HDR hardware in volume for 4 years now. PCs will see more and more of this in time surely. Affinity supports HDR and might support it on Windows now, I haven’t tried to test that. Krita may also support now.
This looks great on screen, but this is going to make people's expectations and failures when it comes to printing even worse... The bust will be even worse than it was before with a SDR monitor and it was already a source of problems for lots of people. Now, the print and the screen will be so far different that it will be laughable.
Maybe. I think print artists will need to keep innovating to compete with such gorgeous displays. Plenty of reasons to stay exited for print.
@@gregbenzphotography Agreed.
Some of us still print! Hahaha... For me that's what photography is. I print with inkjet, but I also make gravure and pt/pd prints from digital negatives. A hand-made print is the craft aspect of photography that I really enjoy.
I’m definitely still printing and totally hear you. I think everyone should make large prints - aside from the beauty, the learnings from the printing process make you a better photographer.
that is one reason people love the dye sublimation prints vs. traditional inkjet. The saturation and pop looks like an hdr image or backlit.
@@MarktrustingJesus How do you like dye sub vs Lumachrome prints? I've done a lot of metallic prints over the years for saturation (looks really interesting with WHCC's transfer to canvas), but metallic is a different animal
It is a shame that you didn't give a warning regarding downloading 16 bit picture and then automatically converting to 32 bit which means many of the processing parts done work and converting to 16 bit gives a horrible desaturated image. If I had known this I wouldn't have done this. I know know there is a 'fix' but hardly satisfactory. Please be careful in future as not all as IT software aware as you are.
You’re not doing it right, that’s avoidable
just work with masks
You’re not seeing it, try on a real HDR display. You can still use masks, the point is not that button, but that you can display things are not otherwise possible with masks or any technique, it’s a difference in pixel brightness.
Finally! This is what i was hoping for for years! Higher output brightness
Now hoping for .heif support for natural viewing on iOS devices
And support in all browsers
Chrome now supports displaying hdr photos in .avif codec
HEIF is supported in Safari with the latest Apple releases.
Ultimately, a JPG (and eventually AVIF for better quality and smaller files) gain map is probably more likely to be the way to share HDR online. Unclear if HEIF support will make it to other browsers.
An AV1 / AVIF video is a nice option (and possibly a useful hack for sites like Instagram which support HDR videos but not yet photos). However, such a format is inferior to a gain map as it means browser tone mapping for any SDR or lesser HDR viewing, vs the artist-created SDR version from a gain map.