The "old" HDR vs "new" HDR
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- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
- There is a lot of confusion around "HDR" these days, as the same name is being used for a completely new and unrelated technology. In this video, you'll learn how the new HDR (true high dynamic range display enabled by new hardware) compares to the old HDR (tone mapping, for old standard dynamic range displays).
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Its amazing to finally have a monitor that can reasonably display actual HDR content. Its like opening up a window into a whole new world.
I am all for the proliferation of HDR images, videos, and displays!! Let's stop using standards from 30 years ago!!!
wow thats wild. All of a sudden all these photos I used to think looked great look so flat
It’s crazy how much of a difference it makes
This photo is taken in Luxemburg 😉
Great tutorial... thank you!!
Excellent video Greg! Also, Meliá is a great hotel to stay at when you're in Luxembourg :)
What happens when an image processed for HDR monitors is displayed on a standard monitor? My guess is it will be awhile before HDR monitors become very common outside the photography community.
If you use a gain map, they’ll get a great SDR (standard dynamic range) image, even if the browser doesn’t understand gain maps either. In other words, it safely falls back to a regular image if the enhanced HDR is not supported. gregbenzphotography.com/hdr-photos/jpg-hdr-gain-maps-in-adobe-camera-raw/
These displays are already far more common than most people know. They are the majority of viewers on Instagram already (mobile first), most TVs, and nearly all Apple displays since 2018 support it to some degree, with the M1 and later MacBook Pro being absolutely stunning. The gap is shrinking, but it will certainly be a while to get to 100% support - so gain maps are a critical technology that makes it safe to share these images now, without waiting for universal support.
Yes, the distribution of HDR displays is interesting. Because outside the photography community, HDR is actually becoming dominant faster than it is inside the photography community. In addition to most iPhones and many Android phones supporting HDR luminance, we have reached the point where if you buy a new TV it is going to support HDR unless you go out of your way to avoid that. Today the Best Buy website lists 961 TVs; if I click the HDR box it lists 896…so HDR TVs are 93% of the new TVs they sell. Many probably do not reach an ideal luminance for HDR editing, since there are a range of HDR standards. But the point is, they are ready for at least some degree of HDR viewing.
So HDR is already becoming entrenched for the most common displays (phones and TVs) that most regular people use daily, which means, oddly, it is the pro photo users who are lagging behind, for two reasons. First, end-to-end full HDR hardware and software workflows have become established and routine in pro video, while pro photographers are just now learning about it. Also, if a photographer wants an HDR computer display they still have to intentionally go look for it because most computer displays still don’t support HDR. With the exception of 14/16” MacBook Pro users as Greg said, since all of those fully meet the Adobe HDR standard of 1000 nits sustained HDR luminance.
@@gregbenzphotography Thanks for the video and information. To continue this question, now when you show this video on youtube. Did you rendered a video which is HDR capable? and then when uploaded to youtube, is the HDR information being streamed through youtube? Thank you
@@kaori-3882 this video is a true HDR video. It will display as HDR on a supporting display (the UA-cam gear icon at bottom right will say "HDR" in red when supported).
When not supported, the video will be automatically tone mapped by UA-cam down to the SDR range. It will look dark and is not nearly as optimized as what we can do for HDR photos (using gain maps), but for teaching purposes still helps get the point across. Of course, the HDR "wow" factor will be totally lacking on an SDR display for this video.
@@gregbenzphotography Thank you
I don't think of "old" and "new" HDR as different versions of the same thing. "Old" HDR was a trick to squeeze more dynamic range out of the limitations of cameras in the mid-to-late 2000s. I've found, more often than not, that one exposure out of my three bracketed exposures has all the dynamic range I need, and this with a Canon Digital Rebel back in about 2010, so it's increasingly useless to me, especially with newer cameras. Occasionally fun, but useless.
"New" HDR is just using the capabilities of modern displays to unlock what our camera has always captured. I just wish the technology was more standardized.
Great explanation
It seems like this new HDR calls into question the age old aphorism that "raw files come out flat". That was true in the days where we needed to do all manner of tone map coaxing, but now just with clicking a button even raw files have plenty of lifelike punch.
Yeah, when you open it into a lower dynamic range space, it’s biased towards looking pretty flat. In many ways, the new HDR makes it easier to get things to a place that feels both true and engaging.
I don't have LR, can this be done in Aurora HDR? Great video Greg!
That uses the old HDR.
Options for creating with the new HDR displays I’m aware of include LR, Adobe Camera RAW, Photoshop, Affinity, and Pixelmator/Photomator.
More info at gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/
@@gregbenzphotography Thanks so much, Greg, I'll take a look.
Hey Greg,
Thank you for these tutorials, you are the only one I could find that is covering HDR. Do you have a way to show HDR-photos on a (OLED) TV? At the moment the only way is to connect a laptop through HDMI and showing it in Lightroom or Bridge. Are there any other ways? Thank you!
That or Photos app on a mobile device connected over HDMI are the ways I know. Note that Bridge ain’t an option, LR (and not in slideshow mode) works for now. Might be other options, email me if you want to chat further- I’m doing some digging next week.
@@gregbenzphotography Ah I haven't even tested Bridge, I just assumed it would work since it is a adobe program. I will contact you!
They’ve done so much for HDR, but I don’t believe Bridge is there yet
Hi Gregg, Thanks for the 'Fog lifting' ! In the end of the video you say 'click on the next video' .Is that the 'Lightroom now supports ' from 9 months ago or the one ' HDR (greater dynamic range) update 6 days ago ? Thanks.
I have an HDR playlist to see all the videos on my channel. This is also a great place to learn more: gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/
What happend to the lights under the benches in the 'new' HDR?
I didn’t merge or blend exposures to pull in that light. In my source material, the lights turned off between shots. In the intro image, I finished it by blended it in so it wouldn’t be distracting.
@@gregbenzphotography thank you 🙏
Great explanation video. Many thanks. May I ask a very basic question: how would handle printing an image that has been processed using the new HDR?
You shouldn’t print it directly, but it’s easy to manage both: gregbenzphotography.com/hdr#printing
@@gregbenzphotography Great. Many thanks for the feedback
Thanks Greg, any recommendations for a true hdr monitor in 4K?
Yes, I have details on how to shop and recommendations on some specific options at gregbenzphotography.com/review-best-hdr-monitor-for-photography/
@@gregbenzphotography thanks mate
This technology should greatly benifit digital reproduction of art. Especially that of the Old Masters, Pre-raphaelites and 20th century artist such as Maxfiled Parrish who used glazing to give their work an inner glow. This depth does not show in 8 bit srgb images. I, myself am trying to capture this effect using HDR technology and I am trying to refine my workflow. I went the still image to movie format route.
Very cool use case! Please feel free to email me if you want to brainstorm approaches.
I would use photos instead of video for a very specific reason, the gain map capability for HDR photos will offer a much better and more consistent display of the finished work. There is no similar option for HDR video to achieve that level of control (not even Dolby Vision can match it, even if you could use trim passes with consumer display of the video).
@gregbenzphotography cool. Brainstorming woupd be great as there are not very many people using HDR technology for still images, let alone 15 year old RAWs. With this technology, digital images can go from the equivalent of a drug store processed print to viewing a Fujichrome Velvia transparency.
Is this revelant for printing?
You should not directly print the HDR photo, but you can easily manage both print and HDR display. See gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/#printing
@@gregbenzphotography Thank you!
New HDR feels like the first time that camera and display technologies are finally growing beyond their deep roots in film photography. We are embracing a format for display (and capture and edit) that film and paper cannot achieve due to hard, physical limits. The ultimate limiting factor will always be biology, our eyes. Nevertheless, new HDR brings us closer to that insurmountable limit. It might be a marginal gain, but pushing the margins even a little bit provides the space for new things.
It’s a huge gain, often up to 12 stops of dynamic range (vs 8 for SDR). We’ll probably see that grow in the coming years, some new TVs are already at 4000 nots or higher, which would support 5-6 stops of headroom (ie 14 stops of dynamic range, vastly beyond SDR and similar to the dynamic range of human vision when we don’t have time to adapt).
@@gregbenzphotography There's still a tension in the audience, though, isn't there? What is the trend towards film photography or film emulation if not a nostalgia for SDR? If I recall correctly, the SDR standard was initially conceived as a way of capturing the range and limits of print. Describing film photography as nostalgia for SDR is a bit facile, elevating a side effect to the main cause.
As this new ground opens up, the parameters of editing need to adjust. In an SDR image, you can reduce the white point on a luminance curve and smooth it out to replicate an old film log curve you find in a 1970's Kodak reference manual. But what RGB values are you affecting to get that "smooth rolloff"? 210-255? In an HDR curve, what are those values?
More importantly, we end up back at biology. 210-255 in the SDR scale really just map to Zones VIII-X, right? Whether we use SDR's numbers or whatever numbers we settle on for HDR, we're still probably going to ground those new numbers and technical standards in the Zone System's qualitative terms.
@@davidturner5 It's hard to say what the reaction will be, as so few people have ever seen it. My personal experience (having introduced a large number of people to it on a good display) has been overwhelming excitement.
My expectation is that most people will love it - when edited properly for the right image. You can certainly make bad images with any editing tool, and HDR isn't going to improve all images. Some are inherently lower contrast (such as corporate head shots, a lot of foggy forest scenes, etc).
Some people will certainly continue to prefer the older SDR - either because they work with subjects / lighting. where there is less dynamic range, or because they prefer the older look. There are plenty of people who prefer black & white exclusively, and I'm sure we'll have some people who just never want to use HDR.
That's fine, it's all a matter of personal preference and suitability for the image. I see it as a technology that will benefit a large percentage of images in the eyes of a large percentage of viewers. So I'm just trying to do my best to help others become aware of it to learn more.
@@davidturner5 for your question on zones, HDR is mapped to new values. If you used the same numbering system, HDR would be values greater than 255 (up to 4095 would be equivalent for a system supporting 4 stops, which is the current capability of Apple MacBook Pros).
But we use different numbering for HDR. In LR and ACR, the values are shown as the number of f-stops over SDR, so it would be up to +4 stops.
In Photoshop, HDR is shown in 32-bit linear values. There, the SDR range is 0.0 - 1.0, and HDR is above that. It would reach 16.0 for +4 stops.
Note that 32-bit can go to over 4 billion and translating that to nits (assuming the 203 nit standard for photography) means roughly 870 billion nits. For reference, the sun is only 1.6 billion nits.
So one of the odd things about HDR is that we no longer have any limit in the data (you can even use negative values). The displays have a limit of course, but they can already often show values brighter than would be artistically ideal. So rather than boosting contrast to the limits (as we often do now for standard images), we have to be more clear on how far to push HDR.
@@gregbenzphotography Agreed on all of the above. New HDR is a tool like any other; nails don't need screwdrivers. It seems like it will drive an irrevocable split in how photographs are processed. No print medium can adequately display a new HDR image and, as you video mentions, conversions for the print medium lose in translation. Photographers who embrace new HDR as part of their style sort of commit to never printing their images. (Not at best quality, anyway.) That's what I was trying to get at above. It feels like a real fork in the road.
Do you usually margin into HDR in Lightroom or Photomatix Pro, what is your preference?
I rarely merge anything - regardless of the old or new HDR, or what software I use. A single, properly exposed RAW (with noise reduction as needed) is more than enough for all these techniques.
When I do merge, I use LR for the new HDR (since I process there) and would tend to use Photomatix if using the older HDR (but I almost never use that anymore now that I can edit for true HDR display).
So I've got a great HDR Display and I edit my image in HDR... now what? I certainly can't print it. And I can't share it, as most people I know have SDR Displays. I think HDR is phenomenal, love it for movies and gaming, but for me at least, it's still pretty far off before I'll be using it for editing my photos.
Share as a gain map and it will look great on any display.
Printing is simple, but part of the learning curve. You do both (do not directly print the HDR), and it is very simple to do with the right workflow. gregbenzphotography.com/hdr#printing
@@gregbenzphotography Thanks you're site is an amazing resource! However, looks like I'm missing out using Firefox on my M1 MacBook Air... When I switch to my desktop with QD-OLED Monitor and Chrome, everything just pops!
When will the rest catch up?
@b34k97 Thanks!
Safari and FireFox are currently missing support for HDR photos (they support HDR video). I’m not aware of any public roadmaps for either.
Chrome, Brave, Edge, and Opera have great support already.
Will Capture One support "New HDR?"
They have not yet added support. Adobe has it everywhere, and Affinity / Pixelmator support it too.
1. Watched it on an old TV. That probably doesn’t even cover the SDR range. And I still could see the difference between those images in tonal range… if it would just be about compressing information into the smaller range, I shouldn’t have seen any difference. So what gives.
2. In the past before all that, I got the best results with 32 bit hdr s in photoshop processed in ACR. Sometimes 2 or 3 times. One processed for highlights, one for shadows etc. and then blending them in PS.
(Nowadays, with the added masking capabilities in ACR maybe even one processing would be sufficient.
3. Maybe I am getting old… but until I see an HDR Monitor at my parents and on every desktop in the office… I think it’s interesting but not the time for it, yet…
HDR video (which I'm using) gets tone mapped to the SDR range (which you are watching). So you are seeing a dark and low contrast version of the video which lacks any "wow" factor, but the relative tones are ok and it communicates the issue. Try watching it with an M1 or later MacBook Pro and you'll see something much more interesting. Most iPhones and Android sold in the past 4 years will support an HDR view of this video in the UA-cam mobile app (not necessarily in a web browser on the same phone though).
HDR isn't just computer monitors... the majority of phones and TVs already have the hardware. So platforms like Instagram (where there are far more people seeing your work on mobile phone than computers) are already well suited to offer benefit to a lot of people. And most Apple laptops have support. It's far more common than you'd expect, largely because we are only now getting the software to support (and there are some key gaps yet to close, but we're seeing rapid progress on that).