Play HDR video on Mac

Support for high dynamic range (HDR) video, such as HDR movies and TV shows from Apple or other providers, requires the latest version of macOS, a compatible Mac model, and an HDR10-compatible display, TV, or projector.

Mac models that support HDR

These Mac models support HDR video on their built-in display (if applicable) and external HDR10-compatible displays.

MacBook Pro introduced in 2018 or later

MacBook Air introduced in 2018 or later (HDR on external displays requires a model with Apple silicon )

iMac introduced in 2020 or later, plus iMac Pro

Mac mini introduced in 2018 or later

Mac Pro introduced in 2019 or later

Mac Studio introduced in 2022 or later

Supported HDR formats

The built-in display and Apple Pro Display XDR support Dolby Vision, HDR10, and HLG. Dolby Vision and HLG are converted to HDR10 when viewed on other HDR10-compatible external displays.

Supported external HDR displays

No alt supplied for Image

DisplayPort displays: Connect to the Thunderbolt port.

HDMI displays: Connect to the HDMI port. If your Mac doesn't have an HDMI port, connect to the Thunderbolt port using an HDMI cable and USB-C adapter such as the Apple USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter or Belkin USB-C to HDMI Adapter .

Apple Pro Display XDR: Connect to the Thunderbolt port, if your Mac is compatible with this display .

If your Mac doesn't automatically enable HDR for the display, enable it in Displays settings .

Getting the best HDR picture

If HDR video doesn't play in high dynamic range or with the quality you expect, try these solutions.

Check your Mac

Install the latest Apple software updates for macOS Catalina or later. Some HDR features are available only with the latest macOS.

Choose Apple menu  > System Settings (or System Preferences), then click Displays. In Displays settings for the external display, make sure that High Dynamic Range is turned on. This setting appears only on third-party displays that support HDR10, not on built-in displays. If you don't want to use HDR on your external display, turn this setting off.

Choose Apple menu  > System Settings (or System Preferences), then click Battery or Energy Saver. Click the Options button, if present. If “Optimize video streaming while on battery” is turned on, your Mac saves energy by playing HDR video in standard dynamic range (SDR) while on battery power. To play in HDR, connect your Mac to power or deselect this checkbox.

HDR content might play at resolutions no greater than 1080p on Intel-based Mac mini, Intel-based MacBook Pro, and Intel-based MacBook Air models, depending on the HDR content and the display on which it is viewed.

Check your display

Some TVs support HDR only on a specific input, such as HDMI input 2 or HDMI input 3. Check your TV's documentation for details.

Make sure that your display supports HDR10. If the display has its own HDR setting, turn it on or set it to prefer HDR when available.

Make sure that your display is using the latest firmware from the manufacturer. Check your display's documentation for details.

In general, HDR quality is better on HDR displays that offer better brightness and contrast ratio, which results in a wider dynamic range.

Check your media

If you're playing premium content from a third-party content provider, check with the content provider to be sure that they support HDR on your Mac.

Check your cables and other devices

If you're using HDMI, make sure that the HDMI cable and any adapter you might be using with it both support HDR10. Apple recommends HDMI cables that have been tested with Apple TV 4K and a wide range of TVs, such as the Belkin UltraHD HDMI Cable . Compatible adapters include the Apple USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter and Belkin USB-C to HDMI Adapter .

If your video connection passes through an AV receiver, sound bar, or other device before connecting to your display, make sure that the device supports HDR10 and is using the latest firmware from the manufacturer. You can test by connecting your Mac directly to the display.

Check your viewing environment

The brightness and color of HDR video might vary depending on your Mac model and the lighting in your environment. Lower lighting conditions, such as in a dim room, enhance the visual effect of HDR.

Check your network

The video quality of content that you stream over a network, including over the internet, is affected by the quality of that network. To stream high-quality video formats, you need a fast connection. Apple recommends a minimum speed of 25 Mbps for 4K streaming.

For details about the HDR capabilities or settings of a third-party display, cable, or adapter, check the documentation for the product or contact the product vendor .

Information about products not manufactured by Apple, or independent websites not controlled or tested by Apple, is provided without recommendation or endorsement. Apple assumes no responsibility with regard to the selection, performance, or use of third-party websites or products. Apple makes no representations regarding third-party website accuracy or reliability. Contact the vendor for additional information.

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4K HDR YouTube now works on iPadOS 15 Safari!

  • Thread starter Stuey3D
  • Start date Jun 10, 2021
  • Tags 4k hdr ipados 15 safari youtube
  • Sort by reaction score
  • iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch
  • iOS and iPadOS

Stuey3D

macrumors 6502a

  • Jun 10, 2021

F0762EF6-EDC7-4C13-901F-E800862BF6B0.png

Well they give with one hand and take with the other, so whilst we have gained 4K HDR, we’ve lost the ability to go picture in picture. Saying that I’d take 4K HDR over Picture in Picture for the little I used that feature.  

447E9C33-9D85-4C14-A034-4605002D5F57.png

  • Jun 11, 2021

It appears 4K is now working in the mini player too, guess it was just software hiccups preventing it working before.  

Well some odd issues with audio have manifested today, videos will play with now audio and in the control centre the mini player shows nothing playing, toggling between video quality settings restores the audio and control centre. Mobile website also works, but you are limited to 720p on that. I’ve even reset Safari data and that didn’t fix it, odd how it was working perfect last night though.  

Ninja Dom

  • Oct 25, 2021

Is it still working for you? I've just installed macOS Monterey on my M1 Mac. Youtube does NOT play any content in HDR in Safari. But it does in Google Chrome. Disappointing.  

Ninja Dom said: Is it still working for you? I've just installed macOS Monterey on my M1 Mac. Youtube does NOT play any content in HDR in Safari. But it does in Google Chrome. Disappointing. Click to expand...

3009B1BC-5E4E-4F40-8E93-830D5E8AE313.png

macrumors 6502

4khdr.png

SpecMode said: Interesting; just tried this on my M1 MacBook Air running 12.0.1, and Safari plays 4k HDR just fine (ignoring that it's not actually playing on an HDR-capable display , but that's neither here nor there...). View attachment 1878467 I do have a couple 'experimental' features enabled in the Develop menu that I'm not sure are enabled by default ( HDR Media Capabilities and VP9 decoder ) — you can enable the Develop menu using the checkbox at the bottom of the Advanced tab in Safari preferences ("Show Develop menu in menu bar"), then enable those features from the menu if they aren't already checked. View attachment 1878472 Click to expand...

How-To Geek

How to watch hdr content on a mac.

Got a MacBook or external display that supports high dynamic range? Try it out!

Quick Links

Which mac models support hdr, getting external hdr displays working, playing hdr video files, other hdr sources you can use, unlock your hdr display's brightness in sdr mode, great for movies and some games.

High dynamic range video, or HDR for short, is all the rage at the moment and many of the latest Mac models and displays support it. Unfortunately, getting HDR video to play back correctly on your MacBook or Apple display isn't quite as straightforward as it could be.

The following Mac models support HDR video playback:

  • MacBook Pro 2018 and later
  • MacBook Air 2018 or later (external HDR playback requires M1 chip or better)
  • iMac 2020 or later
  • Mac mini 2018 or later
  • Mac Pro 2019 or later

Not all of these models have built-in displays, and some of those that do won't display a particularly impressive HDR image.

HDR video doesn't look great without adequate peak brightness (measured in nits) to make the image pop. The 2021 MacBook Pro models can reach 1600 nits peak brightness for impressive HDR output, while the 2018 MacBook Air with its 300 nits peak brightness is going to disappoint .

Keep this in mind when it comes to external displays too. The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) tests and certifies monitors so you know what to expect from HDR performance. Shoot for the VESA DisplayHDR 600 standard or better, since DisplayHDR 400 will disappoint if HDR is a priority for you.

Don't get us wrong: there are plenty of decent monitors that are certified with the DisplayHDR 400 standard. These may be ideal for SDR content, with high refresh rates , good pixel density , and excellent color reproduction. Poor HDR performance doesn't mean a monitor is bad for general use, so don't be put off if it's not a priority for you.

Related: What Is 'Fake HDR,' and Should You Buy HDR Blu-rays?

You can connect an HDR display using DisplayPort (via your Mac's Thunderbolt port), using an HDMI output or USB-C hub with an HDMI port, or using a Thunderbolt connection on a supported display like the Pro Display XDR .

Once you've connected your HDR display, you'll need to enable HDR mode from your Mac's display preferences. To do this, connect your monitor then head to System Preferences (System Settings) > Displays.

You'll see all currently-connected displays shown in the sidebar (or just one display, if you're using a single external monitor setup). If you're using a MacBook, your internal display will be listed also. Select the external display and check the "HDR Mode" checkbox. You should see the display flicker and reappear.

You don't need to do anything to enable HDR on your MacBook's built-in display, HDR should "just work" whenever the content is detected.

With everything ready to go, you'll need to find a suitable media player to play whatever it is you want to watch. Your Mac can play back HDR10, Dolby Vision, and HLG formats  on built-in displays (and the Pro Display XDR). For external displays, macOS uses HDR10. Dolby Vision and HLG content will be converted to HDR10 for displaying on HDR-capable monitors.

QuickTime Player is a good choice, especially for HDR video that has been shot on an iPhone or camera. It comes with your Mac and will open MP4 HEVC (h.265) files and display them correctly. macOS Photos app will also natively play your iPhone (and similar) HDR videos.

Unfortunately, QuickTime Player has its limitations especially when it comes to HDR video files within an MKV container. We had issues with other players like VLC and Elmedia Player displaying these videos correctly too. In the end, we used a premium app called Movist  ($4.99) to play back these files correctly on both the internal MacBook Pro display and an external LG C2 OLED television.

The most readily-available HDR content is on the web, with YouTube leading the charge. You can play back this content in most major browsers, including Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. Vimeo also supports 4K content in HDR.

When it comes to streaming HDR content in 4K quality from Netflix, Safari is one of the best choices as long as your internet connection is up to it . This is thanks to Safari's support for HDCP 2.2. Apple TV+ also supports HDR content in the Apple TV app (naturally) which runs natively on macOS.

Unfortunately, browser support for 4K HDR content from other streaming services (like Paramount+ and Disney+) is still not well supported.

If you have a 2021 MacBook Pro or a Mac that's connected to Apple's Pro Display XDR, you can unlock the brightness normally reserved for HDR content using an app called Vivid . The app costs €20 (around $20) and has a free "split screen mode" so you can see the difference before you buy.

This could be a useful tool if you have trouble using your MacBook or Pro Display XDR in bright sunny conditions. In normal operation, these displays hover around 500 nits max brightness, but Vivid will push beyond this while only causing a small increase in operating temperature.

Developers claim that "Vivid does not use low-level display hacks to push your display to levels it shouldn't go. The temperature of your displays will increase by between 5-10%, but macOS will limit the max brightness if necessary." Of course, Vivid takes no responsibility for any damage caused, so take great caution before investing in and using the app.

HDR display mode is great for watching movies and playing some games, but it's not strictly necessary for daily use. YouTube, Netflix, and other streaming websites will deliver an SDR version if you don't have (or choose not to use) HDR mode.

To understand the benefits of HDR, you need to understand dynamic range . One of the ways you can do this is by editing your photos to squeeze more detail out of the shadows and highlights .

Related: What Is Dynamic Range in Photography?

Apple adds WebP, HDR support, and more to Safari with iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur

Avatar for Filipe Espósito

Safari is getting great improvements this year with iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and macOS Big Sur. Apple shared a document this week detailing all the changes made to the Safari 14 Beta, which now includes WebP support, universal extensions, and more.

One of the biggest changes this year is that Safari now supports the WebExtension API on macOS Big Sur. The WebExtension API is a cross-platform technology present in Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and other browsers to offer cross-platform extensions.

That means Mac users will be able to install the same extensions available to other web browsers in Safari. According to Apple, developers can also use Xcode 12 to port WebExtensions to native Safari extensions in order to offer them on the App Store.

There’s also support for Google’s WebP image format in Safari 14, which enables images with transparency and lower compression but also keeping files smaller.

With iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur, Safari can also play HDR videos for the first time. The company has enabled the VP9 codec for apps on iOS 14 and tvOS 14, which allows users to watch 4K HDR videos on YouTube for the first time, but Safari 14 is yet to get this codec.

Not surprisingly, Flash support has been completely removed from Safari this year, meaning that users can no longer install and run Adobe Flash content in Apple’s browser with macOS Big Sur. Apple had already confirmed  earlier this year that Flash would no longer be supported in Safari, while Adobe itself said Flash will be discontinued by the end of 2020.

The company is also reinforcing its commitment to user privacy by highlighting and blocking websites trackers, a feature that was highlighted during the WWDC 2020 keynote. Users will get privacy alerts for each website they access, in addition to a monthly report when they open Safari.

Other changes include improved performance when loading PDF files, enhanced VoiceOver support, alerts about possibly leaked passwords, and a new way to use Touch ID and Face ID on websites .

You can find the full Safari 14 beta release notes on Apple’s website .

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Filipe Espósito is a Brazilian tech Journalist who started covering Apple news on iHelp BR with some exclusive scoops — including the reveal of the new Apple Watch Series 5 models in titanium and ceramic. He joined 9to5Mac to share even more tech news around the world.

Safari in macOS Big Sur supports Dolby Vision and 4K HDR content from Netflix, but only with newer Macs

safari hdr test

Hardware limitations have made Mac users miss the boat when it comes to 4K HDR and Dolby Vision content from streamers like Netflix when using the Safari web browser, but it looks like that little hurdle has finally been put behind us.

As first reported by  9to5Mac on Monday, Apple will soon let the public enjoy 4K HDR and Dolby Vision content on their Macs, directly within Safari, with the upcoming release of macOS 11.0 Big Sur later this year. Up to this point, Safari has limited viewing to 1080p HD, so even though Netflix has added content that supports the better resolution and higher detail, Macs have missed out.

But while macOS Big Sur will correct this issue, there’s a bit of a catch. The report also notes that hardware limitations will  still play a role, but only for older Macs. Specifically, this new support for 4K HDR and Dolby Vision content will only be available from Macs released in 2018 or newer (and those running macOS Big Sur, obviously). If you have a Mac older than that, this new feature support in Safari won’t be available.

OMG! Netflix on macOS Big Sur's Safari browser just gave me 4K Stream with Dolby Vision on MacBook Pro! Earlier it was just 1080p with Dolby Vision. This is amazing. 😌 pic.twitter.com/afUQPeKisI — Ishan Agarwal (@ishanagarwal24) June 28, 2020

This is a big win for folks who use Safari to watch Netflix, and who want to enjoy HDR10 and Dolby Vision content (when available). But we’re still waiting for YouTube support for Macs, because macOS Big Sur doesn’t appear to add support for the VP9 codec. ( iOS 14 and tvOS 14 do, though, so 4K YouTube content will be available on the Apple TV 4K and select iOS devices beginning later this year.)

What do you think of this change? Will you be happy to take advantage of the support once it rolls out this fall?

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Safari in macOS Big Sur Works With 4K HDR and Dolby Vision Content From Netflix on Newer Macs

Safari 14, introduced in the iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur betas, introduces HDR video support and allows Netflix users to watch content in 4K HDR and Dolby Vision for the first time.

macosbigsur

OMG! Netflix on macOS Big Sur's Safari browser just gave me 4K Stream with Dolby Vision on MacBook Pro! Earlier it was just 1080p with Dolby Vision. This is amazing. 😌 pic.twitter.com/afUQPeKisI — Ishan Agarwal (@ishanagarwal24) June 28, 2020

Watching 4K HDR content on Mac requires a Mac introduced in 2018 or later, so older Macs will continue to be limited to 1080p resolution on Netflix with macOS Big Sur.

As we covered last week , tvOS 14 and iOS 14 are now compatible with YouTube's VP9 codec, allowing 4K YouTube content to be watched on those platforms, but the codec is not yet supported in Safari 14 in macOS Big Sur.

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Top Rated Comments

Somian Avatar

It's not a hardware limitation. Older MacBook Pros can play H.265 4k content just fine. The only reason it doesn't work is that someone made a decision that it's not supposed to work. DRM isn't a technical necessity.

SoN1NjA Avatar

That looks like it says “mp4” and “hevc”. Sounds like YouTube is supporting H.265. Rather than Apple supporting VP9. If so, that’s a good thing.

iBluetooth Avatar

Google will never support HEVC, not even in hell Why on Earth would Google spend loads of money developing VP9 and now AV1, all to bow down to Apple who has to flick a switch on their side?

Jamalien Avatar

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Safari in macOS Big Sur will stream Netflix in 4K HDR

You won't have to switch browsers to watch in full quality..

MacOS Big Sur may be a worthwhile upgrade if you love to marathon TV shows. As 9to5Mac reports , users have discovered that Safari in Big Sur will play Netflix videos in 4K with HDR, whether you’re using Dolby Vision or HDR10. You won’t have to switch to another browser just to see more than a plain 1080p image. The upgrade comes thanks to long-expected support for HEVC in Apple’s web browser.

You’ll have to be picky about your choice of Mac if you want the full effect, either with the Big Sur beta or the finished release this fall. HDR is currently only supported with 2018 or later MacBook Pro models, 2018 or later Mac mini systems, the iMac Pro or the Mac Pro . You’ll need an HDR-capable monitor for the Mac mini and Mac Pro, too.

All the same, this is a welcome upgrade for a browser whose media abilities have sometimes been limiting. It also reflects Apple’s more relaxed approach to 4K outside of its own services. The Apple TV will support YouTube in 4K , for instance, while AirPlay 2 will also stream in 4K from iOS 14 devices to Big Sur. It may be just a question of what you watch using that extra-high resolution.

OMG! Netflix on macOS Big Sur's Safari browser just gave me 4K Stream with Dolby Vision on MacBook Pro! Earlier it was just 1080p with Dolby Vision. This is amazing. 😌 pic.twitter.com/afUQPeKisI — Ishan Agarwal (@ishanagarwal24) June 28, 2020

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Safari Finally Gets 4K HDR & Dolby Vision Support for Netflix on macOS Big Sur

safari hdr test

  • Until now, Mac users weren’t able to stream Netflix in 4K – which will change once macOS Big Sur comes out.
  • Safari’s newly discovered support for 4K HDR & Dolby Vision only applies to Mac models made in 2018 or later.
  • At the moment, Safari is capped at 1080p on macOS, while other Web browsers are capped at 720p when streaming Netflix.

Now that macOS Big Sur is finally available (for developers, as a preview version), we’re starting to learn all kinds of interesting tidbits. A few days ago, TechNadu’s team wrote about all-new features of Safari on Apple’s desktop and mobile operating systems. Aside from its newly-found support for modern Web formats, Safari should become more efficient while also getting a complete visual overhaul. However, as discovered just now (by Ishan Agarwal, via Twitter), Apple’s Web browser will also approach Netflix streaming in a much more powerful way.

It’s no secret that Netflix has been offering 4K content for a long time now. Still, this isn’t something that Mac users were able to take advantage of since Netflix relies on the HEVC codec (which Safari now finally supports). Furthermore, this Web browser will also support Dolby Vision and HDR10. These technologies bring more vibrant and vivid colors, as well as a greater range between deep blacks and bright whites. However, Dolby Vision and HDR10 depend on hardware as well, which means that you’ll need a monitor that is compatible with these technologies.

OMG! Netflix on macOS Big Sur's Safari browser just gave me 4K Stream with Dolby Vision on MacBook Pro! Earlier it was just 1080p with Dolby Vision. This is amazing. 😌 pic.twitter.com/afUQPeKisI — Ishan Agarwal (@ishanagarwal24) June 28, 2020

Sadly, not all Mac users will enjoy streaming Netflix in 4K HDR once macOS Big Sur arrives this fall. Besides having this version of macOS installed, you’ll need a Mac introduced in 2018 or later . And of course, you’ll need Netflix’s Premium plan ($15.99/month) to access the platform’s 4K content.

You might also be wondering what the situation is with other Web browsers. Well, if you don’t meet the above-described requirements, Netflix will be capped at 1080p resolution when using Safari. If you decide to use Chrome, Opera, or Firefox , your Netflix-watching experience will be capped at 720p. Still, there’s a way to stream Netflix in 4K on Macs (even today), but this requires you to install Windows 10 on a Boot Camp partition.

It’s also worth noting that Mac users will also get to stream YouTube in 4K – but only on iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and tvOS 14. These operating systems finally bring support for the VP9 codec, which means that streaming 4K videos will be made possible. Still, Safari for macOS Big Sur doesn’t have this option at the moment, which can easily change before this operating system becomes publicly available.

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flipswitch

Still no HDR in Safari after macOS Monterey 12.1. MBP 2021 M1 Pro.

I thought Apple have fixed the issues regarding HDR playback on Safari, however after updating to 12.1, HDR still cannot be played.

Is there a way around this? I had no trouble with HDR before, then they removed it.

Posted on Dec 13, 2021 5:26 PM

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dialabrain

Dec 13, 2021 6:34 PM in response to flipswitch

FWIW, these are the Macs that support HDR video…

Mac models that support HDR

These Mac models support HDR video on their built-in display (if applicable) and external HDR10-compatible displays.

  • MacBook Pro  introduced in 2018 or later
  • MacBook Air  introduced in 2018 or later (HDR on external displays requires a  model with Apple silicon )
  • iMac  introduced in 2020 or later
  • Mac mini  introduced in 2018 or later
  • Mac Pro  introduced in 2019

My iMac Pro among them as is my M1 MacBook Air. I still don't see HDR showing up in any browser I have installed. Perhaps someone can clarify.

Dec 13, 2021 7:01 PM in response to flipswitch

You're welcome. Turns out, someone in the thread you posted was correct. If you switch the Safari User Agent to "Chrome - Windows" HDR is available.

safari hdr test

That's not a Safari or Apple issue, that's a YouTube/Google issue.

Dec 13, 2021 6:44 PM in response to dialabrain

HDR shows up in other browsers like Chrome, but I use Safari and don't won't to switch.

Thanks for the list.

Here's another thread discussing the matter.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253358714

Dec 13, 2021 6:19 PM in response to dialabrain

Well if it doesn't state HDR that means your MacBook doesn't support it. Simple.

It used to show HDR in Safari on my system which can display HDR content up to a few weeks ago, then I believe these model MacBooks had some issue with it and Apple removed support for it.

Dec 13, 2021 6:23 PM in response to flipswitch

flipswitch wrote:

As I stated, I'm not on a MacBook. Just checked my iMac Pro. When watching supposed 4K HDR videos, it's doesn't state HDR anywhere other than within the title.

Dec 13, 2021 7:19 PM in response to dialabrain

I see. I thought apple disabled it because I read HDR was causing MacBooks to crash in some situations.

I have changed it and now have HDR. I was aware of this but I wanted to know why it's still not available in 12.1

Do you know what actually occurs when you change the user agent? Will it have any impact on my browser?
Well I did the same thing for disneyplus but I am getting an error whenever I change the user agent from default. Only working with Youtube it seems.

Dec 13, 2021 8:47 PM in response to flipswitch

I don't know how user agents work. I just assumed they fooled websites into thinking you are using a different browser/platform than you are.

I don't subscribe so I can't test Disney+.

Dec 13, 2021 5:55 PM in response to flipswitch

Not sure what problem you are referring to. Just checked quickly but this plays in 4K HDR in Safari…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO01J-M3g0U

Dec 13, 2021 6:01 PM in response to dialabrain

Thanks for the reply, but it's not showing in HDR on my end.

I wonder why..

Dec 13, 2021 6:03 PM in response to flipswitch

Welcome. What is it showing as?

Dec 13, 2021 6:10 PM in response to dialabrain

Just HD/4k options. I use Adblock Pro, disabled it but still the same.

Which model MacBook are you using?

Dec 13, 2021 6:17 PM in response to flipswitch

Actually I'm on a 2015 27" iMac at the moment. If you're looking for something that states HDR, I don't see that in Safari, Firefox or Brave. Just up to 4K resolutions.

Dec 13, 2021 6:25 PM in response to flipswitch

Just 2160p60 4k.

Dec 13, 2021 6:26 PM in response to dialabrain

I understand. Don't worry about the title of the video, if it supports HDR it will show up ( plus the screen brightness will increase considerably ) in the video options.

Dec 13, 2021 10:19 PM in response to flipswitch

Just to add, HDR is supported on Netflix in Safari.

Safari in macOS Big Sur Supports Netflix Streaming in 4K HDR

Netflix

Safari 14 in macOS Big Sur has gained support for Netflix streaming in 4K HDR quality, as long as you have a 2018 or later Mac. The 4K HDR streaming works even on Macs with smaller display sizes.

Netflix has offered 4K streaming for a long time but it has been limited to televisions and streaming devices which have support for both 4K resolution and HDR. Only Microsoft Edge and Netflix app on Windows 10 have supported Ultra HD 4K playback. Despite hardware support for HEVC codec, which Netflix uses, Apple had not built support in Safari for the video streaming service to enable the higher quality streaming.

Related Story Samsung’s Galaxy Book 4 Edge With The Snapdragon X Elite Will Compete With Apple’s M-Series MacBooks In Both Specifications & Pricing

However, with Safari 14, 4K playback and HDR will be available on all Mac models launched in 2018 or later. Of course, you would need the expensive Ultra HD Premium plan for Netflix to stream content in 4K. You would also have to make sure that you stream the right title, which has support for the higher resolution.

During our testing on a MacBook Pro with macOS Big Sur , 'Our Planet' streamed in 4K with Dolby Vision without any hiccups. We verified this by accessing the A/V stats menu in Netflix by pressing Option + Control + Shift + D.

Netflix 4K Safari Big Sur

Considering that iPadOS 14 beta also runs Safari 14, we tested Netflix streaming to see if it also supports 4K. Unfortunately, it still streams in full HD resolution, despite having a higher resolution display and ample performance under-the-hood to push the pixels.

Some of the biggest features in Safari 14 include faster performance, enhanced home screen, and privacy improvements. However, the best hidden feature in Apple's browser update for macOS and iOS has to be support for 4K video streaming and WebP image format. WebP is an image format developed by Google, which has better compression than JPEG and PNG formats, and is already enabled in Safari on the new platforms. However, YouTube app's 4K video streaming via WebM support is not available for everyone yet.

via 9to5mac

Further Reading

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OLED iPAd Pro and iPad Air to feature Face ID sensors and front camera in landscapeorientation

Apple To Bring The iPad 10’s Front Camera Orientation To The OLED iPad Pro And iPad Air Models With Face ID Sensors

Apple wants Epic Games to pay $73 million

Apple Is Going To Restore Epic Games’ Account, Allowing The Developers To Bring Back Fortnite And Launch Epic Games Store In Europe

Apple seeking 8.5 million OLED orders from suppliers for the M3 iPad Pro

13-Inch OLED iPad Pro Could Be More Popular Than The 11-Inch Model, Based On OLED Order Division Between Suppliers

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Greg Benz Photography

Note: “HDR” on this page refers to new technologies (hardware and software) which create truly higher dynamic range display. The name for this new technology is confusing because we’ve used the term “HDR” for years, and now we’re using that same name for something completely different.

Our cameras can capture 14+ stops of dynamic range, but our monitors have historically only been able to display 6-8 stops of dynamic range. This causes a significant loss of quality and greater complexity in editing images to accommodate this limitation. Newer display technology with HDR (“ High Dynamic Range “) now offers up to 12 or more stops of dynamic range. This means we can finally display images which show the fully quality of our RAW captures.

This is the most significant improvement in image quality in decades. And there’s a good chance you already own such a display and don’t even know it. On this page, you’ll learn how you can start to explore this incredible world of HDR.

The photograph on the left below is a standard image and on the right is an HDR version of it. The image on the right will look substantially better when viewed as HDR.  If the right image is missing or not clearly better, see the tests and troubleshooting sections below to see what you’re missing. 

  • For the best HDR experience: view the images on this page on an M1 or later MacBook Pro using  Google Chrome (you can easily install Chrome on a floor model in the Apple store if you or a friend don’t own one).
  • If you’re trying to view this page at a PC store, try using the best computer at half brightness and check that Windows  system settings  show support for HDR.

Before

Links for this page:

  • What is HDR and why is it so important?

HDR image gallery

  • Testing your display for HDR support

Which monitors are best for HDR?

  • How to profile an HDR monitor?

How do I capture an HDR image? Do I need to bracket?

  • HDR in Lightroom
  • HDR in ACR (Adobe Camera RAW)
  • HDR in Photoshop
  • JPG Gain Maps (share great images with everyone)

AVIF: the future of HDR

  • Sharing HDR photos on the web
  • Sharing HDR photos on iPhone / iPad
  • Sharing HDR photos on social media
  • HDR conversions from 8-bit JPG (MidJourney, etc)

How many bits are required for HDR?

What is the dynamic range of hdr.

  • What supports HDR, what doesn’t?
  • HDR Standards

HDR technologies

  • What does HDR content look like an SDR display?

What does HDR mean for printing?

  • What are the implications for exposure blending?
  • HDR e-book (free)

Further learning & podcasts

  • Troubleshooting display issues

Acknowledgements

To learn more, be sure to get my  FREE HDR e-book (which also includes a TIF test image to help ensure Photoshop is setup correctly and gauge the limits of your display).

Note: Everything on this page is subject to change in the coming months and years, as support for HDR is rapidly evolving. Please come back for the latest information and be sure to leave a comment if anything seems out of date.

What is "HDR" display and why is it so amazing?

We’ve been using some pretty mediocre monitors for a long time, but that’s beginning to change quickly. The most beautiful and dramatic light we experience has a vastly greater range of contrast and dynamic range than standard monitors. The latest generation of HDR (“high dynamic range”) monitors now support vastly improved recreations of real world lighting through greater peak brightness, richer blacks for improved contrast, and support for new standards such as HDR10+ and DolbyVision. The benefits of HDR over what I’ll call “standard dynamic range” (SDR) monitors are enormous.

Benefits of HDR display for photography include:

  • Vastly greater dynamic range (up to 5 extra stops on the 14-16″ M1 or later MacBook Pro, depending on brightness and settings)
  • Make bright lights truly glow
  • Improved highlight detail in clouds, water, etc
  • Boost the brightness of bright colors without losing saturation for gorgeous sunrises and sunsets, etc

It’s impossible to appreciate how much better a true HDR display is without seeing it yourself. If you bought an Apple device (laptop, iPhone, iPad) or high definition TVs since 2018, there’s a very good chance you already own an HDR-compatible device.  This technology has been around for several years now but gone relatively unnoticed due to a lack of standards, tools, and content. But things are starting to move quickly now with native HDR support from Photoshop, Affinity, the Chrome web browser, and numerous other popular tools for creating and viewing images.

Note: If the HDR images (right side of each slider) aren’t clearly brighter / better (or won’t display at all), see the  tests  and  troubleshooting  sections below to help see what you’re missing.

RAW (SDR)

In addition to the standard SDR and HDR images I have here for side by side comparison, I have a  Lightroom web gallery  (you can simply drag HDR images to a shared album in Lightroom to have them immediately published like this on the web) and an  HDR JPG gain map gallery  page which uses the WordPress media library. See my HDR e-book for more details on both of those options.

All HDR images in section were derived from already-finished SDR images, so you can compare an optimal SDR edit to an HDR upgrade (in many cases an even better HDR could be created from the RAW, but I have skipped that in order to keep things more directly comparable).

SDR

Testing your display for HDR support:

In order to view HDR images, you’ll need an HDR capable monitor and proper settings. It is highly recommended that you view this page on  Google Chrome , as it is the only browser I have fully support the HDR AVIF content on this page. If you pass the tests below (expected results listed below the tests), you’re already setup. If not, you either do not have an HDR-capable monitor or your computer is not properly configured.

If you cannot pass test #1  (other tests are less important), please see the the  troubleshooting  info below as well as the extra detail in my  FREE HDR e-book .

Note for Safari / iPhone users: The top image on this page (the building with the before/after slider) uses a workaround which shows an HDR video as if it were a photo. This will let you get a sense of the HDR benefit, but you will fail the tests below as Safari / WebKit (which means all iPhone/iPad browsers) only supports HDR video and not HDR photos at this time.

Test #1 (HDR headroom):

Test #2 (HDR spectrum )

[ Your browser is not displaying this AVIF image, see the troubleshooting section below ]

Test #3 (HDR gradient)

SDR JPG

Test #4 (bright white text):

[ Your browser is not displaying this AVIF image, see the troubleshooting section below ]

Test #5 (JavaScript)

INCOMPLETE: Unable to determine if your browser / monitor supports HDR

Test #6 (CSS media query):

Test #7 (HDR metadata):

AVIF image not loaded or browser does not support it

Test #8 (JPG gain maps):

gain map test image not loaded

Test #9 (AVIF support):

[ Your browser does not support AVIF images, see the troubleshooting section below ]

Test #10 (HEIF / HEIC  support):

[ Your browser does not support HEIC / HEIF images, see the troubleshooting section below ]

Test #11 (JXL support):

[ Your browser does not support JXL images, see the troubleshooting section below ]

Expected results for the tests above:

  • Display brightness affects headroom. An HDR screen (typically one limited to 400-600 nits) may show 0 headroom at full brightness, so try reducing screen brightness (the measurement will update as you change brightness). This is expected on less capable HDR screens where the entire monitor brightness is devoted to SDR content when the brightness is set high (more capable HDR monitors will always keep some extra brightness reserved for HDR).
  • Clicking this button (on supporting browsers) should show a numeric value for the number of stops of “HDR headroom” your screen offers. An SDR screen will always have 0 stops. An HDR screen with limited capability may also show 0 stops when set to high brightness (and is effectively an SDR monitor in this condition).
  • If you pass this test you should be ready for HDR (if you pass this test and fail the bright white text or spectrum tests below, you have a problem with your system display profile, see  troubleshooting  if you pass this test but still do not see HDR).
  • This is also a helpful way to better understand the relationship between screen brightness and the amount of HDR benefit you can expect, or to compare monitors with various standards of HDR support (different peak brightness).
  • In addition to the monitor’s peak brightness, HDR headroom depends on screen brightness. On Windows,  System / Display / HDR / “ SDR content brightness” will also affect HDR headroom.
  • One quick note on the concept of HDR headroom for displays. The monitor itself does not care about SDR vs HDR content. It simply has a range of brightness it can display for each pixel. The distinction between SDR and HDR is created so that the display can be better managed for human use. This allows allows the user to make the screen brighter or darker for general (SDR) content, with any remaining brightness being available for HDR use. On a very bright display, the SDR brightness is limited so that there is always some available “ HDR headroom “. For example, the XDR display on the M1 MacBook Pro has an SDR limit which can be set between 50 and 500 nits, and the remainder up to the screen’s 1600 nits peak brightness is the HDR headroom.
  • Note for Windows: In System Settings / Display / HDR, you will see a slider for “SDR Brightness” (seemingly for external monitors) or “HDR Brightness” (laptops). This affects the headroom (the test above will update when you switch to another application and back to this browser).
  • Note for Windows: you’ll need to switch to another app and back to Chrome to update the headroom number if you make changes to brightness (MacOS updates automatically).
  • Note: If you pass this test fail the visual tests below, that is likely because you are using a custom ICC profile for calibration which is not supported (see the section on calibration/profiling ).
  • Note that this test uses a new web API that is not supported by many browsers (latest Chrome works well). If you can’t run this test, the visual tests below are the next best way to evaluate support.
  • Notes: there is a bug in Chrome (as of Oct 2022) affecting reported values for an HDR screen set as an extended display in a multi-monitor environment. If you see 0.087 or something very small but not zero on an HDR display, try setting using a single monitor or setting it up as mirrored.
  • To run this test for Chrome: copy this to the URL bar  chrome://flags/#enable-experimental-web-platform-features  and change the value to   Enabled. If you are using MS Edge, you should copy and paste  edge ://flags/#enable-experimental-web-platform-features
  • On an HDR display that has some available headroom, this pattern will be significantly brighter than other content and the bottom row should be similar to or not much darker than the surrounding white on the page.
  • On an SDR image, the brightest white will be similar to the page and the bottom row will likely show a dark gray.
  • If you pass test #1 but not this one, that generally indicates that an unsupported ICC profile has been applied in the operating system settings. Go to System / Display on Windows to reset to sRGB or a canned profile, or ColorSync Utility in MacOS to reset to the factory profile. Watch out for add-on software from your computer vendor which may cause this.
  • This test is effectively redundant with the spectrum test, but offers an SDR version for reference / comparison.
  • Note that less capable monitors (400-600 nits) will likely fail this test at full brightness. With such monitors, there is 0 HDR headroom remaining at full brightness (see test #1).
  • If you can’t pass this test on a monitor you believe to be HDR-compatible, see the  troubleshooting  section below as well as my free e-book (which goes into greater detail).
  • There is a bug in iOS 16 where invalid data is returned (returns 32, which is not valid as a multiple of 3 is expected for an RGB display).
  • In rare cases, you might get a false positive (I’ve seen a 250 nits monitor report itself as 1499 nits in Windows advanced display settings and also showed as a 10-bit display, so bad data in the video driver may cause invalid results here).
  • This test indicates the display supports HDR, but not specific browser features (for example, Safari currently offers HDR video but not HDR photo support).
  • If you toggle HDR settings in the operating system, you probably need to refresh the page (this media query does not seem to dynamically update).
  • Once this media query is properly supported across the board, will be very useful to help control which content is rendered to an HDR vs SDR display.
  • This tests a new metadata which helps ensure HDR images render properly. If you were to view an HDR image which is not encoded with this metadata or view it in a browser which does not support it, you would likely find that the image in the browser is darker than what you see in Photoshop even when viewing the HDR.
  • This test is only valid if you can pass test #1. If you cannot pass that test, then this test will show a false negative result (so you may still benefit from improved SDR display, but this test wouldn’t tell you if your browser supports it or not when testing an SDR display).
  • This test is only valid if you can pass test #1 (>0 stops headroom at current brightness). If your display has no headroom (which may be the case for 400-600 nit displays which are set too bright), then you will be viewing the SDR version even if the browser supports gain maps.
  • Failure to pass this test will mean that you will see an HDR gain map as SDR on your display, even if you have HDR support otherwise.
  • Chrome v116+, MS Edge v116+, Brave v1.58+, and Opera v102+ all have gain maps enabled by default. If you are up to date and can’t pass the test, check that  chrome://flags/#gainmap-hdr-images  is set to Enabled. Replace that “chrome” prefix with edge, brave, or opera as appropriate for those browsers.
  • Note this tests the Adobe/Google standard for encoding a gain map, JPG gain maps exported from iOS / MacOS Photos app are encoded differently and support may vary (though I’ve found they work as expected with Chrome and derivative browsers).
  • Most  browsers support this format. 
  • If you fail this test, all the other visual tests above (which are AVIF images) wont’ be visible – but you may still have support for HDR JPG gain maps.
  • You are likely to fail this test if you are not using Safari, as support is very limited . This is not important as use of this format online is very limited and is not likely to grow significantly any time soon.
  • Failing this test is not a concern as HDR images are most likely to be shared as AVIF or Ultra HDR JPG. This format would most likely be used for posting HDR images directly from an iPhone or one of the few cameras which offers the format.
  • You are likely to fail this test, as support is  very limited . JXL support is not important as use of this format online is very limited and is not likely to grow significantly any time soon.
  • Failing this test is not a concern as HDR images are most likely to be shared as AVIF or Ultra HDR JPG. Furthermore, JXL appears unlikely to get significant use anytime soon as Chrome removed support (but it has some advantages over AVIF and Adobe Camera RAW can export HDR JXL and the latest Safari can show SDR images as JXL).

This is a very detailed topic, so I’ve created a separate page with  reviews and recommendations for HDR monitors . The short answer is that Apple laptops have had them for years (with the M1-M3 MacBook Pro being outstanding), PC laptop options aren’t as great, and external monitors are still pretty pricy unless you only need to view in a darker or more controlled environment. Additionally, there are a number of mobile devices with HDR displays (the iPhone and iPad have had excellent HDR displays for years, but don’t yet support browsing HDR images).

How to profile / calibration an HDR monitor?

I’ve had great success just profiling normally on Windows using an i1Studio like I always have. Apple displays tend to be quite accurate and the default might be your best option for now if you run into any challenges with HDR calibration.

Calibrite (associated with X-Rite) has released a few colorimeters designed to handle brighter HDR displays, including :

  • Display Plus HL . Designed to handle up to 10,000 nits, which vastly exceeds the capabilities of any consumer HDR display. Nevertheless, I bought this one. I’ve since seen reports that these may not be as sensitive to dark values and wonder if there is something like an ND filter in it that enables detection of bright values and may reduce sensitivity at the low end of the range.
  • Display Pro HL . Designed to handle up to 3,000 nits. This is the ideal level to support HDR display for years to come. Many monitors, TVs, and mobile phones are in the 1000-2500 nits range, but it seems unlikely we’ll exceed 3000 nits anytime soon (that would probably require micro-LED).

If you have an Apple display, the color is quite accurate from the factory. Using an Apple display without profiling is perfectly fine for most photographers exploring HDR (though I would recommend you consider profiling if you plan to make prints, especially if you print tinted B&W or important neutrals). With calibration in my laptop’s internal display, I was able to reduce a max deltaE 2000 from 2.7 to 1.4 and average error from 0.9 to 0.3. The primary benefit of calibrating Apple displays is to improve accuracy of neutrals (where deltaE was reduced from a detectable 2-2.5 across midtones and highlights down to well under 0.5).

Bottom line: Be careful (for now) with custom profiles on HDR machines. This is a significant change to the display and the more software or changes you involve, the more likely you are to encounter a bug with this new technology. 3rd-party profiling software may result in loss of HDR. 3rd-party software pre-installed on Windows machines may cause color issues or other HDR problems. If you are able to pass the HDR test #1 above (confirmed headroom) and aren’t getting HDR display, it may well be a profile issue. Try resetting to the factory profile and restarting the computer.

You can approach HDR photography with the same best practices you use normally, such as shooting RAW and  exposing to the right . But even that is not required. You can even use an 8-bit JPG (which I show in the AI-generated MidJourney images below). It’s very flexible and you can get great results from a wide range of images.

If you like, you can bracket and combine several exposures, such as by using Lightroom’s “merge to HDR” feature. This was a commonly used practice for the old “HDR” tone mapping workflows. You can use it with true HDR displays, but it is not at all necessary. A properly exposed RAW image from a modern camera still has slightly more dynamic range than the best HDR monitors available, and would be suitable for even 4000 nit monitors. It’s only beneficial in a small number of cases, and it should generally be avoided in order to simplify your workflow and let you focus on composition or other aspects of the art which are much more important than any potential bracketing benefits. 

Creating HDR images with Lightroom

Every version of  Lightroom (LR)  now supports HDR editing – Mac or PC via both Classic and the cloud version, LR iOS, LR Android, and even the website version. This includes editing and exporting, as well as an option to share HDR images in an  online gallery .

Note: Be sure to enable LR preferences / Presets / “Enable HDR editing by default for HDR photos”. This will turn on HDR mode in the develop panel automatically when you import an existing HDR edit (such as a TIF you edit in Photoshop), otherwise your HDR will show as clipped to SDR.

Creating HDR images with ACR 15

ACR  (Adobe Camera RAW) v 15 supports  proper display and editing of HDR images (which they call HDRO or “High Dynamic Range Output”). To enable support in ACR, go to    PS Prefs / File Handling / Camera RAW Preferences / Tech Previews, check “ HDR output ” and restart Photoshop (Windows support requires ACR v15.1).

Once you’ve enabled it, you can use ACR to create HDR versions from any source image (or any layer when using Filter / Camera RAW Filter). You’ll see the most benefit when working on a RAW image, but you can use this HDR editing even on something like an 8-bit JPG and get incredible results (see my  HDR conversions of 8-bit JPGs  from generative AI).

To process as HDR, you need to click the “HDR” button just below the histogram. Once you do, you’ll find the following:

  • All the editing controls look exactly the same . There is no learning curve. But as you increase brightness (through exposure, highlights, whites, curves, etc), you will find the image simply gets brighter and more beautiful – rather than clipping to white. It’s very intuitive.
  • The histogram will change and show both SDR (standard dynamic range) and HDR. The SDR range is what you’ve always had and the HDR range is the extra stops of brightness above it. The HDR range will show yellow (HDR pixels your monitor can handle) and red areas (pixels which are clipped / beyond the limits of your display at its current brightness).
  • The highlight clipping triangle will also show the same yellow/red coloration to let you know which pixels are in the HDR range and which are clipped on your monitor. There is no fixed upper limit like we have with SDR white.
  • “ Visualize HDR Ranges “. This shows the HDR values color coded various shades of blue/purple for the number of stops over SDR white (note that this does not indicate clipping, which might be in any of the blue/purple areas depending on your display).
  • “ Preview for SDR Display “. The only use I have found for this for using ACR to save the image in an SDR format. Most people can ignore this section. See my  HDR e-book  for more details.
  • The curves will be labeled with SDR and HDR regions and shows a smaller grid spacing.

If you proceed to open your HDR image in Photoshop (whether as a Smart Object or regular layer), you should open it as a 32-bit document to preserve the HDR content.

Creating HDR images with Photoshop

32-bit editing in Photoshop is substantially different 8/16-bit editing, including the several differences:

  • 32-bit mode supports much brighter pixels (and negative values for some bright colors). This is what gives you HDR support in 32-bit images. This means your pixels can go way above “255” max you’re probably used to for 8/16-bit editing. That numbering system is not used for HDR though. Instead, 32-bit numbers are measured on a floating-point scale where 0.000 is the same as 0 in 8/16-bit measurements and 1.000 is the same as 255 in 8/16-bit measurements. HDR values are those above 1.000 , with each stop being double. So 2.000 is 1-stop above standard white, 4.000 is 2-stops above standard white, and so on. Individual RGB channels may also show as negative for bright HDR colors (you would only see this as a result from an adjustment, you cannot request such colors directly).
  • 32-bit mode works with a linear (1.0) gamma at all times. This provides more accurate blending of color, but also has some confusing and sometimes unwanted side effects. For example, you’ll find that curves work substantially differently.
  • Several tools are not available in 32-bit mode (primarily because of the development effort required to offer support, so hopefully we’ll see the options grow as HDR gains in popularity). You won’t see black & white adjustment layers, overlay blend mode, etc. See my e-book for more details and suggested workarounds / alternatives.
  • Some tools work differently or improperly in 32-bit mode. For example, the saturation blend mode produces very different results, “smart sharpen” will clip all HDR pixels to SDR values, etc.

** The  Lumenzia v11  luminosity masking panel for Photoshop offers extensive support for 32-bit workflows. This includes not just full support for luminosity masks in 32-bit images but also color masks, dodging & burning, sharpening, and numerous other optimizations.

Other tools for creating HDR:

The following tools also support HDR editing:

  • Affinity  provides support for viewing and editing HDR images as 32-bit RGB, as well as support to edit the RAW as HDR (see my  e-book  for problematic settings which can clip the results to SDR). Use the 32-bit Preview panel to help control visualization. Change the limits under the histogram to see HDR values, and use the interactive color sampler to see actual values (the info panel only shows clipped SDR readings).
  • Pixelmator Pro for MacOS supports both HDR photos and HDR video. Click the HDR button at top right to enable HDR photo editing. Support includes a wide range of file formats.
  • GIMP  provides support for 32-bit files, but I have not tested to see if it displays over-range values as HDR or simply shows a clipped display the way legacy versions of Photoshop do. So you can edit HDR images, but I’m not sure if you can view the content as HDR.
  • Photomator  for iOS devices. This is a great option for mobile editing if you do not subscribe to Lightroom.

The following tools do not support HDR display and editing currently:

  • CaptureOne  has a “High Dynamic Range” section right under exposure, but this appears to be just tone-mapping to help better convert RAW images to

JPG Gain Maps: Share great images with everyone

One of the fundamental challenges of HDR photography is that the images will ultimately be viewed on both HDR and SDR displays. They will also often be viewed in-between – that is on HDR monitors are aren’t as capable as the one used to create the image.

When HDR is displayed on a less capable monitor, the content must either be compressed into the dynamic range of the display or it will clip. This process of compressing the dynamic range is known as “tone mapping”. It can produce an acceptable and sometimes very good result, but is never as good as the result you could create by simply editing the image for SDR. So this creates a tradeoff the for photographer – do you enable the benefit of HDR if it risks many people seeing a degraded result? Thankfully, that tradeoff is no longer an issue.

A new standard called a “ gain map ” allows a range of file formats (including JPG) to effectively includes both the SDR and HDR version of the image.   JPG gain maps  are  backwards compatible with both SDR displays with browsers that don’t understand gain maps at all. So if the viewer doesn’t have the right monitor, browser, or settings – they will see a great-looking SDR image. But if they have proper HDR support, they will see your vastly improved image. And if they have limited HDR, their display will look much better than tone mapping of a simple HDR without a gain map. This ensures everyone sees a gorgeous version of your image, even if they don’t have an HDR monitor .

Note: Google refers to a JPG with a gain map as “Ultra HDR JPG”.

See my  HDR JPG gain map gallery  for an example of how these images look. You might try viewing the page with an HDR monitor using Chrome vs another browser which does not support gain maps to see how it automatically adapts.

There are some minor caveats with gain maps at this time:

  • Adobe LR / ACR have given us a very nice tool, but we really need complete control over the SDR to optimize in certain situations (including when editing SDR for print and then upgrading that to HDR). If you’d like to see Adobe add support for full control over the SDR rendition, please vote on this feature request .
  • The JPG files are slightly bigger (about 30%), though future support for AVIF gain maps could help offset that.
  • The other limitation is that you need to send your gain map to the viewer without it getting altered by third parties to get the HDR benefit. If you upload to social media or a service which reprocesses your image (to compress, crop, or shink it), it will likely strip the gain map. That will result in the SDR image being shown everywhere, instead of allowing the HDR where possible. The best way to avoid that is by sharing images from your own site / server or sharing links to a service like DropBox or Google Drive (the previews on those sites will be rendered as SDR, but the download will be the original gain map version). This concern should go aware as support rolls out to more platforms. See here  for more details on gain maps.

The image formats we’ve used on the internet for decades (JPG, PNG, GIF) do not properly support HDR. The best format for sharing HDR images is the new AVIF format.

AVIF  is a file format developed by Alliance for Open Media . It’s an open standard which already enjoys fairly broad support in major web browsers for standard images. AVIF offers numerous advantages over JPG, including:

  • Native support for HDR. This offers higher quality than a JPG gain map as AVIF supports higher bit depths and produces fewer artifacts. Browser support for the AVIF does not automatically mean support for HDR images, and may be limited to SDR in some cases (see my test page  with HDR detection and automatic rendering).
  • Vastly smaller file sizes than JPG , PNG, and  webP  at similar or even better quality. An AVIF is often 25%  smaller than a comparable JPG, and I’ve several images shrink by  85% . The results are about 10% smaller than webP as well. These ultimately means websites load faster, reduced bandwidth costs, faster uploads, smaller email inboxes, etc.
  • Higher bit-depth encoding (10 or 12-bit for AVIF vs 8 for JPG). This can help avoid banding in smooth gradients like blue skies. It also eliminates the need for dithering in 8-bit images. This benefits both SDR and HDR images.
  • Transparency . This makes AVIF an ideal replacement for PNG, as the files are much smaller.
  • Lossless encoding . These files are of course not nearly as small when encoded this way, but this offers a great alternative to sending TIF when quality really matters. I expect this will be a great way to send images to print labs in the future.
  • Support for animation (AVIF is based on a video format). This offers vastly better quality than an animated GIF.

Note that AVIF is compatible with gain maps as well and that will make it an ideal replacement for JPG gain maps (for smaller, higher-quality files) when ready. At this time, Chrome can view such images (under a developer flag), but there is no encoder available. Hopefully, we’ll see support for this take off in 2024.

You can both open and export HDR images (as AVIF or JXL) through ACR v15.1. You can open directly in PS (you’ll see the ACR dialog and can open in PS). Exporting is a little more complicated as you only have the option to save as AVIF/JXL when the image is opened directly into ACR (so this isn’t something you can do directly from a layered 32-bit file).

You can use Web Sharp Pro to help export AVIF as shown in the video below. In addition to facilitating AVIF exports, it offers batch processing, sharpening, borders, custom cropping, social media templates, watermarks, and much more. Learn about its AVIF support  here .

If you wish to optimize your website to show HDR image for HDR monitors and SDR versions of your work otherwise, that can be done with methods I describe in my  free e-book  and shown in my  HDR gallery test page . It will automatically detect your display and render the most appropriate image, but you can click the green button to toggle (so you can see what an HDR image looks like on an SDR screen).

There are no good alternatives to  AVIF or  JPG gain maps for HDR on the web:

  • HEIC / HEIF supports HDR and is great for the photo roll on mobile devices, but not supported by browsers (not even Safari). This could become a viable HDR format on the web in the future given widespread use in iPhones, but AVIF is far ahead (not even Safari on the iPhone supports it).
  • JXL  is another competing royalty-free standard which supports HDR. It offers many potential  advantages over AVIF , but Google Chrome has just  removed  it from development. Without JXL support from the dominant web browser, and it appears AVIF will be the primary format for sharing HDR images on the web.
  • JXR supports HDR and has been used for  Xbox and Windows Game screenshots, but it not compatible with any major web browsers and was even removed from MS Edge. This format is history. 

Sharing HDR images for the web

The best way to share images for many users right now is on your own website, where you have full control over the image and can avoid reprocessing which may break the HDR content. Many websites will resize or otherwise process thumbnails and other versions of your upload and these may render as SDR or simply fail. See my HDR JPG gain map gallery, which was created with self-hosted WordPress (share your images using the “full” size variant to avoid image reprocessing by WordPress / ImageMagick, which currently strips the gain map).

There are a couple options for sharing images on portfolio sites:

  • Lightroom web albums  show HDR versions of your image. This is a very nice feature built right into the cloud and mobile versions of LR (and may be integrated with LR Classic with a little more setup). See  my demo LR gallery . If you view on a supporting HDR display/browser, you’ll see an HDR AVIF in the large view of the image (grid view is currently not HDR). If you don’t have support, you’ll see an SDR JPG (try comparing full-sized view of the same image in my gallery in both Chrome and FireFox to get a sense of the HDR vs SDR rendition, as FireFox does not support it and will show SDR).
  • zonerama.com  supports HDR display. I haven’t used it personally, but they do a nice job of rendering HDR (AVIF) where supported and automatically falling back to SDR (JPG) when it is not supported. Their paid tier also includes an option to embed your gallery on another website, which should make it easy to integrate if you have an existing site. If you try it, please let me know your thoughts in a comment below.

Sharing HDR images for iPhone / iPad

The October 2023 updates (iOS 17) from Apple added support in the native Photos app for HDR AVIF images. You can export these with LR, PS, and via Web Sharp Pro. Apple does not yet support JPG gain maps, so you should use AVIF for showing images on your Apple phone/tablet separately from JPG gain maps you use to share images on your website. This is all very new, and hopefully it won’t be long before we can share a single high quality file that just works everywhere.

Sharing HDR photos on Social Media (Instagram, etc)

Instagram has started enabling support for HDR photos (go to  my IG account  and click on individual images to see examples). Support appears to be expanding, but as of Feb 29, I have seen or have received reports of the following:

  • You may upload HDR gain maps captured on the following cameras: iPhone (HEIC and JPG), Samsung S24 (JPG). I don’t know if other Android phones work yet. Your post will be displayed as HDR on supporting devices (including Android, iPhone, and computer web browsers).
  • When you share a link to your IG image on Facebook , it will show as HDR in a supporting web browser (but not the iOS / Android apps at this time) .  

HDR conversions from 8-bit JPG: (MidJourney, stock, etc)

Up-converting to HDR can add great impact even to 8-bit source images such as stock photography or AI-generated art (MidJourney, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, etc). It may not work on images highly prone to banding (those with smooth gradients), but most 8-bit images can tolerate this enhancement quite well.

SDR

If you are not familiar with bit-depth generally, please see  this article  I posted on the topic. You might think 32-bits means HDR, but that is simply not the case. Unfortunately, things get more confusing with HDR because you’re going to have dig a little deeper into the details to know what the numbers mean. For example, you probably have numerous 16-bit TIF files which are only  SDR, whereas the HDR images on this page are  10-bit HDR AVIF files (which were exported from 32-bit TIF source images). With the caveat that details matter, the following will generally be true (with possible rare exceptions):

  • Photoshop natively supports HDR in 32-bit images. 8 or 16-bit images (in common color spaces like Adobe RGB and ProPhoto RGB) are SDR (unless you use the hack built into  Lumenzia v11 , which allows 16-bit HDR for selective color, etc).
  • The AVIF image format support HDR images 10 or 12-bit depths. These file formats can encode SDR images in those same bit-depths as well (for example, a 10-bit AVIF can avoid banding that might occur in an 8-bit JPG).
  • HDR monitors will typically reference a 10 or 12-bit specification.

The important thing to know is that more bits are not required to specify a huge dynamic range. As an extreme example, we could make a 1-bit HDR image if we defined 0 as pitch black and 1 as the brightness of the sun. Obviously that would be useless, but it illustrates the point.  We have always needed higher bit-depths for editing than exporting, which is why we use 16-bit TIFs for SDR but are often perfectly happy to export those images as 8-bit JPGs.  That said, more bits are often helpful (particularly while editing)

Why doesn’t Photoshop natively support HDR for 16-bit images? My best guess is that it’s due to a combination of several factors including: potential for user confusion, quality concerns for potential banding if a linear gamma were used with 16-bits + wide gamut + HDR, common layered file formats and Photoshop itself may not support 16-bit floating point encoding (I’m not sure), and the costs to develop a niche feature. Perhaps we’ll see it in the future as HDR grows, but I wouldn’t expect it since 32-bit files are only twice as big and our processing and storage capabilities tend to double every couple years or so.

Bottom line: you’ll use 32-bits in Photoshop and probably won’t know the bit depth of your exports (but they will likely be 10 or 12 bits). If your export looks like HDR, you’re probably all set.

I’ve heard a lot of experts and articles claim that SDR offers 6-8 stops of dynamic range. That sounds reasonable to me, but I haven’t seen data backing it up and I haven’t seen test methods and data backing that number. What ultimately matters is the ratio of the peak SDR brightness to the minimum black a viewer can discern on the display.

If you have an SDR monitor set at 80 nits and increase the brightness to 320 nits (which is well within the limits of many SDR monitors), you’ve just increased the dynamic range by about 2 stops (doubled the peak brightness twice without changing the black of the monitor). Nothing about your source image changed, but the display itself is higher contrast and will show a lot more visible detail in the shadows. So the dynamic range of SDR is not fixed (even though we have a very clear black and white point encoded in those images) because we can display the same image in different ways or under different conditions.

The minimum black is a bit trickier. If you use an OLED, your pixels can be pure black and the ratio from any peak brightness to zero is “infinity”. We obviously do not have infinite dynamic range in our images. There are a few limiting factors at play with the black point:

  • Monitors always reflect ambient light or objects lit by the screen. This is more true for glossy OLED displays than those with an anti-reflective display, but all monitors are affected to some degree. The reflections ultimately set a minimum practical black value (a darker pixel than the reflection cannot be appreciated).
  • Most displays other than OLED (mini-LED, traditional LED, etc) do not offer true blacks because they use a backlight for multiple pixels and cannot perfectly block that light. So most “black” pixels are just dark grey.
  • Human vision can only discriminate dark values down to a certain point. This limit depends on a number of factors, particularly how your eyes have adapted to the ambient light or the bright parts of the image display. So we can only benefit so much even when using a monitor with perfect blacks in a dark room with no reflections.

So what about the dynamic range of HDR? Just like SDR,  it depends on the monitor’s peak brightness, how you use it (SDR brightness setting), and the ambient lighting .

You could make a pretty good argument that if you set your monitor brightness appropriately for normal use, then the HDR headroom measurement in test #1 above is the additional dynamic range you’re getting from HDR. If you use typical SDR brightness values (80-250 nits), that’s about an extra 1-2 stops on a 600 nits display or roughly 2-4 stops on a 1600 nit display.

That’s paints a fairly clear picture, but it isn’t the whole story. That’s the dynamic range of the display. You could stretch the contrast of an SDR image to cover a 1600 nits range, and that’s in fact what I’ve done with many SDR to HDR conversions (in a very specific way, I’m not just boosting contrast).  But the processing of a RAW image is different. With SDR, we compress the highlights significantly and loss substantial highlight color. We do this because we would otherwise see very flat and dark shadows and midtones. When we process a RAW for HDR, we don’t need to make such tradeoffs and so we process the same RAW data differently. We’re effectively revealing about as much extra range from the original scene as the HDR headroom allows.

Your camera (when capturing in RAW at native ISO) probably captures around 12-16 stops of dynamic range. If SDR display supports 6-8 stops and HDR adds up to 4 more stops, you’re able to process your images with nearly the full dynamic range of your RAW file. 

Human vision can accommodate about 14 stops in a still image (more under dynamic conditions if you give your eyes time to adjust, but that’s not how we typically experience photography). This leaves room for more artistic benefit with even brighter screens in the future (further increases in dynamic range would be useful), although I believe the primary benefit of going above 1600 nits will be a better ability to preserve HDR detail in brighter ambient conditions.

What supports HDR, what doesn't?

Apple has done a fantastic job of releasing supporting hardware for years, and now with support from major software like Photoshop and Chrome we have some great ways to create and share HDR. But as you’ve seen above, support varies widely. So here’s a quick summary of notable hardware and software which does or does not support HDR.

What’s supports HDR photography well now?

  • Nearly all modern  Apple laptops, Pro XDR Display, iPhone, and iPad hardware (iPad HDR is limited to the last two 12″ Pro models).
  • A wide range of Android phones including the Pixel 7 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S20 or later. This requires  Android 14 , which will be released at various dates in Q4 ’23 (varies by platform) . It looks amazing in the current beta on a Pixel 7 Pro using the Chrome Canary browser.
  • Many recent HD TVs and most of the high end models.
  • Lightroom (including edit, exporting JPG gain maps and HDR AVIF, web galleries, iPhone, iPad, and Android)
  • Adobe Camera RAW (including support to export JPG gain maps and HDR AVIF)
  • Photoshop (MacOS offers full support, Windows offers editing support without proper display outside of ACR).
  • Affinity photo (for editing).
  • Pixelmator Pro  for MacOS (v3.5+).
  • Google Chrome / Edge / Brave / Opera. Both HDR AVIF and HDR gain maps work beautifully in these browsers. This includes support for proper HDR display and high-quality tone mapping of HDR images for images not encoded with a gain map.
  • The Apple Photos app in iOS 17 and MacOS 14 . This includes proper HDR display when viewing an HDR AVIF full screen (thumbnails are not supported). This makes it
  • All your existing photos . I’ve gone back to my oldest RAW files from 2004 and found detail I could never see before. Any any SDR image can be converted to a beautiful HDR image – nearly all your existing edits stand to benefit (with the exception of images which are deliberately low contrast or low key).

What’s missing? (I’ve put the most important needs towards the top of the list, in rough order)

  • Social media  support for HDR images. While you can share images now on your own website, major image sharing platforms like Instagram and Facebook do not support HDR images. However, you can convert an HDR photo to an HDR video and post it to Instagram. I’ve posted a few  HDR examples on my Instagram account  (you’ll need to view on an iPhone and click to view full screen – any other scenario will show a lower quality SDR version of the image).
  • iPhone and iPad web browser support (WebKit) : these devices   have excellent HDR hardware on several models, but due to a lack of WebKit support, we cannot view HDR images of any kind in a browser on these devices yet. Apple has been expanding HDR support recently quite a bit and we just need browser support to really unlock the potential of these devices.
  • An encoder which allows complete artistic control over the SDR rendition in a gain map . Please upvote this feature request for better gain maps support in Photoshop (and this request for core AVIF support, as that’s an even better format than JPG gain maps).
  • Photoshop for Windows . You can work around by just using ACR, which does fully support HDR on Windows – or of course Lightroom.
  • More affordable 1000+ nit external monitors . With the exception of those who get the Apple XDR display with their laptop, the best (brightest) HDR monitors are currently beyond the budget of most photographers. This matters to everyone (including those lucky enough to have high end Apple displays), as it means a larger audience of people who can appreciate your gorgeous HDR images. It’s only a matter of time before economies of scale kick in and this becomes much more the norm, as it already is for many mobile devices and big screen TVs.
  • PC laptops . There are very few Windows HDR laptops and fewer still with great support. It’s been improving in 2023, but the Apple is well ahead of the PC market.
  • Adobe Bridge : No support.
  • Photoshop: native support to open and export AVIF : ACR is great, but you cannot easily do batch exports, support exports via extension panels, nor have full control over the SDR version.
  • Simpler Windows support . HDR support in MacOS just works (with the minor exception that you have to enable it for external HDMI monitors). Windows is more complicated (you need to enable it on every screen, loss of support when mirroring, calibration issues, etc). My (limited) experience has also been that connecting a Windows computer via HDMI to an HDR TV produces disappointing color, while MacOS looks very nice by default on the same TV.
  • Enable HDR by default on Windows . With MacOS, you have HDR support if you have the hardware and software. On Windows, you have to enable it manually – which means people with supporting computers may fail to see HDR images. Any outstanding quality issues holding this back from being on by default should be addressed ASAP. I’ve generally had a positive experience with it on Windows, but there are of course millions of software/hardware configurations I’ve never seen used with it, so I don’t know if there are any significant edge cases holding it back.
  • iMessage . You can view an HDR AVIF in the iOS Photos app, but if you receive one via iMessage, there is no way to save it to the camera roll in order to view it. You can send a DropBox link, save to the Files app, and then save to Photos from there – but that’s a complex workaround. HDR support in iMessage would be ideal, but at least direct support to save the image to the photos app would offer a much simpler workaround.
  • Affinity  (as o v2.2) has great HDR editing (including RAW and layers), but lacks a useful way to export for the web (as HDR AVIF or a JPG gain map).
  • FireFox browser support : HDR does not render properly, unsupported.
  • AVIF gain maps. Chrome has support under a dev flag ( chrome://flags/#avif-gainmap-hdr-images ) and it looks great. This file format offers both higher image quality and smaller files than JPG gain maps (at the same time). They also allow the option to encode the base image as HDR for highest quality (though encoding the base as SDR is the safe choice until gain maps are universally supported). We need to see an encoder to use the format, and MS Edge needs to add support for the AVIF file format to make this useful. But will be very exciting in the future.
  • MS Edge v121 will add AVIF support. To try AVIF support now, install the Canary version, right-click the app icon and update the target to append the following extra text after the existing program location in quotes: “C:\Users\{{username}}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge SxS\Application\msedge.exe”  –enable-features=msEdgeAVIF

We are still in the early stages of HDR and things are subject to change rapidly . Please comment if anything on this page seems out of date, and be sure to check back for the latest.

  • Pros: High peak brightness and sufficiently deep blacks for a great HDR experience.
  • Cons: Does not offer true blacks (subject to blooming/haloing around bright pixels), limited range of viewing angles, slower response time may limit frame rates for gaming/video.

QLED (Quantum Dot LED)

These offer significantly improved colors as well as high brightness. But does not achieve the same high contrast ratio as mini-LED.

LMCL (Light Modulating Cell Layer) This uses a single backlight and an extra (grayscale not color) LCD layer to control how much the backlight illuminates a single pixel. You’ll probably never see one of these if you don’t make Hollywood movies (they tend to be $30k+ reference monitors and will probably be replaced by other technologies below in the next decade).

  • Pros: True blacks and high brightness.
  • Cons: Increased energy consumption to provide enough illumination through the extra layer, narrow viewing angle.

OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) Some computer displays and many TVs offer this. These use color filters to turn a white light source into the red, green, and blue sub-pixels. There are several newer variants of OLED discussed below which use different approaches.

  • Pros: Emissive (true blacks) allow extremely high contrast ratio for excellent HDR in dark viewing environments.
  • Cons: Limited peak brightness means that you may not have much HDR benefit if ambient lighting levels are not very low. Newer variants of OLED (including QD and MLA) may help significantly overcome this.

Note that you may read about “burn in”, which refers to potential ghost images if pixels are lit the same way for a very long time (such as the logo you see at the bottom of most news networks). This isn’t a big issue with modern OLED displays (thanks to various compensation strategies), though it may not hurt to set your dock to auto-hide to avoid continuously showing the same content on the screen.

QD-OLED (Quantum Dot OLED)

Instead of color filters (which reduce light output significantly), uses quantum dots (nanoparticles which convert UV light to various colors based on the size of the quantum dot) to convert a blue OLED light source into other colors. This offers great improvements in both color and peak brightness. You’d probably only find this in a premium TV at this time. Note that this technology is so significant the three scientists were awarded the  Nobel prize in chemistry  for it.

MLA-OLED (Micro Lens Array OLED)

MLA adds little hemispheres to help increase brightness by directing more of the light to shine out of the OLED (rather than being lost internally). You’d probably only find this in a premium TV at this time.

WOLED (White OLED) This is OLED with white pixels in addition to RGB. LG and Panasonic offer TVs with this technology. You may hear this referenced as WRGB due to the 4 sub-pixels it uses. This technology is used in some excellent TV monitors like the LG C2, which makes it a commonly used technology for mastering HDR movies and something to consider as an external monitor for photography.

  • Pros: Enables brighter displays than typical OLED.
  • Cons: Lacks saturation in brightest values, calibration is more complicated (CalMAN supports), not necessarily optimized for computer use.

AMOLED (Active Matrix OLED)

An “active matrix” means a pixel is lit continuously (thanks to electronics that help keep it lit). That is in contrast to a “passive matrix” where the pixel is lit while the display is refreshing a given line in the display. A “passive matrix” OLED (PMOLED) is a simpler design where the pixels are driven very bright briefly and then fading or off until the next refresh (this is over a very fast period of time and would not appear to the naked eye to be flickering). You may also encounter “Super AMOLED”, which just means that touch screen sensitivity is built into the AMOLED display.

I’m only including this here because you’re likely to see some smartphone or laptop screens described as using AMOLED. This is not an important distinction because any OLED you use for HDR photography will have an active matrix if it isn’t for some small display with low resolution (like a fitness tracker on your wrist). So you can generally think of AMOLED as being the same as generic “OLED” for our purposes.

Stacked (or “tandem stack”) OLED

There are efforts to create a transparent OLED, meaning that you can see through it (ie any additional light behind the display would shine through). This might enabled novel displays that look almost like floating holograms (such as a “heads up display” in a car). On its own, it may have limited applications as you wouldn’t be able to control blacks. But you could stack it over other traditional or transparent OLEDs, which means you could generate R, G, and B in the same space. This would avoid the conventional sub-pixels thus offering less risk of seeing color separation as close distances and potentially higher resolution. This also may improve brightness (as you can use dual blue emitters). This may also improve longevity (as smaller sub-pixels are driven at higher voltage and don’t last as long, especially the blue ones), though that tends to be less of a concern with consumer usage.

This is analogous to OLED but with an inorganic construction which promises many benefits over OLED. While these are several years from production for a computer display, they promise to deliver the best possible results. You may find them appear in small screens like camera view finders, smart watches, or VR headsets before they are common in smart phones, tablets, or computer monitors.

  • Pros: Promises to potentially offer many benefits over both LED and OLED including higher peak brightness (including better visibility in sunlight), better power efficiency, wider color gamut, wide viewing angles, faster response times (for high refresh rates in gaming), and an improved ability to work in extremely hot/cold temperatures. 
  • Cons: Future technology, no consumer offerings at this time. Likely not available on consumer TVs and computer monitors for many years, and will probably have premium pricing when available.

HDR standards

  • Name confusion . The vastly improved HDR displays we’re discussing here are going to frequently get confused with the completely separate “HDR” tone mapping techniques used by software such as Photomatix. Adobe refers to it as HDRO (“High Dynamic Range Output”) to try to differentiate it from tone mapping methods.
  • Mixed search results . If you try to Google information on the topic, most of your search results are going to be about that other HDR. Try narrowing your search by looking for terms like “HDR10” or “32-bit Photoshop”.
  • Lack of standards . There is no agreed standard for tone mapping, which is the reason an HDR image may look different when viewed on an SDR monitor using Chrome vs Safari. Upcoming file standards and increased adoption of HDR displays should reduce this impact, but there are likely to be some differences in any display which cannot match the peak brightness of a given image.
  • Competing standards . TV makers refer to HDR10, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision. Apple refers to HDR, EDR, and XDR. Computer monitors may reference the DisplayHDR standard. And so on. The ideas are similar, sometimes the same, and yet often have substantial differences.
  • Various levels of adoption of standards . While there are many great standards in development, it will be years before they are consistently adopted. This is likely to result in scenarios where an image is unexpectedly altered. 
  • Marketing terms muddy the water . You’ll have no problem finding a cheap monitor which claims to be an HDR monitor. That monitor may offer nothing more than the ability to process an HDR signal for its SDR display, or it might only support a very limited peak brightness. Don’t be fooled, the details matter.

The following standards come up frequently in discussions involving HDR:

  • DisplayHDR : This is a test standard from Vesa to help compare different monitors with a numerical measurement of peak brightness. 400 would work in a darker environment, 600 is better, and 1000+ is the ideal. If a monitor isn’t listed here, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t HDR and you should look at the peak sustained brightness as the most comparable number. For example, Apple’s XDR monitors are excellent but not on the list, but knowing they have 1000-1600 nits peak brightness ought to tell you they are solid.
  • EDR (Extreme Dynamic Range): This is Apple’s name for its software support for HDR in MacOS. You probably won’t see this term much if you aren’t a software developer.
  • XDR (eXtreme Dynamic Range): This is Apple’s name for its best /brightest HDR monitors. They also have some less-capable but true HDR displays which don’t get the XDR brand name.
  • Gain maps : A file standard for including both the SDR and HDR rendition of an image in a single file, so that the artist is able to optimize the image for both types of displays. This is a critical technology for transition to HDR, as it removes the loss of quality associated with using “tone mapping” to automatically generate the SDR version when HDR is not supported. 
  • Tone mapping : The process of compressing the dynamic range of an HDR image to display on SDR or a less-capable HDR display (without clipping) through an automated algorithm. The result is a usable but much less impressive image. There are numerous methods of doing this, it is not a fixed standard. The opposite of this (up-converting SDR to HDR) is known as “inverse tone mapping” (Web Sharp Pro offers this via its “enhance SDR to HDR” option).
  • HLG  (Hybrid Log-Gamma) and  PQ  (“Perceptual Quantizer”, aka ST2084): These are the two primary electro-optical transfer functions (EOTF) which is used to encode HDR data. These are analogous to “gamma” we’re used to hearing related to SDR images. HLG is a relative standard using no metadata (everything is relative to the brightest value possible for your display). HLG is very nice for live sports or events, as it avoids the delays that would be required to generate metadata for PQ. HLG allows encoding up to 12x reference (SDR) white, ie about 3.5 stops of headroom.
  • PQ  is an absolute standard measured in nits. However, tone mapping is applied by the viewing software based on metadata (so you’ll have an accurate display rendering the image as intended when possible, and tone mapped as needed – at least when proper metadata is stored in the photo and used by the viewing software). PQ with metadata offers video which should be more consistent/optimal, and theoretically would provide better future proofing for quality if we ever get HDR displays exceeding 5000 nits (this won’t be a factor for a long time, if ever). PQ allow encoding of roughly 5.6 stops of headroom (assuming the 203 nits standard SDR for photography).

The following standards come up frequently in discussions involving HDR video, but aren’t directly relevant or necessary for still HDR photos:

  • HDR10 : This is an open standard for encoding HDR video, and probably the most common. It uses 10-bit PQ, D65 white point, and is mastered for 1000 nits. Tone mapping is not standardized. Metadata is static for the entire video, which can limit the quality of tone mapping for movies with a wide range of light.
  • HDR10+ : This is HDR10 with dynamic metadata to help optimize tone mapping for scenes with different brightness.
  • DolbyVision : This is a proprietary standard from Dolby. Due to licensing costs and minimum requirements, you’ll tend to find it only on higher end TVs. Apple products using Safari support it. Seeing support for DolbyVision is generally a good indicator of quality and concern for HDR support. (Some notes on it for video use: It uses 10 or 12-bit PQ, D65 white point, and is mastered for 1000 or 4000 nits. Tone mapping is standardized for more consistent playback on different devices, dynamic metadata is used to help optimize tone mapping for scenes with different brightness, and it has numerous other features for creating better video.)

You would assume that HDR video and photography are quite similar as the only real difference is the image constantly updating in a video. However, there are some very real and practical differences, including:

  • HDR video support is different and varies by platform. In general, there is greater support for HDR video playback than HDR photos right now because the video content has been around much longer (probably due to a combination of Hollywood budgets/resources for creation and a wide range of HDR TVs). So you can watch an HDR video on FireFox with YouTube and Vimeo, but you can’t yet view my HDR photos on this web page.
  • As rough as HDR photo creation is currently, HDR video is even more challenging in my opinion. The learning curve is very steep and color management is a mess with video.
  • HDR video tends to be mastered by professionals for 1000 nits. Most TVs probably adapt 1000 nits content effectively to use the full range on brighter TVs, so this probably wont’ be much of a limiting factor for video.
  • Video tone mapping can be done scene by scene or frame by frame, but in general is going to have more compromise trying to find values that work across multiple images. Photos can be optimized in a more controlled way, which will likely prove to be more ideal when we have tools for gain mapping.
  • Video is edited primarily for P3 (or Rec2020 limited to P3), whereas prints can benefit from gamuts wider than P3. It’s a niche consideration and easy to manage with proper color management.
  • RAW source material is common for photography, but not video (log footage offers great results, but isn’t the same as RAW video). This may have implications for fieldwork. Video is simply vastly more data and it creates the need for some compromises.

In the near term, HDR video is a bit more established. But the standards which are be developed suggest that HDR photography may be a bit simpler and more uniform in a few years. Unless a free alternative to DolbyVision emerges, it is likely that photographers will have greater creative control over SDR / tone mapped versions of their HDR work.

Please see this  HDR video  playlist for some outstanding examples of HDR. Make sure you see the red “HDR” over the gear icon on the playback screen. If you don’t see it, you are viewing the SDR version of the video. If you have two monitors (or can set your HDR monitor to SDR only), it is very interesting to watch these same videos in both HDR and SDR to compare.

What does HDR look like on an SDR display?

If you try to view HDR content on an SDR display, one of the following results will occur:

  • The HDR content be clipped (so bright highlights will generally get blown out to white). This leaves you with accurate SDR content, but would look terrible because the HDR content is not useful.
  • The entire tonal range will be “ tone mapped “, which means that it is adapted to the limitations of your screen. It’s basically a complex curve that limits the maximum brightness to fit your screen. Generally this will leave SDR shadow minimally changed, but the highlights will get compressed into a very tight range. This darkens the SDR content a bit so that you get a general sense of the image (including the HDR content), but it is not an accurate HDR display and certainly not as stunning. But it is helpful to ensure anyone can see something useful (and often still very attractive).
  • Or some combination of both approaches. You might see some HDR content tone mapped into a range your monitor can handle and still have some of the brightest HDR highlights clip.

If you view this web page or my HDR videos on an SDR display, YouTube will use tone mapping. That’s why you can get a sense of the HDR benefit when viewing those videos on an SDR display (though the visual impact is substantially greater if you view the same video on an HDR monitor).

Note that tone mapping is the general approach older HDR technology worked, it would compress an HDR source into SDR. In this case, it’s a fixed algorithm (unlike the much more complex controls you get with software like Photomatix for tone mapping).

There’s also some cross-over between these HDR technologies – tone mapping can be used with bright HDR displays. Every HDR screen has its limits. When you exceed those limits, your browser or photo editing software may try to tone map the content to fit your HDR display. This is particularly useful for 400-600nit HDR displays, but even a 1600 nit display may have some tone mapping if the content was mastered for DolbyVision (which targets 4000 nits). The results are much better here because you are compressing the much less. For example, 4000 nits is 20x brighter than SDR (203 nits) but only 2.5 times brighter than 1600 nits. Human vision is also less sensitive to brighter light, so you are unlikely to notice tone mapping on any decent HDR display, even if it’s used to adapt the content to your screen.

A standard monitor has more contrast that a print (especially with media such as matte or canvas that lack deep blacks).  We aren’t about to discover whiter paper or blacker ink. Sure we might see some little gains, but prints can’t match the dynamic displays of monitors as is and we aren’t going to see HDR prints.  They will never be the same, a screen emits light and a print only reflects light. 

We’ve used to unprintable (out of gamut) colors. But the gap between screen and print capabilities is growing with HDR and it’s something to consider.  The extra brightness of HDR is unprintable and would likely show terrible clipping in the highlights. We may see some automatic tone mapping in the future (probably likely given HDR imaging in consumer phones), but you’d get better results taking control of any such conversion. You should not expect good results when printing directly from an HDR image.

So what should you do? There are several options:

  • Process for SDR first (which gives you a printable image) and then create an HDR derivative for display on screen. This is very easy to do and looks great. Using Lumenzia , just add an L1 or L2 mask to some kind of adjustment which brightens the image to give the existing highlights a nice pop. Web Sharp Pro has an automated “ enhance SDR to HDR ” option. And my  NYC: from Start to Finish  course includes a couple of bonus videos on how to use WSP or Lightroom.
  • Process for HDR first . This lets you work from the RAW (using ACR 15) to get the most out of your RAW to produce an optimized HDR image. You can then convert the HDR to SDR as needed for print (or for digital display meant to represent the image as it will print).
  • Process the image twice : once for SDR and once for HDR. This clearly creates more work and might create important differences between the images, but it could allow you to optimize both in unique ways for special images.
  • Use HDR selectively . Most images are never printed, even for those of us who print a considerable amount. HDR can enhance many images which will never be put on the wall, and HDR can often simplify the workflow for your secondary images.
  • Don’t use HDR at all. Your images won’t look as good as they can on your  computer, iPhone, iPad, social media, website, email, etc. But your screen will better match the limitations of the print, and you won’t have to learn any new skills or do any extra work. I appreciate the merits of this approach for those who only use screens as a way to ultimately get to a print, but I think there is probably a more inspired middle ground. You might choose to process only 1 stop or so into the HDR range to make your images more compelling, while not deviating too much from a print.

I use a mix of #1 (which is simplest and supports my older edits) and #2 (which can extract unique highlight color or detail from many RAW files).

Will HDR offer other benefits for printing? Possibly, but probably not. If it could, the old HDR tone mapping techniques would have let us do that long before we got enhanced monitors. Camera RAW has already been very well optimized to tone map an HDR source to SDR display. The exception might be for images which are lit from behind, which ultimately makes them emissive like a screen.

What HDR mean for exposure blending?

Whenever a new technique comes along, it’s natural to ask whether it displaces other techniques. Many people associate exposure blending with luminosity masks with the idea of managing dynamic range. It can certainly help with that, but that’s actually not the main benefit of blending. If you’ve taken my Exposure Blending Master Course , you already know that the majority of my blending work uses a single RAW exposure. Even when I use Lightroom’s merge to HDR feature to combine images, I ultimately send that new RAW file into Photoshop for blending. Blending allows for much better control over sunset color, artistic control over tonal detail, combining different moments in time, and numerous other enhancements to the image which are unrelated to the dynamic range of your screen or RAW file. Rather than displacing blending techniques, HDR will let us better process RAW images for even more better exposure blends.

As detailed as this page is, I have much more information in an HDR e-book to go through the specifics of sharing HDR images on your own site, setting up your TV, etc. It’s linked from the bottom of all my newsletters, where you’ll also get updates on my latest HDR tutorials and more.

I’ve been a guest on the following podcasts, where we discussed HDR in great detail:

  • This Week in PHOTO  with Frederick Van Johnson (HDR discussion starts at the 19:00 mark).
  • Photo Taco podcast  with Jeff Harmon

Troubleshooting HDR display:

If you do not clearly see HDR benefit or have problems with the tests above, please check the following:

To view HDR, you need support for in software/hardware from end to end. You need:

HDR content (plenty on this page)

an HDR-compatible monitor supporting a peak brightness of at least 400 nits and the brightness must not be set to the maximum if it does not offer >600 nits

an HDR-compatible browser ( Google Chrome is highly recommended)

the operating system must be configured to enable support HDR

See my FREE HDR e-book for more details, especially if you’re trying to use a TV as an HDR monitor .

If your monitor’s brightness is set too high , it may no longer show HDR benefits even if it is an HDR monitor. For example the 400 nits peak brightness of the 2020 M1 MacBook Air won’t show benefit at full brightness (HDR headroom will be reported as 0 in the tests above), whereas the 1600 nit peak brightness on the 2020 M1 MacBook Pro will still show significant HDR headroom.

If you are using a TV and see that your mouse moves slowly , this is because the TV is doing some processing and therefore creating a delay. Try setting the TV to gaming mode or turning off features which may cause lag. 

  • If the images look extremely dark , your browser is not rendering them correctly (FireFox currently does this).
  • Make sure your operating system is set to optimize for the correct monitor if you have multiple. If viewing a website mirrored on a mix of monitors, the display is optimized for only one display when many are mirrored (so you may see clipped HDR content on a mirrored SDR monitor, for example).
  • If you are unsure what HDR should look like, try viewing this page with Google Chrome on an M1 MacBook Pro. It can be hard to troubleshoot when you don’t know what you should expect.
  • If you are able to pass test #1 above (confirmed headroom), but the display is clipping to SDR, you may have a conflict with custom profiles or 3rd-party software. See the section on profiles / calibration above.
  • Right-click the desktop to view display settings, go to the HDR section and make sure the HDR toggle is on. If you do not see a toggle, then you need to alter some settings or may not have proper hardware. In the HDR settings (you can click the arrow at the far right of that line), you need to see Display capabilities / “ Use HDR ” says “Supported”. The toggle is not shown when this value is reported as not supported.
  • Note that the shortcut to toggle “Use HDR” on/off is <Win><alt>-B
  • If you have set “ duplicate these displays ” to mirror screens, there is no way to choose a specific screen to optimize for (unlike MacOS) and the lowest common denominator will limit you. If one of the screens is not HDR, then you see see display capabilities reported as “not supported”. You should either switch to “Extend these Displays” or “Show only on ###” (and select the monitor number for your HDR display).
  • If you cannot toggle “HDR” on (it keeps switching back off), check your screen refresh rate (in System / Display / Advanced Display). Try using a lower rate like 30 or 60 Hz. Higher refresh rates may not be supported with HDR by your ports / cables / drivers / video card.
  • You can look under System / Display / Advanced Display to see the reported “ Peak brightness ” (I’ve seen this reported inaccurately in one case – a 250 nits screen report itself as 1499, and suspect this may cause other problems with HDR editing or at least the reported HDR headroom).
  • In Advanced Display, a properly configured HDR monitor should list the color space as “High Dynamic Range (HDR)”. The bit depth may show as 8-bit, so don’t worry if you don’t see 10 or 12 (though higher bit depth is ideal to avoid banding in the display).
  • Note that in Advanced Display you may find an “HDR certification” listed. Most valid HDR displays currently say “not found”, so having a negative result here really doesn’t tell you anything.
  • Watch out for external HDMI displays. I’ve seen some awful results (such as very light SDR shadows that look washed out). If the SDR content looks bad, the HDR content certainly will.
  • Check that you don’t have low battery power , which can turn off HDR features. Or go to System / Power & Batter / Battery Saver and turn off “lower screen brightness when using battery saver.
  • If the shadows of the HDR content looks substantially darker than the corresponding SDR and you’re on Windows, go to System / Display / HDR and make sure “ SDR content brightness ” is between 0 and 50. On less capable displays (such as 400 nits), this slider can make a huge difference. Test #8 above will generally show 0 or very little headroom if this is an issue.
  • If you use the “ Windows HDR calibration ” app (from the Windows app store), you’ll see a dropdown for profiles you’ve created under System / Display / Brightness & Color / Color Profile. These profiles use the  MHC2  and lumi tags in the ICC profile and will affect HDR headroom and the brightness of SDR content. I saw the headroom of my external monitor change from a correct 3 stops to 7 stops after calibration. I’m not sure using tool this is beneficial / accurate for photography, but encourage you to try for yourself. But if you do try it, be aware that you’ll need to manually remove the profile if you won’t want to go back to the default/factory preset. The profile you create will be placed in C:\Windows\System32\spool\ drivers\color. You can delete (or just move) any unwanted profiles. Then to refresh your options, go into “Use HDR” and back out to refresh the list. 
  • MS guide for HDR: Getting started  
  • I’ve seen some with horrendous color in Windows computers in a store due to improper setup (I’m not quite sure why). This affected SDR JPGs as well as the HDR images, so if the reference JPG looks bad you should assume the system needs calibration or other changes to display content properly.
  • Be sure to check details on a manufacturer website because there is a lot of bad info out there (most people just don’t know about HDR yet). I had several sales guys at a large store tell me they only had 3 HDR displays on the floor, but then I found at least 10 in the store. I also found a 1000 nits monitor with a tag saying it only offered 250.

If you see problems in Photoshop , check the following:

  • Make sure you open any image from ACR into PS as a 32-bit image. Anything less will cause clipped highlights.
  • Make sure the colorspace in ACR and the colorspace of your 32-bit PS document are exactly the same. Any colorspace conversion in 32-bits seems to be affected by a bug that will make the entire image look light and washed out.
  • Make sure you are using a supported Apple  HDR computer. Windows is not supported at this time by PS v24 or ACR v15 (even if you have an HDR display).
  • Make sure both the ACR tech preview and the PS tech preview are enabled.
  • If you use multiple monitors (or are switching display settings), be aware that you may need to restart PS with any monitor change. If PS is launched without an HDR display  active , you will not see HDR for the rest of the HDR session (the monitors appear to only be checked at PS startup). You are likely to run into this if you have an HDR laptop connected to an external monitor (which is very likely an SDR monitor). If the clamshell is closed when you start PS and then you open it later, you’d see SDR content on your HDR monitor until you restart PS.
  • If you use multiple monitors with mirroring, make sure to set MacOS Display Settings to “ optimize for ” the HDR display. If you optimize for an SDR monitor, any mirrored HDR monitor will show clipped highlights

I would like thank and acknowledge the numerous experts I’ve collaborated with at Adobe, Google, Apple, Netflix, Cloudinary, and other photographers for their support developing this HDR material.

HDR image gallery (with sliders)

This section is a duplicate of the gallery above. The setup I use for the sliders has a bug this won’t display consistently. So this area is just for testing and debugging.

Click and drag the vertical slider on these images to compare before and after converting to HDR. All HDR images here were derived from existing SDR images, and could potentially be further enhanced with editing for HDR from the start. Use the slider to compare before and after. If the image on the right isn’t clearly brighter and better looking (or won’t display at all), see the tests and troubleshooting sections below to see what you’re missing.

standard (JPG)

Luminosity masking:

safari hdr test

Download the FREE luminosity masking panel »

Or, simplify luminosity masking with  Lumenzia :

safari hdr test

See the  store  page for Lumenzia and course info. “Lumenzia” and “Greg Benz Photography” are registered trademarks of Greg Benz Photography LLC. See  licensing  for Commercial and Creative Commons (Non-Commercial, Attribution) Licensing terms. Join my  affiliate  program. See my  ethics and privacy  statement.

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HDR10 and Dolby Vision support Safari/Chrome MacOS

By MSI2017 December 4, 2022 in Web App

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Msi2017   39.

So I've been using the new XDR MacBook and have been enjoying HDR content througout the web. Unfortunately,  Emby doesn't seem to be able to trigger HDR playback on MacOS. Both HDR10 and Dolby Vision (both are supported by the OS) won't trigger. Any updates coming to add this? 

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Luke

Luke   36780

Hi, there is no function for web apps to trigger HDR. It happens automatically by the browser video player if it supports it. Just because a device supports HDR10 or DV doesn't mean the browser video player does.

Does Safari support it?

samuelqwe

samuelqwe   313

3 hours ago, Luke said: Does Safari support it?

It does, as both YouTube and Netflix do playback in HDR/Dolby Vision in the browser, but I suspect there are likely many limitations in what content can be played in HDR in the browser.

Agree

3 hours ago, Luke said: Hi, there is no function for web apps to trigger HDR. It happens automatically by the browser video player if it supports it. Just because a device supports HDR10 or DV doesn't mean the browser video player does. Does Safari support it?

Safari supports it, so does Chrome on MacOS. But I believe you have to trigger it a certain way. Many other sites correctly do

Ok for starters I would make sure that you're direct playing an MP4. Is that what you're doing?

14 minutes ago, Luke said: Ok for starters I would make sure that you're direct playing an MP4. Is that what you're doing?

Yes correct

16 hours ago, Luke said: Ok for starters I would make sure that you're direct playing an MP4. Is that what you're doing?

I was too quick. I checked if they were MP4 but it seems like both Safari and Chrome do not like (e)AC3 or DTS audio which means that is the reason it'll transcode and lose HDR. I have tried an AAC audio HDR10 file and that worked well. Problem is that even when it just has to transcode the audio it will also do the video (often going from hevc to h264 for some reason). 

An easy fix would be to just convert the audio and leave the video alone. Dolby Vision will still not trigger tho

Thanks

24 minutes ago, MSI2017 said: I checked if they were MP4 but it seems like both Safari and Chrome do not like (e)AC3 or DTS audio which means that is the reason it'll transcode and lose HDR.

Actually, Safari should be able to play Dolby Digital audio (AC3 and eAC3), at least according to Dolby.

https://developer.dolby.com/platforms/apple/macos/os-support/

I suspect Emby’s transcoding profile likely doesn’t take this into account or there is some other limitation that I don’t know about.

On 12/6/2022 at 6:08 PM, samuelqwe said: Actually, Safari should be able to play Dolby Digital audio (AC3 and eAC3), at least according to Dolby. https://developer.dolby.com/platforms/apple/macos/os-support/ I suspect Emby’s transcoding profile likely doesn’t take this into account or there is some other limitation that I don’t know about.

I am not quite sure why it does that. I've made a DV file with AAC and where it correctly played in DV for one file, the other still got transcoded, again messing with HDR. @Luke Would it be possible to let Emby just transcode the audio to AAC and leave the video alone? Would make testing a lot easier

It could also be that it only accepts certain DV profiles?

2 hours ago, MSI2017 said: It could also be that it only accepts certain DV profiles?

I would think only Profile 5 DV works, and maybe some Profile 8 videos. If I recall correctly, Dolby Vision videos shot on directly on the iPhone are Profile 8, so I would expect those to work as well.

On 12/9/2022 at 11:23 PM, samuelqwe said: I would think only Profile 5 DV works, and maybe some Profile 8 videos. If I recall correctly, Dolby Vision videos shot on directly on the iPhone are Profile 8, so I would expect those to work as well.

I've checked but unless I put the file through subler it will still transcode at times. Will test a bit further today. I don't mind doing this to all my files to get DV working but keeping AC3 would be great for devices that do support it

52 minutes ago, MSI2017 said: I've checked but unless I put the file through subler it will still transcode at times. Will test a bit further today. I don't mind doing this to all my files to get DV working but keeping AC3 would be great for devices that do support it

Sorry for the confusion, I’m just saying what the browser should be able to support in general.

Emby‘s transcoding profile just doesn’t seem to allow those files to be played directly, so Emby will require an update that changes its transcoding behaviour before it could potentially work.

In theory, Safari should be able to playback the same files as QuickTime though. So if it already doesn’t work there, then it for sure won’t work in the browser.

@Luke  I have some issues figuring out why exactly the server is deciding to transcode. I have used Subler on Mac to make two files which are Dolby Vision playable on the Mac. But unfortunately for one it works well via Emby, the other once gets transcoded. Both files do get recognized and played as DV on my LG OLED. Both files also play correctly playing locally via QuickTime. I've added some screenshots

File one, this one works correctly. Both the TV and the MacBook recognise it as Dolby Vision (it is a single file, so no HDR10 to fall back to)

504516307_Screenshot2022-12-14at16_22_32.thumb.png.4339aef613b59f9d3f777df0d97322ba.png

The second file, this one works fine locally via QuickTime, and on the LG. But using Chrome and/or safari it stars transcoding

2110602505_Screenshot2022-12-14at16_22_41.png.9cd5f7c73865772e56d45ea3b12cf309.png

On 12/14/2022 at 4:28 PM, MSI2017 said: @Luke  I have some issues figuring out why exactly the server is deciding to transcode. I have used Subler on Mac to make two files which are Dolby Vision playable on the Mac. But unfortunately for one it works well via Emby, the other once gets transcoded. Both files do get recognized and played as DV on my LG OLED. Both files also play correctly playing locally via QuickTime. I've added some screenshots   File one, this one works correctly. Both the TV and the MacBook recognise it as Dolby Vision (it is a single file, so no HDR10 to fall back to)     The second file, this one works fine locally via QuickTime, and on the LG. But using Chrome and/or safari it stars transcoding  

@Luke  or @softworkz  any idea? Seems like an Emby bug to decide to transcode

On 12/17/2022 at 12:09 PM, MSI2017 said: @Luke  or @softworkz  any idea? Seems like an Emby bug to decide to transcode

Did you explore the stats feature in the video player to learn why it was transcoding?

1 minute ago, Luke said: Did you explore the stats feature in the video player to learn why it was transcoding?

Yes, it gave no further explantion compared to what the dashboard showed. But I have made some interesting progress on this. 

The file playing back correctly was a Dolby Vision profile 8 file, which has HDR10 data to fall back to. Unfortunately, Apple being Apple there is no way to verify but it seems like Apple devices always fall back to HDR10 when playing profile 8. 

The other file not working is profile 5 which does work correctly when downloading the file and playing it with quicktime. I have played a DV profile 5 stream from the Dolby Dev website and can confirm that browser playback for DV works.

Something else regarding the profile 8 file. When playing back on my phone locally (so having the file on device and playing with VLC for examle) the phone displays the video correctly in HDR10 as it does not support Dolby Vision, however, when streaming that file via Emby it does not fall back but shows the wonky purple and green image you see when playing a DV file on a non -DV device.

Long message but imo interesing findings?

  • 4 weeks later...

Are you still having an issue with this?

34 minutes ago, Luke said: Are you still having an issue with this?

HDR10 is fixed as long as it is an MP4 with AAC audio. Otherwise it starts transcoding and tonemapping. DolbyVision is still not working unfortunately

On 1/10/2023 at 7:48 PM, Luke said: Are you still having an issue with this?

Can I share some logs which are sortof related?

https://chromestatus.com/feature/6640863931269120  would this be of any help?

  • 2 weeks later...

OK yes there are some dolby profiles we need to check for direct play support. thanks.

  • 2 months later...

MrPaulo   6

I have the same issue on mac m1. The mac emby app (v 2.1.9) does not trigger transcode but the video has the wrong colours when playing dolby hdr files.

Playing on safari or chrome triggers transcode - not interested to use these.

Emby is spotless when it plays these fine on nvidia on a LG 2022 4k tv.

If you have a beta version you want to test on an m1 mac please let me me know.

On 3/28/2023 at 3:24 PM, MrPaulo said: Hi, I have the same issue on mac m1. The mac emby app (v 2.1.9) does not trigger transcode but the video has the wrong colours when playing dolby hdr files. Playing on safari or chrome triggers transcode - not interested to use these. Emby is spotless when it plays these fine on nvidia on a LG 2022 4k tv. If you have a beta version you want to test on an m1 mac please let me me know.

Hi, we are working on improving this. Thanks for reporting.

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Guiding Tech

We explain and teach technology, solve tech problems and help you make gadget buying decisions.

8 Best Fixes for HDR Not Working in Netflix on Mac

Netflix is known for delivering some of the best HDR and Dolby Vision content on its platform. You also can enjoy HDR content on Netflix from the comfort of your Mac as well. But that’s what some users complain of not being able to do on their Mac.

safari hdr test

There’s a plethora of HDR supporting TV shows and movies on Netflix. If you are facing any HDR playback issues, we bring you the best fixes for HDR not working in Netflix on Mac.

1. Check if the Title Supports HDR

Starting with basic solutions, you should check whether the movie title or series is available in HDR or Dolby Vision on Netflix. Almost every Netflix Original film or series supports HDR and Dolby Vision formats. You can confirm the same via a simple Google search. But for the non-Netflix Original content, you need to check whether the symbol for HDR or Dolby Vision is visible next to the title name or not.

safari hdr test

2. Check if Your MacBook or iMac Supports HDR

The next basic solution is to check whether your MacBook or iMac model supports HDR or Dolby Vision playback. You can visit Apple’s official support page to check the list of supported models. Check the next solution if the playback format is supported and available.

3. Check Your Internet Speed

Watching HDR content on Netflix requires a minimum internet speed of 15MBps. So if your iMac or MacBook model supports HDR, run a speed test and check if your network delivers required bandwidth. For wireless networks, we suggest switching to a 5GHz frequency band for faster internet speeds if you have a dual-band Wi-Fi router.

4. Open Netflix in Safari Browser

If you are still unable to play HDR content in Netflix on your Mac, chances are that you need to switch your browser. As per Netflix’s official support page , the Safari browser on macOS is capable of HDR10 and Dolby Vision playback in Netflix. Instead of using any other browser like Chrome, Firefox, or Microsoft Edge on your Mac, we suggest switching to the Safari browser.

safari hdr test

5. Check Your Netflix Streaming Plan

The next solution we recommend is checking the validity of your streaming plan on Netflix. You’ll need to choose the Ultra HD Premium streaming plan for $19.99/month to stream content in HDR and 4K resolution. You might have missed a monthly payment or there is some issue with your payment method. Here’s how to check and rectify the payment problems in Netflix.

Step 1:  Press Command + Spacebar to open Spotlight Search, type  Safari,  and press Return.

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Step 2: Open Netflix in a browser tab   and log in to your account.

Visit Netflix

Step 3:  Click the profile icon in the top-right corner.

safari hdr test

Step 4:  Select Account.

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Step 5:  Click on Billing Details.

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You will see the history of payments done on your account.

Step 5:  Click on Manage Payment Info on the right side.

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Step 6:  Click on Change Payment Method if the previous payment didn’t work to process the payment.

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Step 7:  After adding a new payment method, return to the Netflix home page and try to steam an HDR-supporting title to check if it works fine.

6. Disable Optimized Video Streaming

To save battery life of your MacBooks, macOS gives you the option to turn on Optimized Streaming. This feature will disable HDR (High Dynamic Range) content playback and will enable SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) playback on your Mac to reduce energy consumption. So if you are still unable to enjoy HDR content on Netflix, here’s how you can check and disable this feature.

Step 1:  Press Command + Spacebar to open Spotlight Search, type  System Settings,  and press Return.

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Step 2:  Scroll down and click on Battery from the left sidebar.

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Step 3:  Scroll down and click on Options button at the bottom-right corner.

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Step 4:  Check if the option for ‘Optimized Video Streaming While on Battery’ is enabled.

If it is, turn off the toggle for the same to disable the feature.

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Step 5:  Click on Done.

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Step 6:  Close the Settings window and open Netflix on your browser to stream HDR content.

7. Clear Cache and Cookies for Netflix

Your browser collects Cache and Cookies based on the websites you visit most to provide a seamless browsing experience. You can try clearing the Cache and Cookies for Netflix on your browser. Since we recommend switching to Safari for HDR playback on Netflix, you can check our guide on how to clear Cache and Cookies in Safari . After that, login again to your Netflix account to stream some HDR content.

8. Update macOS

The last resort for you to fix this issue is to update the version of Safari on your Mac. For that, you need to check for a version update of macOS.

Step 1:  Press Command + Spacebar to open Spotlight Search, type  Check For Software Updates,  and press Return.

safari hdr test

Step 2:  If an update is available, download and install it.

Step 3: After the installation is complete, open Netflix on Safari and check if the problem is solved.

Alternatively, you may try out the Safari Technology Preview build to check if Netflix’s HDR content works on it. Note that since it’s a preview version of Safari, expect some bugs and random crashes.

Download Safari Technology Preview

HDR Playback Made Easy

These solutions will help you enjoy HDR content playback on Netflix on your Mac. We have also covered a post stating the best hidden features of Netflix to improve your viewing experience further.

Last updated on 12 December, 2022

The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.

safari hdr test

DID YOU KNOW

safari hdr test

Paurush Chaudhary

Paurush dabbles around iOS and Mac while his close encounters with Android and Windows. Before becoming a writer, he produced videos for brands like Mr. Phone and Digit and worked briefly as a copywriter. In his free time, he satiates his curiosity about streaming platforms and devices like Apple TV and Google TV. On weekends, he is a full-time cinephile trying to reduce his never-ending watchlist, often bumping it longer.

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  • Set the display brightness to less than 100%.
  • Turn off Low Power Mode on iOS .

What's that?

The RGB color values of the message and the background are the same. Take a screenshot then compare them in an image editor.

Your experience may vary depending on browser, OS version, display, everything. Tests so far seem to indicate this only works on the Apple platforms.

By combining an HDR video (little box below heading) with CSS hack, the white color of the text becomes even brighter.

When a HDR-capable browser encounters one, it switches to HDR mode. The exact reason for this behavior is not yet known.

You may hide this video visually to achieve better webpage look.

Read more about playing HDR content with the EDR system .

Works with HDR-capable Macs and iPhones:

  • Safari / Chrome / Edge, macOS Big Sur, MacBook Air (M1, 2020)
  • Safari, macOS Big Sur, MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018)
  • Safari, macOS Big Sur, MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019)
  • Safari, macOS Big Sur, iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020)
  • iOS 14, iPhone X
  • iOS 14, iPhone XS / XR
  • iOS 14, iPhone 12 / iPhone 12 Pro
  • iOS 14, iPad Pro 11-inch (2nd generation)

Works with SDR Macs with Blink browsers:

  • Chrome / Edge, macOS Big Sur, iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)

Does not work with:

  • Firefox (Does not support HDR )
  • webOS TV (Does not support backdrop-filter )
  • Chrome, Google Pixel 4a
  • Edge, Samsung Galaxy S10
  • PlayStation 4
  • Xbox Series X (Might crash the console)
  • Chrome, Windows 10, LG 27UK600 / LG 34WL600

Wanna see a whiter white?

Avatar of Chris Coyier

📣 Freelancers, Developers, and Part-Time Agency Owners: Kickstart Your Own Digital Agency with UACADEMY Launch by UGURUS 📣

Heck of a CSS trick here from Dongsung Kim.

There are hidden HDR videos playing at the corners of this page. When a HDR-capable browser encounters one, it switches to HDR mode. For some reason, CSS backdrop-filter + brightness >100% combo seems to behave like HDR—reaching beyond the user-controlled display brightness, up to the maximum HDR brightness—while the everything in between follow[s] along. At least that’s the overall idea, but I still don’t know exactly why it works; especially why with those two CSS properties.

As I look at that demo in Chrome, I see an extra-white text-shadow . In Safari, I see extra-white text. In Firefox, the whites match so I see nothing. Probably a bug.

I wouldn’t recommend actually using the trick, as I’d think the extra-whiteness almost certainly takes extra battery power that a user isn’t opting into, even without the video playing—even though it does feel like a bummer that our screens are capable of whiter whites than we normally have access to. The good news is that the gamut of color on the web is expanding , generally.

Cool trick!

That site is quite confusing when your browser doesn’t support it. I had assumed there was text above but pressing “select all” didn’t show it. It was only when I viewed the GitHub I actually saw what it is meant to look like.

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safari hdr test

Try these additional tests: Eye Tracking Demo | Video Game Panning Test | Persistence Demo | Ghosting Test | Black Frame Insertion Demo

IMPORTANT: Close all apps and other browser tabs and windows for best performance! Keep Aero turned on. * Problems? Check Your Browser . Supported Browsers with VSYNC: Chrome (up to 240Hz+), FireFox 24+ (up to 240Hz+), IE 10+ (Limited to 60Hz). Copyright (C) 2017 Blur Busters - All Rights Reserved | BlurBusters.com | Discussion Forums | Privacy Policy | Contact Chief Blur Buster Blur Busters: Everything better than 60Hz™

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COMMENTS

  1. Play HDR video on Mac

    You can test by connecting your Mac directly to the display. Check your viewing environment. The brightness and color of HDR video might vary depending on your Mac model and the lighting in your environment. Lower lighting conditions, such as in a dim room, enhance the visual effect of HDR. Check your network

  2. Safari not showing HDR option in Youtube …

    Make sure the video you're trying to watch has an HDR version. Then in Safari, under Experimental Features, make sure that both VP9 decoder options are enabled, as well as "HDR Media Capabilities". Then under User Agent switch it to "Google Chrome - Windows" and refresh the page and HDR options should show up on the video.

  3. 4K HDR YouTube now works on iPadOS 15 Safari!

    949. Northamptonshire, United Kingdom. Jun 10, 2021. #1. Just installed iPadOS 15 on my 2018 12.9" iPad Pro and I have now discovered that 4K HDR YouTube now works in Safari which is AWESOME! As it previously topped out at 1080p and I hate YouTubes app so this is great for me. LFC2020. Stuey3D. macrumors 6502a.

  4. Safari can now stream 4K HDR and Dolby Vision content on ...

    Unfortunately, according to Apple, the 4K High Dynamic Range stream requires a Mac introduced in 2018 or later. That means older Macs can only play 1080p videos on Netflix, even with macOS Big Sur ...

  5. How to Watch HDR Content on a Mac

    To do this, connect your monitor then head to System Preferences (System Settings) > Displays. You'll see all currently-connected displays shown in the sidebar (or just one display, if you're using a single external monitor setup). If you're using a MacBook, your internal display will be listed also. Select the external display and check the ...

  6. Apple adds WebP, HDR support, and more to Safari with iOS 14 ...

    Safari is getting great improvements this year with iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and macOS Big Sur. Apple shared a document this week detailing all the changes made to the Safari 14 Beta, which now includes ...

  7. Safari in macOS Big Sur supports Dolby Vision and 4K HDR content from

    Hardware limitations have made Mac users miss the boat when it comes to 4K HDR and Dolby Vision content from streamers like Netflix when using the Safari web browser, but it looks like that little hurdle has finally been put behind us.. As first reported by 9to5Mac on Monday, Apple will soon let the public enjoy 4K HDR and Dolby Vision content on their Macs, directly within Safari, with the ...

  8. Mac Users Can Finally Watch Netflix in 4K HDR

    As 9To5Mac reports, that all changes with macOS Big Sur. Big Sur will include the next version of Safari (14), which includes the required support for watching Netflix in 4K with HDR through ...

  9. Safari in macOS Big Sur Works With 4K HDR and Dolby Vision ...

    Safari 14, introduced in the iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur betas, introduces HDR video support and allows Netflix users to watch content in 4K HDR and Dolby Vision for the first time.

  10. Safari in macOS Big Sur will stream Netflix in 4K HDR

    Jon Fingas. MacOS Big Sur may be a worthwhile upgrade if you love to marathon TV shows. As 9to5Mac reports, users have discovered that Safari in Big Sur will play Netflix videos in 4K with HDR ...

  11. Safari Gets 4K HDR & Dolby Vision Support for Netflix on ...

    Until now, Mac users weren't able to stream Netflix in 4K - which will change once macOS Big Sur comes out. Safari's newly discovered support for 4K HDR & Dolby Vision only applies to Mac models made in 2018 or later. At the moment, Safari is capped at 1080p on macOS, while other Web browsers are capped at 720p when streaming Netflix.

  12. Still no HDR in Safari after macOS Monter…

    In the Safari settings "Develop > Experimental Features" I have "HDR Media" enabled, as well as both "VP9" decoder options. In my battery settings, I have already turned off "Optimize video streaming while on battery". I have tried a myriad of battery option combinations, and I just can't get Safari to show the HDR option on Youtube.

  13. HDR 1600 Nits Test File for 2021 Macbook XDR Display USE SAFARI

    Just a Test file to see if Youtube encodes this file as an HDR to the proper 1600 Nits for the new Macbook XDR display. Chrome based browsers like Google Chr...

  14. Safari in macOS Big Sur Supports Netflix Streaming in 4K HDR

    Imran Hussain • Jun 30, 2020 02:12 AM EDT. • Copy Shortlink. Safari 14 in macOS Big Sur has gained support for Netflix streaming in 4K HDR quality, as long as you have a 2018 or later Mac. The ...

  15. Create and edit true HDR (High Dynamic Range) images

    This test indicates the display supports HDR, but not specific browser features (for example, Safari currently offers HDR video but not HDR photo support). If you toggle HDR settings in the operating system, you probably need to refresh the page (this media query does not seem to dynamically update).

  16. HDR10 and Dolby Vision support Safari/Chrome MacOS

    The mac emby app (v 2.1.9) does not trigger transcode but the video has the wrong colours when playing dolby hdr files. Playing on safari or chrome triggers transcode - not interested to use these. Emby is spotless when it plays these fine on nvidia on a LG 2022 4k tv. If you have a beta version you want to test on an m1 mac please let me me know.

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  18. 8 Best Fixes for HDR Not Working in Netflix on Mac

    Step 2: Open Netflix in a browser tab and log in to your account. Visit Netflix. Step 3: Click the profile icon in the top-right corner. Step 4: Select Account. Step 5: Click on Billing Details ...

  19. Wanna see a whiter white?

    CSS trick/bug to display a brighter white by exploiting browsers' HDR capability and Apple's EDR system. White. Set the display brightness to less than 100%. Turn off Low Power Mode on iOS. ... Safari, macOS Big Sur, MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018) Safari, macOS Big Sur, MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019) Safari, macOS Big Sur, iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020)

  20. Wanna see a whiter white?

    Heck of a CSS trick here from Dongsung Kim. There are hidden HDR videos playing at the corners of this page. When a HDR-capable browser encounters one, it switches to HDR mode. For some reason, CSS backdrop-filter + brightness >100% combo seems to behave like HDR—reaching beyond the user-controlled display brightness, up to the maximum HDR ...

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