What is this new thing called HDR rather than that old thing called HDR?

[earlybird]

Hi,
 I have been shopping for monitors and have been trying to reconcile my understanding of old-fashioned bracketed exposure HDR photography with the new way the acronym is being used.

  I am trying to catch up with the trends, and feel a bit confused.

 Having spent a couple of decades operating my display monitor at brightness levels that prepared me for viewing print output, and knowing that any Bob, Fred, or Larry could easily bump up the brightness and make their photos pop onscreen, while making it less and less likely their images would translate to print, I am perplexed by the new endeavor to crank up the brightness and refer to the imaging as "HDR".

 Am I missing something, or is this simply a trend towards making and viewing photographs with no intention of printing?

 I mean, I do enjoy the bright, colorful imagery that can be produced on a backlit screen. The pictures often look great. The big screen menu at McDonald's makes those burgers look juicier than ever, and the Mustard has never looked so yellow.

 Is that what new speak HDR is all about?

 Is the rise of HDR display technology intended to more or less replace print hanging and gallery lighting?

 I am sincerely curious.

 Thank you.

[digitaldog]

Simple: true HDR images cannot be properly viewed on an SDR display
 Just as Adobe RGB (1998) or Display P1 can't be viewed on an sRGB display (colors outside sRGB gamut).
If you have no need to view HDR on a display, you don't need an HDR display. That content can't be printed either.

[earlybird]

My follow-up question is: Where do still photographers display their HDR images?

I have made an effort to read about HDR standards or proposed standards for motion picture distribution on electronic viewing devices.

Is the display of HDR still photography targeted exclusively at the same devices?

[Tuco]

My follow-up question is: Where do still photographers display their HDR images?

I have made an effort to read about HDR standards or proposed standards for motion picture distribution on electronic viewing devices.

Is the display of HDR still photography targeted at the same devices?

Only digital is capable of the brightness, so in my case I show mine off on my iPad Pro (the big one) and iPhone, or Macbook Pro.  You're flying blind if you don't edit/create them on a screen without the ability.  Apple calls them XDR displays.  I haven't tried to display them properly on a HDR 4k TV, but it'd seem possible.

My workflow: Edit in Lightroom (hitting the HDR button) on a XDR display Macbook Pro, export to HDR enabled Jpeg files.  Import into Apple Photos for display in the Apple ecosystem.

[earlybird]

Thanks for explaining.

I recall sitting with a friend's Amiga and a paint program in the early days while thinking, "Wow, this would look great hanging on a wall."

I wonder how far away we are from that becoming commonplace.

[Chris Kern]

The light sensors in digital cameras capture high dynamic range images (tonal values that exceed the brightness range that can be printed on paper), at least if you're saving raw RGB files, and anyone with a Lightroom license and a recent MacBook Pro can process and display them.  I'm sure there also are laptops for MS-Windows with HDR-capable displays; the magic number to look for is a brightness value of 1000 cd/㎡ (a.k.a. 1000 nits), although you can get at least a partial HDR effect with less, especially in a darkened room.  You don't need an external HDR monitor.

The entertainment industry seems to be migrating to HDR for video, so it's no surprise that Adobe and Apple, in particular, are adapting their products to support this technique.  All recent iPhones display HDR stills and video, and I gather that's true of much of the hardware for Android products as well.  My understanding is that many newer consumer TV sets will display HDR content—although they also may require a dark environment.  (I don't have any personal experience with Android phones or HDR-capable TVs.)

Unlike the traditional HDR technique that involves merging exposure brackets in order to squeeze the tonal values into a composite image that can be viewed on a conventional computer display or printed on paper, this newer HDR technique produces an image that is a much better representation of the tonal range that the human eye and brain can detect.  The highlights can be much brighter and the shadows can include more detail.  Depending on the subject, of course.  An indoor photograph made under soft light won't look appreciably different as an HDR image than it would as an SDR image.

The reason you can't print this kind of HDR image is that you can't print highlights that are brighter than the surface of the photo paper.  And when an HDR image is displayed on a conventional computer monitor, it's likely to look awful.  However, it's possible to create a JPEG that will allow both conventional and HDR-capable monitors to display the same file properly by embedding a "gain map" in the file with the data needed by the latter.  Lightroom supports this as an export option and it seems to work fairly well.

[earlybird]

I can't help but chuckle a bit to myself.

People have been turning up the brightness *inDiscRiminAtelY* on their TVs and Computers for decades, and finally, the practice has a standards committee and a brand name.

Does Photoshop offer the "gain map" embedding? How about Affinity Photo?

Full disclosure, I usually export a single layer .TIFF based on my Photoshop .PSB multi layer file and then use the .TIFF in Affinity Photo to export JEPGs as I find the Affinity export function more enjoyable to use.

If embedding a gain map is the future, I would appreciate learning about it.

This situation reminds me of the gamma wars that occurred circa 1995.

[Tuco]

If embedding a gain map is the future, I would appreciate learning about it.

Greg Benz has the most HDR coverage that I'm aware of.

[earlybird]

Thank you.

I did stumble upon the Benz website and saw some information. It is good and helpful to learn that this may be the best place to review the information for the near future.

Thank you.