. . . what you see is unique to anyone viewing the images elsewhere. They may or may not have HDR displays and of course, they may or may not have any display anything like your display in terms of calibration. So, what's the goal here? . . . HDR is a can of worms in this respect.
Yes, points taken. In terms of application, I'm thinking of setting up an HDR kiosk in my living room to display a selection of my photographs, especially the ones that specifically benefit from an HDR treatment; obviously, not all images do. As for display via the Internet, that is indeed a challenge at the moment. That may change as the standards mature, HDR viewers become common, and more photo-sharing sites accept HDR file formats. Google Chrome already does a decent job of displaying HDR images on various monitors and TV screens that support HDR, and ubiquitous browser support appears to be on the way. On Apple products, at least, the viewing experience with Chrome seems to be quite uniform across different MacOS and iOS platforms.
For image sharing now, gain maps are the most practical solution. I haven't always been satisfied with the way the SDR version of a particular image looks, but I suspect that reflects my limited experience with the technique. (Actually, I just recently stumbled upon it when I noticed the option in Lightroom's export dialog while I was in the process of experimenting with different HDR-only files.)
However, I do plan to continue printing, and when I do I want to have two monitors that depict SDR colors similarly—at least sufficiently that I won't be obsessed with the mismatches. (I don't have a way to quantify that requirement, but suffice it to say I'm not really that good at detecting slight color variations.) So the gist of my inquiry is whether it is realistic to believe that two monitors from different manufacturers that support similar color spaces can be calibrated as closely as my two current NEC monitors can.
