What is HDR, anyway?

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mxfh ◴[14 May 25 14:00 UTC] No.43984652[source]▶

Does anyone else find the hubris in the first paragraph writing as off-putting as I do?

"we finally explain what HDR actually means"

Then spends 2/3rds of the article on a tone mapping expedition, only to not address the elephant in the room, that is the almost complete absence of predictable color management in consumer-grade digital environments.

UIs are hardly ever tested in HDR: I don't want my subtitles to burn out my eyes in actual HDR display.

It is here, where you, the consumer, are as vulnerable to light in a proper dark environment for movie watching, as when raising the window curtains on a bright summer morning. (That brightness abuse by content is actually discussed here)

Dolby Vision and Apple have the lead here as a closed platforms, on the web it's simply not predictably possible yet.

Best hope is the efforts of the Color on the Web Community Group from my impression.

https://github.com/w3c/ColorWeb-CG

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lordleft ◴[14 May 25 14:19 UTC] No.43984882[source]▶

>>43984652 #

Isn't that the point of the article? That the colloquial meaning of HDR is quite overloaded, and when people complain about HDR, they mean bad tone-mapping? I say this as someone as close to totally ignorant about photography as you can get; I personally thought the article was pretty spectacular.

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1. puzzlingcaptcha ◴[14 May 25 14:55 UTC] No.43985281[source]▶

>>43984882 #

But it's not the colloquial meaning, HDR is fairly well defined by e.g. ITU-R BT.2100, which addresses colorimetry, luminance and the corresponding transfer functions.

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2. sandofsky ◴[14 May 25 15:03 UTC] No.43985387[source]▶

>>43985281 (TP) #

I don't think that's the colloquial meaning. If you asked 100 people on the street to describe HDR, I doubt a single person would bring up ITU-R BT.2100.

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3. roywiggins ◴[14 May 25 15:56 UTC] No.43986048[source]▶

>>43985281 (TP) #

I think you may be operating with an idiosyncratic definition of "colloquial"

4. redczar ◴[14 May 25 16:10 UTC] No.43986220[source]▶

>>43985281 (TP) #

Colloquial meaning and the well defined meaning are two different things in most cases, right?

5. babypuncher ◴[14 May 25 16:32 UTC] No.43986480[source]▶

>>43985387 #

HDR has a number of different common meanings, which adds to the confusion.

For example, in video games, "HDR" has been around since the mid '00s, and refers to games that render a wider dynamic range than displays were capable of, and use post-process effects to simulate artifcats like bloom and pupil dilation.

In photography, HDR has almost the opposite meaning of what it does everywhere else. Long and multiple exposures are combined to create an image that has very little contrast, bringing out detail in a shot that would normally be lost in shadows or to overexposure.

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6. altairprime ◴[14 May 25 16:42 UTC] No.43986599{3}[source]▶

>>43986480 #

Photography’s meaning is also about a hundred years older than video games; high(er) dynamic range was a concern in film processing as far back as Ansel, if not prior. That technology adopted it as a sales keyword is interesting and it’s worth keeping in mind when writing for an audience — but this post is about a photography app, not television content or video games, so one can reasonably expect photography’s definition to be used, even if the audience isn’t necessarily familiar.

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