NEW: gain maps ⇨ better photos

[@ctcwired]

Just wanted to thank you for being one of the only folks to make videos on these topics (and good ones too)! I'm excited for Gain Map images to take off because it's the most practical way to distribute single-master files as far I can tell. Adobe & Apple nailed this one. The typical HDR10 type metadata in ISO 22028-5 images won't be enough to derive decent or consistent SDR fallbacks, that's assuming the metadata is even present or correct, and that an SDR device has enough processing power to do all the necessary tonemapping in GPU shaders for webpages with lots of images. In the mean time, I believe Gain Map images were just given an ISO number this past month: ISO/AWI 21496-1 I believe the closest video equivalent to Gain Map HDR images would be Technicolor's SL-HDR spec, though so far I've yet to see it used in the wild.

[@gregbenzphotography]

Thank you! Yes, 21496-1 is the draft proposal for gain maps. They've done an awesome job with it and Google has been an important part of that as well (Chrome has been leading the way for browsing). Gain maps work great (both JPG and AVIF, though the latter is in a beta / development phase and we don't have an encoder). Now the challenge is updating back end services so they don't strip the map (so we can use media libraries) and of course support in social media will be very popular. DolbyVision has a similar concept for video. But the royalties kill it for general use, it's mostly used for Hollywood to make movies for TVs. HDR video is a nightmare in my opinion, very hard to make a video like this look decent. On the other hand, HDR photography is now extremely easy to create and export exactly the way you want, just need broader support to simply keep the file as you export it. HDR video really needs an open standard comparable to what gain maps are doing for photography, coupled with a way to control the SDR rendition as Adobe Camera RAW has enabled.

[@Delivator]

Your content on HDR is so informative! It feels like this topic is still very new and its hard to find good information and you're providing so much, thank you!

[@AntonioPena1]

Thank you for explaining, first video really explaining HDR option, makes a lot of sense, I appreciated your time explaining this feature.

[@MGVphoto]

Really insightful, thanks for the detailed explanation!

[@Line-vw5io]

So glad I found your channel and your products about a year ago. You are a master in this field. Thank you so much 🙏

[@gregbenzphotography]

Thank you!

[@Soandnb]

I have to extend my most heartfelt thanks towards you and your expansive wealth of knowledge on this subject. Though I am not a photographer, I am a digital artist with a rather strange and unusual workflow that essentially allows me to "paint in HDR", or more specifically, in a scene-referred colorspace. I've been painting this way for 5 years, and for some of those, I have had the desire to export my art into easily consumable HDR formats. Your website helped me immensely in learning about different HDR formats, and it was a crucial element in me getting my first HDR-enabled device a few days ago. And it was with this new HDR-enabled device, along with the discovery of a tool that let me convert the .EXR image files I had painted into a gainmapped JPEG, that allowed my eyes to finally see my artwork in its full HDR glory, fulfilling a long-time goal of mine. While there are probably a fair number of tools to facilitate the creation and distribution of HDR photographs, HDR is still relatively unknown in the 2D art world. I hope to bridge the excitement of the HDR world into the world of digital art.

[@gregbenzphotography]

Very cool! I’d be curious to see how you use it. Please email me if you have any deeper questions, your export workflow may be unique in some ways. gregbenzphotography.com/contact/

[@alexlaouri]

Snow photos in HDR looks like you can touch it! Tnx for the video!

[@gregbenzphotography]

Yeah, really helps to keep that subtle highlight color to show the shape of snow

[@mariolombardi4766]

Greg, I have read all of your HD article (just wonderful thank you) and have watched all of your HD videos (exceptionally well explained) and Adobe’s HD related videos and now feel I have a pretty good initial understanding of the HD pro/cons. Now let me ask you a question and show my ignorance, as a workaround for displaying HD images on SDR monitors, could you take a screen shot of the HDR image my Mac Book pro with the M1 Chip and then send it to a friend who has an SDR monitor. Will they not then see the difference then or will the screen shot image just show up as an SDR image. It seems to me that if you capture a screen shot of the HDR image it will still look better than an SDR image itself. Ok, so what am I missing here? I know just go ahead and create a gain map and be done with it, but I just wanted to see what your thoughts were. Also, I am just amazed that there is so few people/photographers are even talking about this. These HDR images are just stunning period, I think it’s definitely worth the effort.

[@gregbenzphotography]

A screenshot will clip to SDR, which is the worst possible conversion. It would show the difference vs the HDR image on an HDR display. Best way to share to an SDR display is be exporting a JPG “gain map”. That has the best adaptation to lesser screens.

[@mariolombardi4766]

Thank you Greg

[@exploremarketingllc]

Is this only possible to do in Photoshop or can we do it in LRC too? I tend to work mostly in LRC and do some tweaking in Photoshop is why I ask. I assume lots of others may also do the same too. Thanks for the very informative videos Greg and keep up the great work! 👍

[@gregbenzphotography]

Gain maps can be created with LR, ACR, and my Web Sharp Pro panel (via ACR, adds some additional capability). In LR: just edit in HDR mode, set the Preview for SDR display as you’d like your fallback SDR, and then export as JPG with HDR output checked in the export.

[@exploremarketingllc]

@@gregbenzphotography Awesome and thanks! Been dealing with this the past two days trying to figure out how to get the better looking HDR photos to a client, and my OCD just can't handle the SDR look after seeing how amazing the HDR looks on most of the images.

[@gregbenzphotography]

@exploremarketingllc you’ll need to make sure no web service alters the image. File sharing sites are fine for the downloaded version, preview on site is probably altered to a standard SDR JPG. I post via WordPress (full size image is unaltered).

[@kimpeterson1710]

Thank you so much!

[@ryevisuals]

hey Greg - when my macbook pro 16" 2021 (hdr capable mini led panel) is set to the HDR Video (P3 ST2084) profile, this video flickers pure white at times. Under the XDR profile, which goes to 1600 nits, this video displays properly. I'm curious what the target nit output is for this video. Are you exceeding 1000 nits?

[@gregbenzphotography]

What time points? On Safari and FF too, or just Chrome-based browsers. Not sure how they transcoded it, but that’s just some kind of glitch / bug.

[@michiuno2238]

Hi Greg, I have found your tutorials very useful. Thank you very much. However, trying to export HDR with gainmap seems to produce lower quality SDR images. The problem starts where I have my HDR image in LRC on a HDR monitor with the HDR button turned off. After Editing this, I have a very good representation of colors and exposure for SDR. Turning on HDR in LRC, I can now tweek some more for the HDR ranges not visible so far and create a really beautiful HDR picture. So far so good. Where I lose it is here: With the HDR button still on, I can click preview for SDR. This preview looks really bad and nothing like the SDR image I got with the HDR button turned off. In other words, the two versions "HDR on - SDR preview" and "HDR off" don't look the same at all. And I'm wondering why. Also, when I try to optimize the SDR preview version with the sliders below, I don't get anywhere close to the quality of the "HDR off" version. Then, when trying to export in any format with the HDR gainmap, I get this: the picture looks really good as HDR on an HDR monitor, but looks really bad on an SDR screen - very similar to the SDR preview version in LRC. So for me saving HDR with gainmap and hoping to get the best possible SDR representation on any SDR monitor does not work. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[@gregbenzphotography]

I agree that the "preview for SDR display" isn't as good as what an expert photographer can create on their own. It would be ideal to have full control over the SDR version embedded in the gain map. Please add your voice and vote on this feature request to allow full control of the gain map in Photoshop: community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-ideas/allow-full-user-control-of-the-sdr-rendition-in-an-hdr-gain-map-export/idi-p/14205440#M19464

[@eitan1235]

Hey buddy thanks for the video! I just don't understand, how can I edit a RAW file with HDR 32-bit in camera raw, then open it in Photoshop to use tools like Content Aware and AI Generative Fill?

[@gregbenzphotography]

CAF supports it, can do Gen Remove in RAW now: gregbenzphotography.com/lightroom-acr/generative-remove-ai-in-lightroom-acr/

[@UpLighting]

Are you using the HDR sRGB color space for IG?

[@gregbenzphotography]

That’s fine, so is P3. Key to successful HDR upload is the encoding, which I do by using my Web Sharp Pro plugin for PS. Details under the “tutorials” button in the panel.

[@iyves]

Correct me if I am wrong but Apple Photos seems to accept avif, jpg xl but displays correctly only the hdr version of the image ? And if it is a jpeg it displays only the sdr version. May be those files could converted in HEIF ? With the next release of Photomator ? The situation is a little bit confusing here 😅

[@gregbenzphotography]

Apple Photos in the latest release will show standard HDR versions of AVIF and JXL. But it will not properly handle gain maps, which is why a JPG gain map will show as SDR. You can take a source image with a gain map (such as HEIC from iPhone) and export to a JPG gain map (you cannot export a 32-bit TIF as a gain map). So it’s a mixed bag at the moment, but really helpful that you can show HDR AVIF to share your HDR portfolio right from your iPhone or 12” iPad Pro. Pixelmator’s new HDR announcement is very exciting, can’t wait to see it and all it can do to help create HDR images right on a phone. www.pixelmator.com/blog/2023/09/25/sneak-peek-at-hdr-support-in-photomator/

[@GeorgeLoch]

Do social platforms support gain maps?

[@gregbenzphotography]

I’m not aware of any which would display them as HDR (they would all automatically fall back to the safe SDR version). You could post a link on social media to your gain map on a server or shared drive. I recommend sending by a request to sites you use to let them know you’d like HDR support. Support is inevitable, but demand will drive the speed at which it arrives.

[@VonbatenBach]

Hi, does Affinity Photo 2 support similar solution with gain maps?

[@gregbenzphotography]

Not last I checked

[@JohnKorvell]

How will this effect my physical prints?

[@gregbenzphotography]

No benefit there, but easy to manage. See gregbenzphotography.com/hdr#printing

[@patduss174]

Why are you using Photoshop and not Lightroom?

[@gregbenzphotography]

LR didn’t support at the time I recorded this. Capabilities are same. ACR still handy for many uses (especially with Web Sharp Pro for extra features like custom size templates and automated cropping), but LR is great and easy.

[@kanedafx1]

For some reason I only can see this video 1080 max.....

[@Line-vw5io]

someone knows how to make this work in squarespace? 🙏🏼

[@gregbenzphotography]

It can be done. Email me for details.

[@xxxxxxxxx6xxxxxxx]

When I get to the step of clicking the Sharpen button in Web Sharp Pro, it crashes Photoshop. Been trying to solve the problem but no solution. Photoshop 25.6, WSP 5.9.3 M2 Max MBP

[@gregbenzphotography]

Please email me to troubleshoot, if you are using an HDR image, there’s a known PS bug there and I have a fix to workaround it