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bgreenstone
Participating Frequently
February 12, 2023
Question

HDR AVIF saved from ACR looks not quite as HDR in Chrome

  • February 12, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 318 views

I've been playing around with the HDR feature in ACR and the biggest problem I'm having is figuring out how to actually view the HDR images after I save them as AVIF files.  Loading them into Preview on the Mac just shows a flat SDR image, and loading them into Google Chrome does show an HDR image, but it's nowhere near as "HDR" as it appeared in Photoshop or ACR.  The highlights are much dimmer and areas that I allowed to get blown out suddely appear correct.  It is as though Chrome is knocking the exposure or at least highlites of the image down to reduce the brightness.  Like I said, however, it's still in HDR - way better than the obvious SDR version, but it doesn't look anything like what I see in Photoshop.

 

I'm doing this all on my MacBook Pro with 1600nits peak brightness.  Any idea what may be happening?  Are there other apps for the Mac that support HDR AVIF files?  I wonder if they'll look the same.  I don't know if the issue is with the AVIF file itself or with the way Chrome handles it.

 

Here is the DNG file which appears correct in ACR and the output AVIF file which looks different at least in Chrome:  https://www.dropbox.com/sh/keln53jaoqnovux/AABTB5M3mwZuzR_3N-1SRSHAa?dl=0

 

 

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1 reply

TheDigitalDog
TheDigitalDog
Inspiring
February 12, 2023

If I load both into Adobe Camera Raw, and enable or disable HDR, they don't match there with either mode, which seems odd. So yeah, I see that. Why I don't know. This might be something an engineer in the Adobe Camera Raw team needs to answer. I'll ping one. 

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"
B
bgreenstoneAuthor
Participating Frequently
February 13, 2023

Thanks.  I wonder what would happen on a display with lower peak nits brightness.  I'm at 1600 on my MacBook Pro which is fairly high, but if I connected a different HDR monitor that had a peak of say 1000 nits I wonder if it would just look all blown out (because I edited the photo for 1600 nits peak), or if some tone mapping or scaling would occur to knock it down and make it look more like what I was seeing in Chrome.

 

 

TheDigitalDog
TheDigitalDog
Inspiring
February 13, 2023

There's a visual mismatch so that's my first concern. The cd/m2 isn't going to change that. Yes, the sky shows the biggest difference but I see it elsewhere too. 

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"
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