HDR Exports don't view correctly on social media

Community Expert

This is good advice but do know that you will not be able to get the image to look as good in SDR mode (which the overwhelming majority of browsers and social media platforms will show for a jpg with HDR gain map) when doing this as you can when you edit directly in SDR. There are a few basic controls that allow you to make the image look acceptable in SDR but not the fully optimized image you would normally do if you only edit in SDR. iOS doesn't support these jpegs at all for example. Android has support but only if it was shot using the android camera so you won't see it there either. Social media sites will just strip the HDR info when they recompress the images. It is a good thing to have if you host your own webserver and your clients all use chrome on desktop machines but realize it won't work almost anywhere if you don't have control over your own webserver. I wish there was better support but it all seems to be very slow moving. HDR images look so good on machines that support it so I wish operating system developers would just get with the times.

Community Expert

Are you editing in HDR mode? Very few places support this yet and you probably should not do that. The reference to avif and jxl seem to indicate that you are. Basically no social media site supports HDR images in Avif or jxl yet. They sometimes support them from iOS in HEIC format but that is extremely spotty and usually limited to video. In SDR, jpeg will not result in loss of quality if you choose the export settings correctly.

Bottom line is to generally edit in SDR mode if you go to social media or other web sites. HDR simply will not work in 99% of cases.

Ruchir35683101tq0h작성자

Participant

Thank you for your response. I guess I'll edit only in SDR Mode then.

Community Expert

It is very unfortunate that there is no more support. The images look so amazing with it on. But Safari doesn't support it even on iOS! Only browser is Chrome on desktop operating systems. So it is currently not a good idea to try to publish to the web or social apps in HDR. There is simply nothing that works everywhere.

Rikk Flohr_Photography

I've seen no evidence of a bug on this thread.

Most social media do not support HDR files yet. I recommend reading:
https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2023/10/10/hdr-explained
as well as articles here:
https://gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/

to gain a better understanding of the incomplete support for HDR in the social sharing world.

Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org

Ruchir35683101tq0h작성자

Participant

The thing is I literally am unable to use it anywhere. Adobe Scan or any other software either refused to recognize it or just cannot use it. I believe if a feature is made available, at least application like AVIF signs be able to detect it. So it should be a Bug.

But from Jao's response I have at least understood, that it is then better to edit just in SDR Mode.

Thank You

Community Expert

A LOT of software does not yet support avif in HDR mode even if it supports AVIF itself (it's a more general format than HDR images). JXL support is virtually non-existent. iOS only recently gained support for HDR avif in the photos app for example but preview on Macs still doesn't support it. The AVIF and jxl files that Lightroom writes are completely standards compliant so it is not a bug in Lightroom. It is just incomplete support for the avif and jxl standards by software developers. Nothing really that Adobe can do although I agree they should update ther own software outside of Lightroom and Camera raw. Even Photoshop does not natively open these files an will always go through camera raw which is weird.

It really is a big mess when considering HDR images outside of Lightroom and camera raw. Adobe is really far ahead of everybody else but that comes with problems.

Ruchir35683101tq0h작성자

Participant

Does no one from Adobe ever see these issues??

Or vigor anyone help me how I can report the bug to Adobe??