New 32-bit Color Picker in Photoshop Public Beta!

Report · Apr 30, 2025

Hi All,

We’re exciting to announce a new and improved color for working with 32-bit documents is now available in Photoshop Beta. This update is part of an ongoing effort to bring more tooling and support to 32-bit workflows and improve modern color management and HDR workflows in Photoshop.

To try the feature:

Note: this new color picker is on by default and will be shown when working with a 32-bit document.

Open a new or existing 32-bit document. Ensure it is 32-bit by going to Image > Mode > 32Bits/channel.

Once done, open the color picker, which should now be the new and improved 32-bit color picker.

Feature updates:

HDR UI Limit slider: Allows setting the maximum brightness on the picker window from 0 (SDR white) to +4 stops. When set to >0, a divider line will appear to show the split between SDR and HDR range.
RGB sliders to set values

Thanks and looking forward to your feedback!

Report · May 02, 2025

Thanks for this update.

1. The explanation is a bit confusing.

- Why is it called HDR UI Limit in the picker window? What does the UI have to do with picking a color?
- Why is it referred as "HDR Nit" in the post here? The nit limit slider seems to be a multiplier allowing for up to 2^4 higher than 1.0 values. Stating a 0-4 nit range is not accurate as we are seemingly talking about exposure stops normalized multiplication math.

2. The behavior is also a little bit weird because it's default value is set to 1.0 but is actually 0.0 before doing anything. If you touch the slider but keep it at 1.0 then the picker field switches to the first 2x multiplication range.

Usability wise this is also a bit messy because if you altered the slider it becomes impossible to return the view to a max of 1.0 so you'd need to pick a color that is between 0-1, hit OK, open the picker again and then it's normalized to that range again.

- Changing the slider to 0-4 range rather than 1-4 with 'hidden' 0 as default is a sensible fix.

- Perhaps useful to add a modifier key to limit the range to 0-1 while dragging could work?

3. The RGB sliders already have a range of 0-16 regardless of the limit slider and retroactively increase the limit slider as necessary. It would be more useful if the limit dictates the max ranges for the RGB sliders themselves. ie. Limit = 0 == RGB min/max 0-1. This would be much more artist friendly.

4. It would be nice if HSB boxes were also sliders so they could be dragged as well instead of only selecting them and then using the vertical box which is slow if you want to tweak more than 1 of them.

5. The new UI does not allow for RGB to be selected for the vertical slider. Would be nice if that was still the case.

6. It looks like OCIO documents have a different color picker that is still partially 8bit int.

It's equivalent "HDR UI Limit" slider with more sensible definition also goes all the way to +/-20 stops which is perhaps overkill as 10stops is already 1024.0 which for scene-linear context is already way too extreme.

This picker also seems a bit buggy, if you choose "white" then bump up the Intensity slider to say 4 stops and hit OK you have the correct value of 16.0 but if you open the picker again something else is shown.

For some reason it converts the color to a darker base value with a higher multiplication but this isn't accurate.

The result is 15.94.

The most logical would be to depricate and replace this entire picker with the new one I guess...

7.. Hope to see more improvements to the color picker. Especially for OCIO based workflows the ability to color pick in a color space different from the working space is very important.

Houdini example:

Mockup example addressing all above:

Report · May 06, 2025

Hi Shebbe, thanks for the feedback! To clarify a few things:

This is definitely a work in progress, and mainly to showcase the new HDR backed capabilities with some initial improvements and simplifications. This is also ONLY available in ICC profiles, the OCIO picker has not yet been revamped, as it requires quite a bit more thought and care in how it is implemented.

As for the ICC 32b picker:

1. The term nits appears to have been mis-used. We went with 'UI limit' as it's a way to limit the available stops over SDR white in the UI. For instance, if you have a very dark image, you don't want +4 stops of white in the UI to pick from as the relative brightness difference can make it very difficult to relatively understand what you're looking at. So that slider is aimed to allow you to set the maximum brightness the slice renders when picking directly from the slice window. The UI limit is expressed in stops, and we can definitely update the verbiage and add a tooltip. a value of 4.0 is +4 stops. Intensity is kind of odd in my opinion, and was really just a way to mentally imagine some SDR color as if it were +N stops. Now you don't have to imagine anything, if you want to pick a color +3 stops, just make sure the limit allows you to select up to +3 stops and then click the color you want from the slice.

2. There's a bug in the current beta that is already fixed and will show up in the next update where the slider is supposed to have a range of 0-4, 0, being SDR only in the slice, and you won't get that weird jump when touching something.

3. This is good feedback. We wanted to get the basic implementation out for users to experiment with, but limit slider is really supposed to cap all of the controls from the dialog, so that it doesn't constantly auto-expand on you. It's really meant to imply 'Do not show me colors in this dialog beyond +N stops over SDR'.

4. Will take note for future updates.

5. With moving the RGB sliders to the bottom, it didn't seem necessary to have radios to duplicate the behavior in the vertical sliders. I think if we render the gradients as part of the slider (similar to how our panel pickers work) it might make the entire experience more fluid for users.

6/7. N/A as the OCIO picker is just the original 32b picker still and hasn't been updated. That being said, one of the complications in OCIO matching display/view with a document you're looking at - otherwise the colors you pick may look totally different when painted into the document. In addition to that - rendering a smooth ramp with a variable working space can be very difficult especially when supporting HDR, but we are still exploring how to tie it all together for a similar experience but with proper OCIO support.

Report · May 07, 2025

Hey @cody_cuellar ,

Glad it was useful!

After making my post with the suggested design I also thought it would be even better to make all sliders show their gradients already, much like Houdini's and many other pickers out there. It removes the need for the variable vertical slider too.

Regarding color appearance inside the color picker I always found it really odd that Adobe force manages this. It's true that you see a direct relation from picking color to resulting display color but this isn't always desired. I find it more problematic seeing a heavily skewed and unintuitive sat/brightness gradients over non managed appearance. Especially when working space is log where the numbers start to mean something totally different and the full 0-1 range is actually really large.

Mechanisms like the choice of color picking space are more efficient than always showing the converted display space color for the complete 0-1(or higher) rgb range of the working space. In Houdini's implementation they also give you the choice how to view the colors in the picker. Such mechanism could theoretically be deployed for both OCIO and ICC based workflows correct? And the view options would allow artists to apply their own preference how the picker shows the colors.

Hoping to see such functionality in an improved version of the new picker.

Report · May 08, 2025

One thing I'd like to point out that wasn't mentioned is, prior to this update, the picker in 32b was heavily skewed into the highlight range making most of the usable midtones/shadows heavily compressed in the bottom of the picker window. Now, even though 32b is still linear, the picker now renders as a nicely smooth perceptual gradient which is perhaps one of the bigger improvements of this new picker. Please continue to play around with it a bit (for ICC documents, as OCIO is not yet supported) and get familiarized with it and keep the feedback coming!

Report · May 08, 2025

This is a great update for anyone working with 32-bit documents in Photoshop! The new color picker and HDR UI limits will definitely improve color management and HDR workflows. Looking forward to seeing how this enhances the overall editing experience.