[HN Gopher] HDR-Infused Emoji
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       HDR-Infused Emoji
        
       Author : tabletcorry
       Score  : 180 points
       Date   : 2025-04-17 14:42 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (sharpletters.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (sharpletters.net)
        
       | jchw wrote:
       | Looks like this works on Chrome for Android, but Firefox doesn't
       | seem to support HDR at all.
       | 
       | https://bugzil.la/hdr
       | 
       | Maybe some day.
        
         | lxgr wrote:
         | Neither does Safari on macOS - which honestly seems like the
         | correct behavior, given that this will inevitably be used by
         | websites in user-hostile ways.
        
           | lights0123 wrote:
           | Safari only shows HDR in videos, not photos. It's possible to
           | just show a single-frame video though.
        
             | lxgr wrote:
             | And I could see Safari changing its behavior to only allow
             | HDR for actually playing videos (or even playing videos
             | with actually varying content, if websites start playing
             | clever games with one second loops of still images), or
             | maybe only after confirming an "I am wearing sunglasses
             | right now" prompt.
        
               | jchw wrote:
               | It looks like the current Safari developer preview
               | supports it for images, according to the Mozilla bug.
        
               | zamadatix wrote:
               | If it were to become a real problem I'd sooner see Apple,
               | of all vendors, leave it as one of the many settings
               | flags in Safari than intentionally avoid or remove
               | support for wide range media in their app.
               | 
               | Related: there is also a CSS property coming which allows
               | sites to control which page content should be clamped to
               | standard range or not. Worst case you can just add an *
               | !important override in your
               | Safari->Preferences->Advanced->Style Sheet if nobody else
               | considers it problematic but you still wanted to clamp
               | things (in Safari, otherwise you can just disable HDR).
        
               | lxgr wrote:
               | Apple is definitely not afraid to block otherwise widely
               | available features behind flags or extra clicks. For
               | example, Web Push is available on iOS only for "installed
               | PWAs".
        
               | zamadatix wrote:
               | Specifically media support though, for which Apple has
               | built their entire OS (both macOS and iOS) and app
               | experience around having the best out of the box color
               | experience for designers/aesthetics (e.g. bit depth, wide
               | gamut, true tone type adjustments, hdr all widely adopted
               | early for this reason). This is in contrast to your
               | example of Web Push, which is the antithesis of their
               | goals on how the OS should be used and what for.
               | 
               | The only reason Safari lacks HDR image support on macOS
               | right now is it's their lowest priority platform for the
               | feature. It's coming, it's supported on their other
               | platforms, and it wasn't an unreviewed accident they've
               | been working on it.
        
               | LoganDark wrote:
               | > they've been working on it.
               | 
               | Could you provide a link to any recent communication from
               | them about this, or are you just speculating based on
               | that other platforms support it?
        
               | zamadatix wrote:
               | I don't know about a communication... but I can do one
               | better! You can download the latest Safari Technology
               | Preview on macOS, toggle the "Support HDR Display"
               | feature flag, and see it working (for certain image
               | formats and HDR encodings - it's a flag in preview for a
               | reason). E.g. the images at https://ccameron-
               | chromium.github.io/hdr-jpeg/index.html will be brighter
               | (if your mac has an HDR display attached with HDR
               | enabled) but not the images from this HN post yet.
        
               | lxgr wrote:
               | Apple's days of their primary customers being
               | photographers, designers etc. are long past, so I'm not
               | sure I see the distinction between advertisers pushing
               | their content by having it render brighter than #FFFFFF
               | and web push notification spam.
               | 
               | I do believe that Apple generally has plans to implement
               | HDR support in Safari, but I wouldn't be surprised if
               | they immediately walked that back once we see abuse of
               | the technology annoying regular users.
        
               | tshaddox wrote:
               | Why would we expect this to become more of a problem
               | than, say, websites playing audio quietly to encourage
               | you to turn your volume up, than playing extremely loud
               | audio?
        
               | zamadatix wrote:
               | Websites can't autoplay audio anymore (which is actually
               | really annoying in a few use cases) precisely because of
               | abuse.
               | 
               | I don't think it'll be problematic though because a site
               | can already choose to show you images a lot more
               | bothersome than a bright light (I say this as I type on a
               | 1600 nit HDR monitor) already and that's not a
               | particularly common problem to worry about either. Same
               | for videos, which already HDR support in browsers.
        
               | tshaddox wrote:
               | > Websites can't autoplay audio anymore (which is
               | actually really annoying in a few use cases) precisely
               | because of abuse.
               | 
               | But this is hardly true. There are some complicated
               | heuristics (like Chrome's "Media Engagement Index") but
               | many websites can and do autoplay video and audio. And
               | browser policies are even more relaxed for playing audio
               | on user events (like clicking).
        
               | zamadatix wrote:
               | MEI (and the like) is what I'm referring to, though
               | perhaps we look at this from different angles. Sites can
               | still mark audio _should_ autoplay but it 's now up to
               | the browser to decide if it actually does it (because
               | shitty sites would abuse that).
        
         | new_user_final wrote:
         | So many people push for more browser engines yet Firefox can't
         | implement HDR in 6 years.
        
           | LoganDark wrote:
           | Wonder if Ladybird will ever support it. (Imagine HDR on
           | SerenityOS!)
        
         | matsemann wrote:
         | Feels like either Chrome or my android phone is cheating,
         | because if I cover the hdr image with my finger and switch
         | between Firefox and Chrome, the page background in Chrome is
         | noticeable more grey than the one in Firefox.
        
       | Groxx wrote:
       | This might be the best use of HDR I've ever seen.
       | 
       | And will continue to see for quite some time when my eyes are
       | closed.
        
         | pier25 wrote:
         | yes it's blinding on my MBP lol
        
         | BoorishBears wrote:
         | > These examples will work best when posted to Slack.
         | 
         | I should not have been clued into this power.
        
       | lxgr wrote:
       | For more information on the different ways to encode HDR content
       | in images, together with examples for each, I've found this
       | article very useful: https://gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/
       | 
       | And this explains how Apple implements this feature on non-
       | OLED/mini-LED screens (and, in my observation, at least still to
       | some extent even on mini-LED): https://prolost.com/blog/edr
        
       | joshuaturner wrote:
       | Time to make my Slack profile pic really stand out
        
         | Hamuko wrote:
         | Oh god it fucking works. It's brilliant in every sense of the
         | word.
        
         | tuetuopay wrote:
         | oh god. off my evening goes tweaking the multiply value for
         | proper effect.
        
       | globular-toast wrote:
       | Interesting, my phone seems to do some normalisation, I presume
       | rather than clip the image. So it turns "down" the rest of the
       | page leaving the emojis bright. I wonder which part of the system
       | is doing this. Chrome on Android.
        
       | Jeremy1026 wrote:
       | > Works great on iPhones
       | 
       | Funnily enough, on my iPhone I'm getting the blue box question
       | mark instead of the images on the page.
        
       | muglug wrote:
       | Can confirm that this works, and can also confirm that people who
       | post glaring HDR images to Slack are frequently peer-pressured to
       | remove them shortly thereafter by everyone in the channel.
        
       | ionwake wrote:
       | Sorry for the noob question but I think finally someone in this
       | thread can answer this for me. Sometimes when I see a youtube
       | short video it looks like its HDR is whacked up by like 500% as
       | per the image in this page, but Im confused how this could be
       | done. Is video processing on the video before it is uploaded
       | somehow giving it some sort of encoding which chrome just wacks
       | up? Or is it the hardware doing it and encoding it a certain way?
       | 
       | I am not talking about a slight brightness increase, I am talking
       | Ill be scrolling youtube and suddenly this video is like a portal
       | into another dimension its so bright.
       | 
       | Can anyone explain how its done?
        
         | harrall wrote:
         | Screens can't often do full brightness on the whole screen so
         | if you come across a video or image that is supposed to have a
         | higher contrast ratio, the system will darken everything and
         | then brighten up the pixels that are supposed to be brighter.
         | 
         | Yes, there are formats that able to store a higher contrast
         | ratio so that's why it doesn't happen on non-HDR content but
         | the actual brightening of a portal on your screen isn't because
         | of the format but because of your hardware (and software)
         | choosing to interpret the format that way.
         | 
         | For more a practical example, if you had an 8-bit HDR image,
         | 255 on the red channel (after inputting this number through a
         | math function like HLG[1] to "extract" a brightness number)
         | might mean "make this pixel really bright red" whereas 255 on a
         | SDR format would mean "just regular red." However, each red
         | channel is still a number between 0 and 255 on both formats but
         | your hardware decided to make it brighter on the HDR format.
         | 
         | (Although in reality, HDR formats are often 10-bit or higher
         | because 256 values is not enough range to store both color and
         | brightness so you would see banding[2]. Also, I have been using
         | RGB for my example but you can store color/brightness number
         | many other ways, such as with chroma subsampling[3], especially
         | when you realize human eyes are more sensitive to some colors
         | more than others so you could "devote fewer bits" to some
         | colors.)
         | 
         | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_log%E2%80%93gamma
         | 
         | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_banding
         | 
         | [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling
        
           | ionwake wrote:
           | Thank you so much for your reply - I will look into it!
        
           | kllrnohj wrote:
           | > Screens can't often do full brightness on the whole screen
           | so if you come across a video or image that is supposed to
           | have a higher contrast ratio, the system will darken
           | everything and then brighten up the pixels that are supposed
           | to be brighter.
           | 
           | There's no system that does that. The only thing that's kinda
           | similar is at the _display_ level there 's a concept known as
           | the "window size" since many displays cannot show peak
           | brightness across the entire display. If you've ever seen
           | brightness talked about in context of a "5%" or "10%" window
           | size, this is what it means - the brightness the display can
           | do when only 5% of the display is max-white, and the rest is
           | black.
           | 
           | But outside of fullscreen this doesn't tend to be much of any
           | issue in practice, and it depends on the display.
        
           | dr_kiszonka wrote:
           | I use YouTube on my rather inexpensive TV. When a thumbnail
           | of an HDR video starts playing, the whole screen brightens up
           | significantly. I don't know as much about HDR as you do, so
           | maybe they are using some other perceptual trick. It might
           | also not be "full brightness." BTW, why can't screens do full
           | brightness on the whole screen?
        
         | detaro wrote:
         | The video is marked as containing a different color space with
         | a higher brightness/color range. That could either be because
         | the initial camera recorded it that way (e.g. iPhones can do
         | that) or because someone took a "normal" video and edited it.
        
           | ionwake wrote:
           | Would this be specific software on the iphone used to record
           | a video ? Or a default setting on a certain iphone? I ask
           | because I only very rarely see this whacked up HDR youtube
           | short, like super rarely.
        
             | detaro wrote:
             | Fairly sure a stock iPhone can do it, but you might need to
             | enable it explicitly for compatibility reasons? And
             | depending how you edit or upload the video it could get
             | lost there too, it's still something where support is not
             | really universal.
        
               | ionwake wrote:
               | Interesting Im starting to think that perhaps only
               | certain video software on an iphone would allow it -
               | which explains why its so rare?
        
             | LoganDark wrote:
             | Does this video look super whacked up to you too? It is
             | HDR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceSiK-0HX_I
        
               | ionwake wrote:
               | Yes it is! But how does one make their video upload HDR?
               | I am familiar with video editing but am unsure how I
               | would perform a test, using a test video with my iphone,
               | and upload it so it doesnt lose its HDR encoding? I
               | believe there is a HDR setting for my phone, but I dont
               | think it will upload by default in a HDR state such as
               | the link you just gave me.
               | 
               | Thanks to everyone trying to help me understand this. I
               | have heard of HDR for years but Ive never witnessed my
               | macbook darken and brighten a video before like 2 months
               | ago.
        
               | LoganDark wrote:
               | which MacBook do you have?
               | 
               | if you record in HDR, uploading that raw footage to
               | YouTube should produce an HDR video. to get the raw
               | footage, you can either upload the file directly from the
               | phone, or AirDrop it to your Mac from Photos (you should
               | get a .mov), or sync it to iCloud (or connect the phone
               | over USB, maybe) and then use Photos' "File > Export
               | Unmodified Original"
        
               | ionwake wrote:
               | I have an M1 macbook, and an iphone 13. Thanks for
               | instructions I think you are right I have to do a
               | specific flow so the HDR isnt lost ie in software like
               | CapnCut I suppose. Thanks again for the help m so glad
               | Ive slowly figured this out with ur help.
        
               | LoganDark wrote:
               | yep, plenty of software will export in non-HDR and lose
               | the information. some software (i.e. iMovie, Final Cut
               | Pro, DaVinci Resolve) won't lose the information when
               | configured correctly, but HDR workflow is always a bit
               | different than SDR.
        
         | kllrnohj wrote:
         | There's many factors in play from what your SDR white point is
         | at, how your OS handles HDR video, what the content contains,
         | and finally what your brain is doing.
         | 
         | HDR10(+) & Dolby Vision, for example, encode content at
         | absolute luminance, so they are basically completely trash
         | formats since that's an insane thing to expect (the spec for
         | authoring content in this format literally just goes "lol idk
         | do X if you think it's going to be seen in a movie theater of Y
         | for TV and hope"). Sadly, they are also quite common. Mobile
         | phones (both Android & iOS) are instead pushing HLG, which is
         | better. Although then hilariously MacOS's handling of HLG was
         | atrocious until the latest update which fixed it but only if
         | the video contains a magic flag that iPhone sets, but isn't
         | standard so nobody else sets it (the "avme" tag
         | https://developer.apple.com/documentation/technotes/tn3145-h...
         | )
         | 
         | There's then also just how your eyes & brain react. When HDR
         | shows up and suddenly the white background of a page looks like
         | a dim gray? That's 100% a perceptual illusion. The actual light
         | being emitted didn't change, just your perception of it did.
         | This is a _very_ hard problem to deal with, and it 's one that
         | so far the HDR industry as a whole has basically just ignored.
         | But it's why there's a push to artificially limit the HDR range
         | in mixed conditions, eg https://github.com/w3c/csswg-
         | drafts/issues/9074
        
           | ionwake wrote:
           | You clearly know alot about this, but I think there could be
           | a misunderstanding. Not trying to offend but when I see the
           | youtube link mentioned above in the other comment, my macbook
           | screen literally goes darker AROUND the video , which gets
           | brighter. I am not making this up. I think its how chrome on
           | macbooks handles raw HDR encoding.
           | 
           | Can someone else confirm I am not mad?
           | 
           | PS - I am not trying to shut you down, you clearly know alot
           | in the space I am just explaining what Im experiencing on
           | this hardware.
        
             | kllrnohj wrote:
             | > my macbook screen literally goes darker AROUND the video
             | , which gets brighter. I am not making this up
             | 
             | This is almost certainly your eyes playing tricks on you,
             | actually. Setup that situation where you know if you scroll
             | down or whatever it'll happen, but before triggering it
             | cover up the area where the HDR will be with something
             | solid - like a piece of cardboard or whatever. Then do it.
             | You'll likely not notice anything change, or if there is a
             | shift it'll be very minor. Yet as soon as you remove that
             | thing physically covering the area, bam it'll look gray.
             | 
             | It's a more intense version of the simultaneous contrast
             | illusions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrast_effect &
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion
             | 
             | Eyes be weird.
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | The screen is literally getting darker so the HDR video
               | will appear to have more contrast.
               | 
               | https://prolost.com/blog/edr
        
               | kllrnohj wrote:
               | No, it literally isn't. It's literally doing the
               | opposite, it _increases_ the display brightness in order
               | to show the HDR content. The SDR content is dimmed
               | _proportional to the increase_ such that SDR has the same
               | emitted brightness before  & after the change.
               | 
               | SDR brightness is not reduced to "add contrast". The blog
               | post doesn't seem to say that anywhere, either, but if it
               | does it's simply wrong. As a general note it seems wrong
               | about a lot of aspects, like saying that Apple does this
               | on non-HDR displays. They don't. It then also conflates
               | EDR with whether or not HDR is used. EDR is simply the
               | representation of content between apps & the compositor.
               | It's a working space not entirely unlike scRGB where
               | 0.0-1.0 is simply the SDR range, and it can go beyond
               | that. But going beyond the maximum reported EDR range,
               | which can be as low as 1.0, the result is simply clipped.
               | So they are not "simulating" HDR on a non-HDR display.
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | I agree with what you said, but I was trying to give the
               | layman summary ;)
               | 
               | > The SDR content is dimmed proportional to the increase
               | such that SDR has the same emitted brightness before &
               | after the change.
               | 
               | That's the intent, but because things aren't perfect it
               | actually tends to get darker instead of stay perceptually
               | the same. It depends on which panel you're using. MBPs
               | are prone to this, XDR displays aren't.
        
               | kllrnohj wrote:
               | > I agree with what you said, but I was trying to give
               | the layman summary ;)
               | 
               | Your layman summary is wrong, though. Brightness stays
               | the same is the summary, whereas you said it gets darker.
               | 
               | > MBPs are prone to this, XDR displays aren't.
               | 
               | On my M1 16" MBP it doesn't have any issue. The
               | transition is slow, but the end result is reasonably
               | aligned to before the transition. But yes MBP displays
               | are not Apple's best. Sadly that remains something
               | exclusive to the iPad
        
       | recursive wrote:
       | I don't think I understand HDR. It just looks brighter and more
       | contrast. I can just do that with normal manipulations. What's
       | this all about?
       | 
       | Edit: Maybe my hardware doesn't support it. I'm using an LG
       | monitor with Windows. There's also a good chance I've never
       | actually seen anything in HDR.
        
         | detaro wrote:
         | > I can just do that with normal manipulations
         | 
         | Then you are probably not viewing this with HDR-capable
         | hardware and software. Otherwise it'd go past what you can just
         | do with normal manipulation on an sRGB image.
        
       | donohoe wrote:
       | I used (abused) HDR in an editorial project last year. We were
       | working with an amazing illustrator doing a take on series of
       | stories exploring the intersection of faith, storytelling, and
       | technology.
       | 
       | As the early versions of the images emerged we thought we could
       | used HDR to provide more or a aura to some elements. We tried to
       | make it subtle and not overwhelm.
       | 
       | This example is my favorite:
       | 
       | https://restofworld.org/2024/divinity-altered-reality-muslim...
       | 
       | I think it worked well - and this technique would have been
       | useful. We tried something similar but could not get it to work.
       | 
       | Our method was to use a stretched HDR video in the background.
       | 
       | Here are the steps I used:
       | 
       | In Photoshop create white image to proportions required. Save as
       | MP4:                 File > Export > Render Video
       | 
       | Save as "sample.mp4"
       | 
       | With the MP4, generate a HDR version in WEBM:
       | ffmpeg -i sample.mp4 -pix_fmt yuv420p10le -color_primaries 9
       | -color_trc 16 -colorspace 9 -color_range 1 -profile:v 2 -vcodec
       | libvpx-vp9 sample.webm
       | 
       | With the plain MP4, generate the HDR version:
       | ffmpeg -i sample.mp4 -pix_fmt yuv420p10le -color_primaries 9
       | -color_trc 16 -colorspace 9 -color_range 1 -profile:v high10
       | -vcodec libx264 sample.mp4
        
         | timciep wrote:
         | That looks amazing!
        
         | shahahmed wrote:
         | these look so tasteful and well done
        
         | BolexNOLA wrote:
         | Big fan of the final result. Very striking
        
         | tobr wrote:
         | Remember seeing this when it was published. Excellent work,
         | great use of HDR.
        
         | mzs wrote:
         | Here's how RoW did it:                   .religion-atf__nav-
         | chapter--current .religion-atf__nav-chapter__book {
         | box-shadow: -4px -4px 50px 0 #fff,4px 4px 50px 0 #fff         }
        
         | InsideOutSanta wrote:
         | Wow, this is super smart, and the effect is really compelling
         | and novel.
        
         | razkarcy wrote:
         | This is a beautiful implementation all-around. It captures a
         | similar "wow-factor" that gilded pages in physical books
         | provide. If this is the future of digital media I'm excited!
        
         | jjcm wrote:
         | Incredibly well done. FWIW, the video hack is no longer needed.
         | Originally that was required due to browsers only having hdr
         | support with video, but recently support for PNGs were added as
         | well. You can just use an all-white png with the rec2020 color
         | space set.
        
           | zamadatix wrote:
           | Safari on macOS does not have HDR support in images shipping
           | to general user channels yet.
        
         | ValveFan6969 wrote:
         | This is a lot of technical mumbo jumbo for a simple thing like
         | brightness. HDR is a gimmick like 3D TVs. The best image
         | quality is not the one with the most colors, which is entirely
         | pointless, but instead a simple image, with no fancy features
         | that only serve to distract the eye.
         | 
         | Like in the famous case of the Apple logo in the 1990s. Steve
         | Jobs, when asked why he uses a black and white Apple logo
         | instead of a color one, said - "color will only distract the
         | eye from what's important".
        
           | throawayonthe wrote:
           | calling HDR a gimmick is somewhat silly considering it's
           | already in widespread use for media, and it's great
        
             | recursive wrote:
             | There are plenty of gimmicks in widespread use. I'd wager
             | >99% of "surround sound" deployments would take more than a
             | year to notice if they were transparently "downgraded" to
             | stereo, for instance.
        
           | shepherdjerred wrote:
           | Agreed, this is exactly why I only watch silent era black-
           | and-white films.
        
           | itishappy wrote:
           | Hard disagree. HDR is more than just boosted brightness, but
           | the boosted brightness on it's own has been (in my humble
           | opinion) the biggest advancement in TVs in the past decade.
           | For instance, I'd choose a 500 nit 1920x1080 panel over a 250
           | nit 3840x2160 panel any day.
        
           | Almondsetat wrote:
           | Yep, watching a logo is exactly like watching a movie
        
           | alwa wrote:
           | I feel like the whole emoji example might favor your point of
           | view, but that, delightfully, grandparent commenter's example
           | is one of the better counterpoints I've seen.
           | 
           | Selectively deployed, a glint of extra brightness, above and
           | beyond the "100%" baseline, simulates the glints and shimmers
           | that draw our eyes naturally--in this case, in the same
           | manner as gilt on the physical counterpart to the books
           | they're depicting. It fits in cleverly with a long tradition
           | for that specific context.
           | 
           | Where I agree is with the idea that brighter-for-
           | brighter's-sake is not better after a certain point, any more
           | than color-because-we-can. And it seems, as far as I can
           | tell, that uniformly cranking up the full frame brightness
           | into the HDR range is not The Done Thing, at least in film
           | and design, at least so far. Possibly for compatibility with
           | the wide range of displays stuff will end up on.
        
             | recursive wrote:
             | Hm, so you're saying we're going to be using browsers that
             | give authors/publishers another ability to "draw our eyes
             | naturally"? What could possibly go wrong. I'd be turning it
             | off now if I had hardware that supported it.
        
         | ben0x539 wrote:
         | What devices is this meant to work on? On my laptop I'm not
         | seeing anything out of the ordinary.
        
           | hatthew wrote:
           | Do your OS and screen both support HDR and have it enabled?
           | It works by default on my mbp m2's screen, but not its
           | external monitor or on my windows desktop/laptop.
        
       | dmd wrote:
       | To forestall confusion: If the smiley face on the right is not
       | much much brighter than the page background (which is #ffffff),
       | then your hardware does not support this and you are not seeing
       | what others are seeing.
        
         | ZeWaka wrote:
         | To forestall more confusion: If your system is set to dark
         | mode, the page background is not #fff, and is instead #1d1e20.
        
           | moron4hire wrote:
           | There's a dark/light mode switcher at top of the page, but
           | the page background still looks grey, even when going to
           | another page on the blog that doesn't have the HDR images.
        
         | zimpenfish wrote:
         | > If the smiley face on the right is not much much brighter
         | than the page background [...] then your hardware does not
         | support this
         | 
         | Or you're using Safari because my hardware absolutely does
         | support this (tested in Chrome and I am thankful that Safari
         | does not support it because good grief.)
        
           | astrange wrote:
           | A funny thing I've noticed in Safari is that the play buttons
           | on video elements are HDR white, and so the screen will adapt
           | (turn grey) when you scroll past one.
        
           | kllrnohj wrote:
           | > and I am thankful that Safari does not support it because
           | good grief
           | 
           | Safari absolutely will support HDR images if it doesn't
           | already. It might not support this PNG hack, but it's
           | inevitable that it'll support HDR HEVC or JPEG images since
           | those are what's produced by iOS and Android cameras
           | respectively, and they obviously aren't going to just ignore
           | them.
        
         | nine_k wrote:
         | Works in mobile Chrome, not in mobile Firefox; increases the
         | overall screen brightness a bit to add the dynamic range.
         | Shines!
        
       | jessewilson wrote:
       | Instructions on turning 'em off:
       | https://github.com/swankjesse/hdr-emojis
        
       | 1970-01-01 wrote:
       | Thanks, I hate it.
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | HDR-Infused _Slack_ emoji that is, not unicode emojis.
        
       | dangoodmanUT wrote:
       | HDR is terrible
       | 
       | The fact that you can't turn it off system wide shows the macOS
       | leadership is asleep at the wheel
        
         | Night_Thastus wrote:
         | HDR is terribly _implemented_ , in most cases. (Especially
         | Windows)
         | 
         | macOS handles it about the best of the bunch.
         | 
         | What I hate is on Windows, you need to basically explicitly set
         | the program, the OS, and the monitor into an "HDR mode". Then,
         | once you're done, you need to un-set it or the colors and
         | brightness will be screwed up.
         | 
         | That is tedious AF. I refuse to use it until it doesn't require
         | constantly toggling crap on and off.
        
           | benbayard wrote:
           | I think with Windows 11 it's a little easier now. At least, I
           | don't have to do this for playing games in HDR. But I can't
           | take screenshots or record videos this way using most built-
           | in tools. Like window's screencapture tools and steams tools.
        
         | LoganDark wrote:
         | > The fact that you can't turn it off system wide shows the
         | macOS leadership is asleep at the wheel
         | 
         | You totally can, at least on Apple's XDR displays.
         | 
         | Just go to System Settings -> Displays -> Preset and change it
         | from "Apple XDR Display (P3-1600 nits)" (or whatever) to
         | "Internet & Web (sRGB)". You lose the ability to change screen
         | brightness (I assume because you're locked to reference
         | brightness), but HDR is fully off.
        
           | AlanYx wrote:
           | That option only works with Apple's XDR enabled displays
           | (internal and external). For non-Apple external displays with
           | HDR10, there's a separate "High Dynamic Range" toggle in the
           | display settings in the display. On some Intel macs, if you
           | open Display preferences while holding down the Option key,
           | another option appears to disable simulated HDR. I'm not sure
           | how to disable simulated HDR on the internal display of
           | current Macbook Airs.
        
             | LoganDark wrote:
             | thanks for the clarification
        
         | pier25 wrote:
         | I love HDR for movies/shows on OLED but other than that I
         | agree. It really sucks you can't disable HDR in apps like
         | Netflix etc. It does look terrible on non OLED TVs. In Chrome
         | you can force a specific color profile in the settings. I
         | believe sRGB shouldn't allow HDR content.
         | 
         | Personally I think the biggest benefit of HDR is not even those
         | super bright annoying colors but 10-12 bit colors and the fact
         | that we can finally have dark content. If you look at movies
         | from 10-20 years ago everything is so damn bright.
        
         | tshaddox wrote:
         | That strikes me as an odd opinion. Surely the colorspaces and
         | display technologies that predate HDR had as much dynamic range
         | as they could reasonably squeeze out of the technology at the
         | time. Is it the brightness specifically that bugs you? I could
         | understand that, although brightness is not directly related to
         | HDR (in the same way that loudness in digital audio is not
         | directly related to bit depth).
         | 
         | Of course I do agree that these things should be configurable.
         | And on my MacBook Pro, I can set the built-in display to sRGB.
         | Is that option not available on your particular Mac and
         | display?
        
           | astrange wrote:
           | > That strikes me as an odd opinion. Surely the colorspaces
           | and display technologies that predate HDR had as much dynamic
           | range as they could reasonably squeeze out of the technology
           | at the time.
           | 
           | Some of it was just bad historical decisions. In particular
           | SDR video only uses the values 16-235 instead of 0-255
           | because of some NTSC compatibility thing I don't quite
           | remember. That's a huge loss!
        
         | bigstrat2003 wrote:
         | Agreed. I've used it on my PS4, and all that it accomplished
         | was an annoying screen blank and restart every time I started a
         | game which used HDR. It didn't actually make anything look
         | better. I turned it off after some experimentation and I don't
         | plan to ever mess with it again with how underwhelming it was.
        
       | LoganDark wrote:
       | Fun fact: On "XDR displays" (such as recent MacBook Pros and also
       | Apple's new Studio Display XDR), you can actually decrease the
       | display brightness to see more dynamic range.
       | 
       | Here is a recording of this happening for those who can't
       | experience it for for themselves:
       | 
       | https://logandark.net/files/2QN2R1P3-26295O2O-9045N31P-P2POQ...
       | (6.7 MB / 6.4 MiB)
       | 
       | (sorry for the terrible quality, it was a very lazy recording)
        
       | nialv7 wrote:
       | > Works great in Chrome and Slack, and not at all on Android
       | devices.
       | 
       | Hurmm it does work for me in Chrome on Android.
        
       | Spunkie wrote:
       | Doesn't seem to work at all on linux in any browser I test. My
       | laptop and distro support HDR and it's turned on.
        
       | A_Duck wrote:
       | Here are all the emojis in HDR format, ready to import to Slack
       | 
       | My apologies to your co-workers
       | 
       | https://we.tl/t-CV83O4r74f
        
       | MasterScrat wrote:
       | More HDR shenanigans from some time ago:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36389285
       | 
       | Demo: https://notes.dt.in.th/HDRQRCode
       | 
       | Interestingly that one worked on iPhone, while the new emojis one
       | doesn't
        
         | WhyNotHugo wrote:
         | Nice! Using HDR to improve contraste of a QR code is a really
         | neat idea.
        
       | MasterScrat wrote:
       | On MacOS, if you toggle the OS from dark to light mode and back,
       | you can see for a second the HDR effect being turned off
        
       | basisword wrote:
       | This worked well on my iPhone but my M3 MacBook Pro doesn't seem
       | to render the HDR version of the image in Safari. Is that
       | expected? Pretty sure the Photos app works with HDR.
        
       | ALLTaken wrote:
       | Here's how you do that in CSS4!
       | 
       | For an image or video:
       | 
       | - https://github.com/ccameron-chromium/hdr-headroom-limit/blob...
       | 
       | - https://drafts.csswg.org/css-color-hdr/#controlling-dynamic-...
       | 
       | For a canvas element:
       | 
       | - https://github.com/w3c/ColorWeb-CG/blob/hdr_canvas_r2/hdr_ht...
       | 
       | Resource: https://www.w3.org/TR/mediaqueries-5/#dynamic-range
        
       | ValveFan6969 wrote:
       | I don't have any interest in HDR. HDR is a very new technology
       | that is just a gimmick. The human eye is barely able to perceive
       | more than a few colors. Therefore anything above 16.7 million
       | colors is not useful. And even that is overkill, 250-300 shades
       | of a single color is more than enough for anybody.
        
       | jjcm wrote:
       | I was playing around with this a ton yesterday.
       | 
       | One thing I was attempting to do was create an emoji that only
       | had partial portions that had their brightness maxed, while the
       | rest of the emoji displayed "normally". It turns out this was
       | quite hard to do - most filters or scripts such as the one on
       | this page simply max out the channels, which creates a "fried"
       | look to the image.
       | 
       | Gimp luckily has support for this, but getting an existing image
       | to display the "same" with the new color space proved fairly
       | difficult. I found this curve to be the best starting point,
       | after which I edited things from there manually:
       | https://image.non.io/a3c227d4-56d6-40bd-a898-3879fd062cf3.we...
       | 
       | I used this to create a companion emoji to the :mean-jacob: emoji
       | (https://html.non.io/emoji/mean-jacob.png) my team is quite fond
       | of using (I'm Jacob). I made :angel-jacob:, which has a halo that
       | shines with the brightness of a thousand suns. I don't expect my
       | team will use it, but still it was a fun exercise:
       | https://html.non.io/emoji/
        
       | neilv wrote:
       | This creates an additional reason to run Firefox: innate HDR
       | abuse blocking. :)
        
       | jillyboel wrote:
       | It's just a white circle in firefox on linux and android, looks
       | terrible. Even in chrome it looks terrible, are the eyes supposed
       | to be red?
        
       | 0xTJ wrote:
       | I'm on Wayland, and get very different results between Firefox
       | and Chromium. On the former, it's white with yellow eyes and
       | mouth, while on the latter the face is yellowish, with whites in
       | the eyes, and red pupils and mouth.
        
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       (page generated 2025-04-17 23:00 UTC)