Exporting HDR edits to SDR & Tone Mapping

[Davey]

I love how the HDR image looks and having the ability to edit in HDR, but I’m find the fact I need an SDR image for export a lot of the time limiting this feature as editing a photo in HDR in Photomator appears to make the SDR version essentially unusable.

For example, here is a photo I took on the iPhone that’s HDR. If I do not edit it at all and export it. The SDR image looks fine. I’m sure with whatever magic Apples photos.app does as well, I can edit in HDR and the SDR version looks totally fine.



If I edit the same image in Photomator in HDR mode (I’ve just tweaked the image slightly as a test) then upload it, as you can see, the sky and details are just completely blown out and unrecognisable. I presume this is something to do with how it’s tone mapping HDR detail to SDR?



This means 90% of the time I have to convert the image to SDR to use on the web, so most of the time I can’t actually use the feature…
is this something that can be fixed, or is it just a limitation of the way this feature has to work?

[Arnaud]

I don't think there's a ready-made solution for this, or I haven't found it, yet.

Apple's Photos app does a slightly better job here, but again you'll get blown out highlights, etc. It looks like tone mapping from HDR to SDR is not a solved issue, yet.

I'd stick to SDR for a while more.

[nigelw]

+1. Editing RAW files in HDR mode is really useful. But like @Davey I can't seem to make use of the results, so have been avoiding the feature. I've noticed two issues:

- Same as @Davey, highlights in HDR images are totally washed out when viewing the SDR version. By comparison, Photos.app seems to make SDR conversion "just work".
- If I take an HDR photo that I edited with Photomator, and e.g. post it to a photo stream in Photos.app, the shared version looks noticeably different/worse. The shared version is still HDR, but the colors are not consistent with the original output from Photomator.

It would be helpful to know if these are things that can be or will be improved upon in Photomator? Or if anyone has tips on working with HDR so I can understand how to make use of the feature.

[Martin Chalifoux]

If I take a HEIC image and Export a JPEG on my iPad which run 3.3.1 and my Mac which run 3.2.3, both the latest releases, I get different results. The iPad export is better, with highlight somewhat recovered while the Mac export totally wash them out. So I think they are tweaking the JPEG conversion and at the moment the iPad version is better. I hope they keep improving this because conversion from HEIC/HDR images to JPEG is very important, JPEG remaining an essential format. I would make no sense to have to do edits twice to produce a good HDR and a good SDR image. There must he a reliable high quality automated way to get SDR from HDR images.

[Davey]

I don't think there's a ready-made solution for this, or I haven't found it, yet.

Apple's Photos app does a slightly better job here, but again you'll get blown out highlights, etc. It looks like tone mapping from HDR to SDR is not a solved issue, yet.

I'd stick to SDR for a while more.

This sadly does seem to be the solution for now. This feature just isn’t ready for prime time in my opinion, or has adequate documentation to list the pros cons and advise on workflows for people… it’s just messy.

Back to SDR for me

[mauro.delromano]

If you rotate thumbnail images 360° in Photos App you'll force to reload previews, fixing highlights washout. I know it's a workaround, but better than nothing.

[Tomsan]

Is it possible to suggest Pixelmator use the preview and adjustment feature for SDR without affecting the HDR photo, similar to LR? At the very least, we can use HDR to adjust photos and save them with HDR, then export the SDR version for platforms that do not support HDR, while still being able to preview and make adjustments.

[ChristophK]

I also agree, the tone mapping for HDR highlights isn't good especially for areas in the transition from SDR to HDR. It is often yellowish

[Martin Chalifoux]

And we need to emphasize that nailing a seamless transition from HDR to SDR tones is extremely important. One might have HDR capable hardware and like to edit such images, but reality is that as soon or you share those images you need a good transformation to SDR for the rest of the world and social media. They must make that seamless in the app, else like others above I just stick to SDR so I don't have to deal with the hassle.