I can view beautiful HDR content on YouTube (as long as the video is labeled 'HDR') with my Late 2021 16" MacBook Pro using the built-in Liquid Retina XDR Display. How do view my own photos taken with my iPhone X (Camera set to take photos in HDR) on my MacBook Pro with the same level of contrast?
Add a comment
|
2 Answers
This is a massively complex subject, so I'm going to avoid as much 'jargon & maths' as I can; but there will have to be some, even if simplified;)
You're confusing two different definitions of HDR [this is going to become a common theme in future, as Microsoft Windows has seen fit to adopt an old, familiar abbreviation & used it for a new, different, purpose.]
"Traditional" HDR, as used in cameras for years, takes multiple exposures then combines them to bring details out of the darker areas, without washing out the light areas.
This is actually a form of dynamic compression. It actually reduces [or redistributes] the dynamic range so it can be displayed on a screen with a smaller gamut.
"Modern" HDR, as adopted by Microsoft but not Apple, is a way of expanding the dynamic range by using 10 bits of data in the screen display, rather than the tradition 8 bits in use on most screens. This is actually based on a video spec HDR-10 [or BT2020], not a photographic spec.
HDR10 is actually a bit of a poor spec & not really very future-proof, as it uses static not dynamic metadata [just go with me on this]. There's another, more inferior spec called PQ10, but we can ignore that one.] A better, dynamic spec is Dolby Vision - this is what Apple TV uses, on capable TVs, Macs & iPhones.
There is a similar HDR spec used in both video & stills, called DCI-P3 [or often just P3 for short].
Each of these is reliant on another standard - a colour profile, which is embedded in the image or video, to tell the viewing app how to display this colour range.
The old standard for images was sRGB for stills, and most screens & computers are set up to at least attempt to reproduce this colour gamut fully. The old standard for video was Rec 709. sRGB & Rec 709 have the same colour gamut [they can display the same range of colours] but have different gamma curves [they are different in how darks & lights are displayed]
TVs were set up for Rec 709 & computers for sRGB. This is why movies played back on your older computers & TVs look different.
There are other higher range specs for professional use, but I'll skip these as I think we're getting enough 'info-dump' already ;)
This is all gradually being replaced by HDR10, P3 & variants.
This is where we start to become thankful for the P3 spec… it can be used for both video and stills without the need to recalibrate in between.
I have yet to see an HDR10-capable display that doesn't just make a whole heap of mess out of any image displayed on it. As it stands, in my personal opinion, it is an option to switch off if at all possible. There seems to be no real calibration effort between 'broadcaster' & consumer. In short, you have no clue if what you are seeing is what was intended.
P3 displays, however, seem to do a better job, even if not fully hardware-calibrated, just 'straight out of the box'.
So, here's the good news… in brief…
Your iPhone takes images & video in P3.
Your Mac's display is a P3-capable display.
It's already "HDR".
No user intervention required.
Some background reading -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDR10
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/photography/tips-and-solutions/color-gamuts-a-quick-primer [this is aimed at photography, not video]
https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/docs/HDR_WideColor.pdf [this is how Apple handles 10-bit colour in Final Cut Pro so it's really for broadcasters not consumers. It doesn't do too much math]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCI-P3 [this is a bit sparse & a lot of numbers, not sure how much use it is tbh]
The only way that I've found to view HDR photos on a XDR display in full quality is to load them into the Photos app. No other application that I know of will show these photos in HDR, but instead just the normal "flattened" versions. It's disappointing, and surprising, that Quick Look and even Preview can't show the real "pop" that HDR photos contain.
After much searching, I still have the same question as QuantumDot, since Photos is not a fast nor convenient viewer.
