Google and Apple discover a frequent floor on HDR commonplace

Among the best options of final 12 months’s Android launch was assist for true HDR pictures. As a substitute of simulating an HDR-like impact by stacking images and making use of computational pictures tips, telephones working Android 14 or greater are able to capturing true HDR images utilizing Google’s Extremely HDR picture format. Whereas Extremely HDR was an excellent development in cellular HDR pictures, it had one huge downside: a scarcity of cross-platform compatibility. Fortunately, that’s not an issue, as each Google and Apple have embraced an ordinary that makes HDR images seem as supposed on Android and iOS.

The way in which that Google designed Extremely HDR was fairly intelligent. Quite than creating a completely new format, Google as an alternative primarily based Extremely HDR on the almost universally supported JPEG format. In reality, Extremely HDR pictures are simply JPEG information which have an additional little bit of metadata slapped onto them. That metadata takes the type of a achieve map that, when utilized on high of the bottom JPEG picture, turns it right into a HDR photograph. Units and apps that assist HDR and know methods to apply the achieve map will see the HDR model of the photograph, whereas gadgets and apps that both don’t assist HDR or don’t acknowledge the achieve map will see the SDR model of the photograph.

That’s the gist of how Extremely HDR works, however as anybody well-versed in pictures will inform you, issues get much more difficult than that. A kind of issues has to do with how the achieve map metadata is definitely encoded within the picture. As I simply alluded to, it’s not sufficient to your machine to have an HDR show so as so that you can see the HDR model of an Extremely HDR picture. You additionally must open the picture in an app that acknowledges the Extremely HDR achieve map metadata and subsequently applies it on high of the bottom SDR picture. In any other case, you’ll solely see the bottom SDR model of the picture though your machine has an HDR show.

The problem for apps is that there are a number of methods to encode achieve map metadata in a picture file. Google’s Extremely HDR, which makes use of Adobe’s encoding scheme, is considered one of them, however Apple has its personal model. That implies that platforms like, say, Instagram would want to not solely deal with each schemes but in addition doubtlessly convert between them in the event that they needed each Android and iOS gadgets to see any given HDR photograph the identical method. Thankfully, there’s a greater resolution to this downside, one which has already been adopted by each Google and Apple: the ISO 21496-1 commonplace for achieve map metadata.

ISO 21496-1 standardizes how achieve map metadata and its attributes are outlined in addition to utilized. When applied correctly, the usual allows HDR images to be captured and shared throughout platforms. You’re capable of, for instance, take a HDR photograph in your Android telephone and ship it to your pals who’ve iPhones, iPads, or Macbooks, they usually’d have the ability to see it the identical method you do in your machine. The identical is true in reverse; your pals can take a HDR photograph with their iPhone after which ship it to you to view in your Android telephone or different gadgets.

To make this all attainable, although, gadgets must observe the ISO 21496-1 commonplace when encoding achieve map metadata of their pictures. As well as, apps want to acknowledge the ISO 21496-1 metadata.

Apple introduced at WWDC that it was including developer APIs for studying and writing achieve maps utilizing the ISO 21496-1 commonplace in macOS 15, iOS 18, and iPadOS 18. In response to photographer Greg Benz, the Apple Messages app, Photographs app, Preview app, and Fast Look are including assist for the ISO commonplace. One person on Reddit famous that their 14-inch MacBook Professional from 2022 was correctly displaying the HDR model of a photograph they’d taken on a Pixel telephone, suggesting that Apple has both already rolled out assist for the ISO commonplace in these 4 apps or the corporate applied assist for the way Adobe/Google encode achieve map metadata.

After some testing and discussions with show analyst Dylan Raga, I’ve concluded that it’s the latter, although that doesn’t imply that Google isn’t additionally embracing the ISO 21496-1 commonplace. In reality, its Google Chrome browser already helps it, and its most up-to-date Android 15 launch helps each encoding and decoding achieve map metadata utilizing the ISO 21496-1 commonplace. In response to Google, Android 15 by default “encodes each Extremely HDR v1 metadata and ISO 21496-1 metadata when encoding Extremely HDR JPEG information,” which implies that Android 15 telephones that shoot in Extremely HDR will mechanically output HDR images that different platforms can deal with.

The Google Photographs app on Android right this moment helps HDR images captured from an iPhone, although we don’t know if that’s as a result of Photographs already helps the ISO 21496-1 commonplace, not to mention if iPhones even encode achieve map metadata utilizing that commonplace proper now. Regardless, HDR images are already cross-compatible between Android (when utilizing Google Photographs) and iOS (when utilizing Apple Messages, Photographs, or Google Photographs), so introducing ISO 21496-1 assist into each platforms will solely serve to enhance the compatibility of HDR images with much more apps and platforms.