I’m working with .CR3 files from a Canon EOS R8 with HDR PQ enabled. My monitor is HDR compatible and HDR is enabled in Windows settings.
After I export an edited photo as a Jpeg in PhotoLab 8, it looks great when viewed on my PC - be it in Windows explorer or the browser version of Google Photos. However, when I go to look at the same image in Google Photos on my Android phone it’s way too dark, losing pretty much all detail in the shadows. Changing the color space for the export doesn’t help, so does anyone have an idea of what I’m doing wrong? I’m in love with the results I’m getting on my PC so I’d love to be able to see them on other devices too haha.
While editing with HDR disabled in Windows and the monitor switched to standard mode does help, that has me confused as to whether or not I’m losing information from the photo by doing it like that? Doesn’t this mean that I’m not taking advantage of HDR and I might as well turn it off in-camera too? I also can’t get quite the same end result in terms of shadow details while keeping the rest of the image from being too bright.
I apologize for the basic questions, I’m unfamiliar with HDR workflows.
HDR monitors are useful only for gaming and 4K movies with HDR support.
Not for photo editing, so it’s better left off.
The HDR option in some cameras or in editing programs is a very different thing from HDR in the monitor (the fact that they have the same name is misleading): it’s just a way to “compress” tones in a normal JPEG by combining multiple exposure. But the end result still is better viewed with the monitor set to a standard gamut and brightness… at least until they will invent a new format which can exploit HDR monitors (and anyway, in that case the printing results will be VERY different, as paper still cannot reproduce the contrast and brightness of a screen).
Photolab does not support any editing in HDR. The only program that supports HDR image editing (not to confuse with the stacking of several images with different exposures) that I am aware of is Lightroom. And even in Lightroom, you have to export to heif format, as 8-bit jpgs do not support hdr neither.
Ok, but here we were speaking of a supposed Photolab issue.
Anyway, even with Lightwoom, the problem is that the output (which I suppose to be a JPEG or a TIFF) is too dark when viewed on other devices or printed. This is what I mean when I say that an HDR monitor is useless for photos if the intent is to share them on non-HDR devices.
Side note as this is a Lightroom issue but I’ve also tried the same workflow in Lightroom, which correctly recognizes the CR3s as HDR and enables its own HDR features. Unfortunately, even with Soft Proofing turned on and the JPEGs exported as HDR P3 they show up dark. It’s weird because Google Photos on my S24 Ultra correctly recognizes the Lightroom JPEG as Ultra HDR but it’s still too dark. Meanwhile JPEGs exported from Photolab don’t show up as Ultra HDR.
Thanks anyway, I guess for now I’ll just edit and export stuff with SDR only in mind.
It is a sad fact that we can not predict the qualities of other people’s viewing devices when we edit our photos. If we share a photo widely, it could be viewed on darker or brighter devices than our own and colours may not be seen as intended, no matter how fastidious we are in our setup and presentation.
Personally, I prefer viewing my photos on screen and the brightness is adjusted to suit, on my computer, phone or tablet. I do many things with my computer other than photo editing and having it set up with very low brightness permanently would be unwanted. Perhaps there’s a way of easily switching between two monitor setups but I’ve not discovered it.
However, photos that look good on my screens will almost certainly be too dark if printed and I am faced with the prospect of dimming my computer screen and re-editing my photos if I would like to print them. I have tried various methods of just brightening previously edited photos with variable success and would like advice on that. “Your monitor is too bright” is unhelpful when you’re a time pressed amateur who just wants a print once in a while.
Just a thought to end: DxO are complicit in all of this. If you just accepted the auto everything results from Photolab, the result would best suit being viewed on a bright screen.
stuck
(Canon, PL7+FP7+VP3 on Win 10 + GTX 1050ti)
11
I have a Dell monitor and Dell provides software called ‘Dell Display Manager’ that allows me to set which mode is used for which application. Thus for normal use the monitor runs in its ‘standard’ mode but when I open a photo editing application it switches to a hardware profiled mode that corresponds to Adobe RGB and which also adjusts the brightness.
I don’t know for sure but I believe that BENQ provide similar software for their photo monitors and I’d be surprised if Ezio don’t have an equivalent.
The monitor is not part of the PC and may be used to display from different devices. I also may choose to use one profile while editing an image that I want to view on a display and different profiles for editing to print on matte paper versus glossy paper.
Thank you so much for the example. I have found that there is Philips SmartControl software available for my monitor that has “Application Preset Mode”. I shall be trying this out in the new year.
I’ll also add another consideration: HDR screens are the least standardized thing ever. Even if you display the same photo/movie on two HDR compatible screens, their maximum luminance and contrast may vary A LOT. So, it’s almost impossible to get the same rendition on two different devices.