True HDR workflow

[eugenialoli]

I'd like to see a True HDR workflow (not the fake one where you combine 3 images together). Both Google and Apple have formats for their phones/laptops that Lightroom now supports, and then exporting to Instagram enables these ultra-bright images to be viewable on phones. This is a must have for instagramers because these images get attention. Right now, there's not a single open source app that can deal with that, it's only Lightroom and Photoshop. We need this feature too.

[kmilos]

Possibly a duplicate of #17399

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[ralfbrown]

Darktable can process images with brightnesses greater than 100% and can export to a number of formats which support HDR (e.g. OpenEXR, JPEG XL), but the graphical toolkit it uses (Gtk+ 3) does not support HDR so you can't see those ultra-bright pixels on screen. You'll also need to avoid using display-referred blend modes and a few of the display-referred modules, as they clip values to 100%.

If using Filmic, you need to set the target white luminance to 400% or 1600% to get those extra-white whites in the export (you have to right-click the slider to enter values >100).

[github-actions]

This issue has been marked as stale due to inactivity for the last 60 days. It will be automatically closed in 300 days if no update occurs. Please check if the master branch has fixed it and report again or close the issue.

[TacoCake]

Still relevant, I'd love to be able to see the HDR image, in true HDR, as I process it.

I'm using KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland with the color management protocol.

Chrome/chromium HDR video and photo has been implemented recently for Wayland, so having darktable render true HDR photos would complete my setup.

[ralfbrown]

HDR display won't happen until darktable is migrated to Gtk4, which is a huge undertaking (several person-years of effort).
You can do a search for "label:gtk4" to see issues and PRs related to the early efforts in that direction. The dev team would be happy to have people help with that task....

[MaykThewessen]

Feature request

Add support for exporting .avif (and optionally .heif) with HDR metadata (Rec.2020 gamut, PQ or HLG transfer functions).

⸻

Motivation / Use case
• Many HDR workflows today rely on AVIF/HEIF for distribution and sharing.
• On iOS/iPhone, .avif and .heif are the most widely supported formats for HDR stills, including Instagram.
• Lightroom currently supports HDR export to AVIF/HEIF, which allows uploading HDR images directly to Instagram in up to ~2000 nits.
• I shoot Canon .CR2 RAWs, process them in darktable, and want to publish them in HDR without going through TIFF/EXR → external encoder → re-tagging.
• On desktop I view HDR10 output on a Lenovo P32pz-30 HDR monitor; AVIF with Rec.2020 + PQ/HLG metadata displays correctly.

At the moment, darktable can export to float TIFF/EXR for grading pipelines, but there’s no straightforward way to generate consumer-friendly HDR files for actual display/publishing.

⸻

What’s needed
• Export to .avif (libavif) with:
• Wide gamut ICC profile: Rec.2020 primaries.
• Transfer function: PQ (ST.2084) or HLG (ARIB STD-B67).
• Embed HDR10 metadata blocks:
• Mastering display primaries:
• Red: (0.708, 0.292)
• Green: (0.170, 0.797)
• Blue: (0.131, 0.046)
• White: (0.3127, 0.3290) (D65)
• MaxCLL (Content Light Level): e.g. 2000 nits
• MaxFALL (Frame Average Light Level): e.g. 400 nits
• Correct matrixCoefficients, colour_primaries, transfer_characteristics fields in the bitstream:
• matrixCoefficients = 9 (BT.2020 non-constant)
• colour_primaries = 9 (BT.2020)
• transfer_characteristics = 16 (PQ) or 18 (HLG)
• Optionally, parallel support for .heif (using libheif), which is also widely supported on Apple devices.

⸻

Benefit

This would make darktable competitive with Lightroom for HDR workflows and provide an end-to-end open-source HDR still photo pipeline, from RAW to Instagram/consumer HDR displays.

⸻

References
• Pixls forum thread: Processing RAWs for HDR displays in darktable
• libavif GitHub – shows HDR metadata support already exists in the encoder.
• Apple iOS 16+ and Instagram both recognize HDR AVIF/HEIF with Rec.2020 + PQ/HLG tags.

⸻

Would it be possible to add this to the export module, similar to current TIFF/EXR options but with consumer-oriented HDR metadata baked in?

[github-actions]

This issue has been marked as stale due to inactivity for the last 60 days. It will be automatically closed in 300 days if no update occurs. Please check if the master branch has fixed it and report again or close the issue.