Excessive dynamic vary (HDR) images strategies can precisely seize a scene’s full vary of brightness values — from these of its darkest shadows to its brightest mild sources. Nevertheless, when the time involves view the ensuing HDR images, many shows are solely able to displaying a restricted vary of brightness ranges. This discrepancy implies that HDR images are sometimes downgraded to suit inside the bodily limitations of those normal dynamic vary (SDR) shows and the corresponding file codecs that retailer a restricted vary of values.
Nevertheless, an growing share of cellular gadget and pc shows are HDR-capable, displaying a better vary of brightness ranges with brighter whites and darker blacks. Though a number of frequent HDR file codecs able to encoding this better vary exist, HDR-only codecs can seem in another way relying on the show capabilities. To optimally present pictures on any show — regardless of the dynamic vary — Android 14 launched the brand new Extremely HDR picture format in October 2023. Google Pixel 7 and newer gadgets adopted the format, capturing and saving HDR pictures as Extremely HDR and affording a extra true-to-life rendition as in comparison with SDR codecs, with better distinction and brighter highlights.
Though the format unlocked HDR picture show, its new metadata additionally elevated the complexity of picture enhancing operations. Till now, in case you utilized a extra advanced edit like Magic Eraser to an Extremely HDR {photograph} utilizing Google Photographs, your new edited picture would save in SDR, shedding its HDR rendition and the related brightness and distinction.
At the moment, we introduce a brand new machine studying (ML) approach that permits advanced picture enhancing for HDR pictures, together with these saved as Extremely HDR. On Pixel 8 and newer, our mannequin runs behind the scenes in Google Photographs to make sure that even in case you apply advanced edits to HDR pictures, your new edited pictures stay HDR. Core to our approach is predicting the HDR picture metadata lacking after enhancing, utilizing an ML mannequin educated on a big dataset of HDR pictures with full metadata.
