All of the Pixelmator Pro’s or Photomator’s available HDR Export formats (HDR JPEG, HDR HEIC, HDR AVIF, HDR PNG) have massive problems when attempting to read that file back in using other industry standard digital imaging software.
- Apple’s QuickLook, Preview, Safari as well as your own Pixelmator Pro are all completely incapable of opening up a HDR file correctly when exporting it in any of the available HDR formats from Photomator.
- Google Chrome can only see JPEG correctly as HDR image, PNG and AVIF files are both too dark, HEIC fails completely.
- Affinity Photo can open HEIC and PNG files as HDR images, but the file is 1 stop brighter than in Photomator. It fails to see any HDR data in JPG or AVIF files.
- Photoshop only manages to import AVIF file through Camera Raw, but all of the other formats (HEIC, JPG, PNG) fail to import in HDR.
- The way to get HDR content inside Pixelmator Pro is to go Image > Edit with Pixelmator Pro. Pixelmator Pro offers the same HDR Export formats than Photomator, which behave exactly the same as described above.
- Apple Photos actually does see all of the exported formats correctly but it is not clear which format to use when I want to share the HDR with the rest of the world. On macOS Messages fails to see any HDR data in any of the shared images. On the iPhone side only HEIC seems to work when you actually open the image up, but all of them are dark in the general view.
- In iPhone's Photos app the imported HDR are displayed as HDR but they all look somewhat different and problematic (different color casts and banding issues) than the original HDRs inside Photomator or Pixelmator Pro.
All in all, your HDR workflow is incredibly inconsistent and unreliable, even when staying within the Apple's ecosystem. At the very least I expect to be able to QuickLook/Preview the exported files correctly as HDR images and have a consistent look to them no matter if I see them on my HDR capable Macbook or iPhone, no matter which HDR capable app I'm using to preview them.
- Apple’s QuickLook, Preview, Safari as well as your own Pixelmator Pro are all completely incapable of opening up a HDR file correctly when exporting it in any of the available HDR formats from Photomator.
- Google Chrome can only see JPEG correctly as HDR image, PNG and AVIF files are both too dark, HEIC fails completely.
- Affinity Photo can open HEIC and PNG files as HDR images, but the file is 1 stop brighter than in Photomator. It fails to see any HDR data in JPG or AVIF files.
- Photoshop only manages to import AVIF file through Camera Raw, but all of the other formats (HEIC, JPG, PNG) fail to import in HDR.
- The way to get HDR content inside Pixelmator Pro is to go Image > Edit with Pixelmator Pro. Pixelmator Pro offers the same HDR Export formats than Photomator, which behave exactly the same as described above.
- Apple Photos actually does see all of the exported formats correctly but it is not clear which format to use when I want to share the HDR with the rest of the world. On macOS Messages fails to see any HDR data in any of the shared images. On the iPhone side only HEIC seems to work when you actually open the image up, but all of them are dark in the general view.
- In iPhone's Photos app the imported HDR are displayed as HDR but they all look somewhat different and problematic (different color casts and banding issues) than the original HDRs inside Photomator or Pixelmator Pro.
All in all, your HDR workflow is incredibly inconsistent and unreliable, even when staying within the Apple's ecosystem. At the very least I expect to be able to QuickLook/Preview the exported files correctly as HDR images and have a consistent look to them no matter if I see them on my HDR capable Macbook or iPhone, no matter which HDR capable app I'm using to preview them.
Statistics: Posted by Juhani — Today 06:34:09