Note: Web Sharp Pro (WSP) v6 now includes the ability to easily export any image as an HDR on both Instagram and Threads, with full control over both the HDR and base SDR image in a JPG gain map. See the video below for a demo of one potential workflow where you can create an HDR result even if you do not have an HDR image or monitor (this is one way to support both print and enhanced HDR display for the same edit). See the workflow to successfully export and upload HDR.

 

Instagram (IG) and Threads just added support for HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos! This means we are starting to see the first steps toward mainstream use of these enhanced images. HDR photos look more true to life by retaining the full color and dynamic range captured by the camera sensor.

I’m still testing to see what works best, but have posted a few HDR test images to my IG account (note that I have yet to find a way to get a final post that fully matches my the complex edits I’m doing on my computer, which isn’t surprising as support for sharing phone captures is the natural first step for a mobile-first platform).

 

How can you view HDR photos on Instagram / Threads?

IG supports HDR on all major platforms: iPhone, Android, and on the web (with a supporting browser like Chrome). Most smart phones  support HDR, as do most Apple laptops sold in the last several years (the 14-16″ M1 or later MacBook Pros look especially stunning). The majority of your audience will likely be able to see your HDR images, as IG is primarily used on mobile phones.

Support is automatic for most users. There’s nothing you need to do on a phone other than ensure you’re up to date on your operating system and the Instagram app. For a computer, see my tests to confirm that your display supports HDR.

Photos will show as HDR in the feed and when viewed large (such as by clicking an image in the grid on a web browser). They currently show as SDR (standard dynamic range) when viewing a profile grid on a mobile device until you click to view a specific image (the grid is HDR on the web). The images are shared as gain maps, which is a standard intended to help optimize display on any monitor (regardless of whether it supports HDR or just SDR).

Support appears to be starting to roll out across other Meta-owned platforms as well. The Threads iOS now supports HDR. And if you share share an IG or Threads post to Facebook, it will show as HDR when viewed on a supporting web browser. Support seems to be expanding/evolving quickly.

 

How do you capture and upload HDR photos to your account?

Initial support appears focused on sharing images from smart phone cameras (which makes sense as the primary way most people interact with IG). Just use the native iOS / Android camera app and you should have HDR support. I have tested JPG, HEIC, and RAW on the iPhone and all those formats are supported when captured with the native camera. On Android, I have found both the native Android app and IG’s built-in camera work.

If you are using Apple Silicon, Web Sharp Pro v5.9.8+ has several enhancements which make it the ideal way to share images on IG. These features are in a tech preview phase and I am investigating support for Windows for a potential future update. WSP offers the following benefits:

• HDR exports which are supported by Instagram so they may be viewed on any phone or supporting browser.
• Complete control over the SDR rendition for optimal results.
• Easily support both prints and enhanced HDR display via “enhance SDR to HDR“.

I will share more information and tutorials on these capabilities in the future when the feature moves out of a “tech preview” phase. For now, please click the “tutorials” button in WSP v5.9.8 or later and see the sections related to HDR for more info

 

While HDR viewing support on Instagram is very easy, there are numerous ways to fail when uploading HDR which either result in no HDR or a low quality result.

The best way to share images on Instagram is to use Web Sharp Pro, which uses unique encoding required by Instagram for HDR support. Just use the following workflow:

1. Export through WSP using the “JPG (w/ gain map)” option under Settings / File.
   • While there are many ways to create a valid gain map, IG is very specific in what it accepts and WSP is specifically designed to encode for success on IG.
   • Web Sharp Pro also supports full control of the SDR base image, which is crucial for ensuring everyone sees a great result (if you only test the HDR view of your image, you may be surprised how others with SDR support see your work).
2. If you are working with an SDR source image, turn on the “enhance SDR to HDR” option as well.
3. Use any of the quick export templates with “Instagram” in the name. This is required to tell WSP to use the IG-specific encoding. You may create your own custom template, but it must literally include the word “Instagram” in the template name.
4. Upload the exported image from a computer browser or Android (iPhone can view HDR just fine, but it will fail to upload as HDR – likely because iOS does not natively support the format supported by IG).
5. In the first upload window on IG, you must switch the cropping to “original ratio” for every upload (the default 1:1 or any other crop will fail).

If you do follow of the bolded steps above, your final post will support HDR on Instagram. (Note that the current Chrome desktop v131 is receiving SDR from IG due to a bug in Chrome, this should be resolved no later than January 14, 2025 – but you can get HDR support now using beta/dev/canary versions of Chrome).

I recommend uploading from a computer, but Android should be ok as long as you go to settings / data usage and media quality and enable “upload at highest quality“.

Do NOT upload HDR from an iPhone, the quality is substantially lower at this time.

Click the “tutorials” button in WSP and see the HDR and IG sections for more detail on all the supported workflows (the example with an SDR source shown here is only one workflow, you can of course provide an HDR image instead and WSP will help you create the SDR base – or you can provide both the SDR and HDR for complete control).

 

Alternatively, you can create HDR on Instagram by uploading a simple HDR AVIF from an iPhone. I strongly recommend you do not use this approach. It will look fine as a fully rendered HDR, but many people will have a bad experience with it. It is easy to see a good HDR result and not realize the SDR is not good. The auto-generated (tone mapped) SDR result is never ideal and will often look rather terrible. While most people have HDR support on IG, not all do. SDR is what people will see on old phones, when battery power is low, when viewing outside in bright light, when using an SDR computer monitor, etc. This also impacts viewers with limits HDR support (the quality of the SDR version impacts anyone who lacks support for the full HDR rendering). You can see the SDR version of your image by viewing IG using the Safari or FireFox browsers (as neither support HDR yet).

 

 

Troubleshooting viewing:

There are a few scenarios where you may only see SDR versions of HDR images posted to Instagram, or you may see HDR tone mapped to the SDR range. You may not have HDR support if:

• device does not support HDR (obviously). Most iPhones and Android phones since late 2020 have support, but older phones are much less likely to meet the requirements.
• viewing on website with a browser which does not support HDR. Supported browsers include Chrome, Edge, Brave, and Opera when using MacOS, Windows, or Android. Note that you will not have support on iPhone / iPad because these browsers use WebKit on Apple’s mobile devices (ie, any browser on an iPhone is basically just a skin running Safari under the hood).
• randomized split testing impacts results. Based on personal experience and numerous detailed reports from others, it appears that HDR display for a given post may be disabled. split testing may disable support. New features are routinely tested by nearly all major web platforms and services. This is common in order to collect information on evaluate consumer response. I am not aware of anything you can do to stop this, so you may simply not see HDR for a given post at a given time just due to “bad luck”. You may try viewing it on another device or viewing it again later (of course, there is no guarantee as to how many attempts would be needed to randomize for support or no support). Hopefully this sort of testing will end relatively soon.
• phone is in bright ambient light, where the HDR headroom may be reduced to zero stops. A cloudy day outside may be enough to trigger the ambient light sensor – and even if you turn down the brightness on an iPhone the remaining display capability is apparently not used for HDR (which I consider a bug as the display capabilities are simply not being used when they could be)
• phone is in “low power” mode (as bright pixels consume more energy). This setting may be forced on in your settings, or may turn on automatically at lower battery levels (depending on your phone’s settings).
• iPhone Accessibility / “reduce white point” is enabled. Even at the lowest level, this setting disables HDR on the phone entirely.
• Instagram settings / media quality / “disable display of HDR media” is enabled (this setting is only available in the iPhone app, not Android). Note that this toggle does not take immediate effect. You need to force quit / restart the app or restart your phone after changing it to see the impact.
• You encounter a bug. It is ideal to restart your phone if nothing else enables HDR.
• There may be a bug on the platform with that “disable display of HDR media” setting. I have received a couple of independent reports that some people have seen no support on their Android device and were able to get it to work after toggling this setting off and back on in an iPhone logged into the same account. I have been unable to replicate this scenario myself.

These are all the conditions I know of, but there may be others. If you are able to confirm some other setting reliably breaks or fixes HDR, please comment below.

Note that when using an iPhone and the ambient light or low power mode is a factor, the iOS app will tone map the HDR image to SDR rather than displaying the true SDR image. In practice, I find that this isn’t a big problem – but it does mean that the results may not be as good as a standard SDR.

Keep in mind that all the above are subject to change. For example, the iOS app was rendering a maximum of 1.5 stops (even when the hardware would support 3 stops) for a long time – and then suddenly started to offer well over 2 stops of headroom. This is still a new feature and I would expect the results will just continue to improve as HDR formats standardize, mobile operating systems update, phone displays continue to offer higher peak brightness, Instagram continues to optimize their platform, etc.

 

 

What about Facebook?

There is actually some very limited support on FB now. If you share a link to one of your images from IG or Threads, it will show up as HDR when viewed in a supporting web browser – but the FB app will not support it on any device. Still, that means true HDR images for computers like the MacBook Pro when using Chrome, etc. And everyone else will get your fallback SDR, so the results will look great when properly encoded (which is a bit trick due to the limit noted below). You can see an example on my FB page.

 

What isn’t supported?

I have found the following scenarios do NOT currently support HDR (this is not an exhaustive list, and limitations here may be resolved by the time you read this):

• IG Stories do not currently appear to support HDR. This would of course be ideal for sharing landscape work, as you can show your work full screen (rotated).
• Some iOS native camera capture workflows do not include the required gain map. This includes pano images, as well as as portrait mode shots if you shoot too quickly (before text like “natural light” shows in yellow) or you use either of the mono (black and white) modes.
• Third-party camera apps may not capture or share gain maps.
  • I tested ProCamera and found that JPG / HEIF images did not include gain maps and RAW / ProRAW captures did not generate gain maps when uploaded (unlike RAW files from the native iOS camera).
  • The IG camera on iOS did not support HDR in my testing (but direct captures within IG work great on Android / S24).
• Filters work great for HDR in the Android app. However, selecting any IG filter in the iOS app during upload will result in an SDR result.
• Uploading through a web browser on a computer will fail to preserve HDR in most cases.
• Uploading iOS captures on Android or vice versa. Apple and Google use different gain map formats.

None of these limitations for advanced HDR photography surprise me for initial support. There are different gain map specs and implementations at this point which will likely require further work from multiple companies to allow full support across platforms. Focusing on sharing smart phone images is the right first step and the results are gorgeous and very easy to obtain (automatic actually). I had assumed we probably wouldn’t see social media support for HDR any sooner than the end of 2024, so this is a very exciting development.

==> Keep an eye on my newsletter and Instagram account for updates as HDR support continues to evolve on social media. I’ve been testing various approaches to upload edited images and am getting pretty close with my latest post.