HDR photos are now extremely well supported by browsers, editing software, and a wide range of hardware (literally billions of devices). The key remaining challenge is sharing the photos. The gaps are closing quickly and there are already a wide range of options to share your gorgeous HDR images with others. 
This page shows exactly how you can share these images almost anywhere already with the right approach, including:
- Instagram / Threads
- SquareSpace / Wix
- WordPress
- AppleTV (or direct on TV)
- iMessage
- Discord
- YouTube
- Adobe Portfolio
- Lightroom Web Galleries
- and more.
Web Sharp Pro v7 has been extensively optimized to support these use cases.
There is more work to be done across the web, so please be sure to vote for expanded HDR support on your favorite sites / platforms.
[Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. By purchasing through these links, you are helping to support the creation of my tutorials at no cost to you].
Instagram (IG) / Threads:
These platforms offer native support, see how to share HDR photos on Instagram or Threads.
Additionally, IG supports HDR videos in both Reels and Stories using this workflow:
- Export an HDR video slideshow via Web Sharp Pro v7 (see below).
- Upload
Limitations for HDR video:
- Unlike HDR photos, support for HDR video is not deterministic. Accounts with few followers (such as test accounts) don’t typically show HDR. Accounts with 10K+ followers almost always do. It’s hard to say exactly where the line is drawn but seems to be based on expected use (presumably to manage the cost of storing and streaming HDR video). Once a video is old enough that views are very limited, it may stop showing an HDR result.
- Video does not show HDR immediately if you upload normally (see tip above). A 10-20 minute delay is typical before playback shows the best HDR results.
- Video only plays back as HDR in the mobile app (computer browsers don’t show the video as HDR at this time, though you can safely upload from them). This isn’t a big deal, as 95% of views take place in the app.
Facebook (FB):
Unlike IG / Threads, FB does not yet support HDR photos.
However it supports HDR video with the same workflow and limitations. Additionally, you can upload other video formats in FB posts (which is helpful for slideshows with landscape photos).
See how to create HDR video slideshows below.
Creating an HDR video with Web Sharp Pro:
Using Web Sharp Pro v7:
- Export your HDR images. A batch export using 4K size template, JPG w/ gain map, and “auto” for tone mapping (as the base image won’t be used this allows faster batch exports).
- Go to the top-right flyout menu > HDR TOOLS > Create video / HTML slideshow *
- Select the folder with your source images and click “create HDR video“
- Select desired options
- Use 1080p vertical for social media, 4K landscape for YouTube and AppleTV
- Click the “?” button for more info on the various options (transitions, cross fade, music, etc)
- Tip: if you are posting a landscape (wide) image to a portrait (vertical) format like Reels / Stories, one creative option is to use the “pan” transition in the WSP video editor. Double-click your image to see it large, pick pan, then set the start and end views to the left and right side of the photo to make it pan. When you do this with a long time (maybe 15-30 seconds), it would pan across your wide image with that vertical viewport.
- Click “render”
* Note: support for exporting is currently only available in Web Sharp Pro under Apple Silicon. I may expand support to Windows if there is significant demand, though I expect expanded support for photo formats may make HDR video less necessary as a workaround in the not too distant future.
SquareSpace / Wix (or other sites like Joomla, etc):
These platforms do not have native HDR photo format support in their media libraries. However, they support custom code blocks, which means you can host your image elsewhere (such as DropBox) and share those images.
Web Sharp Pro v7 includes the ability to easily convert those image links into a proper grid of HDR photos. See gbenz.com for a demo of HDR photos on SquareSpace (or this page for Wix).
Workflow:
- Export your HDR images via Web Sharp Pro v7 as JPG w/ gain map.
- Use the “resize to fit, max” size template. This lets you pick the maximum width or length to apply to any mix of images. 1500 x 1500 would be a reasonable choice to balance image detail and website performance.
- For fast loading of your website, use “good” or “high” quality.
- Upload your images to DropBox
- Or another supporting service like Zonerama or your own server.
- Note that Google Drive does not allow your images to be hosted on another site.
- Go to WSP’s flyout menu (top-right four bars icon) > HDR TOOLS > Create HDR gallery for SquareSpace, Wix, etc.
- Right-click each image on DropBox (one at a time) and select “copy link“, then paste the link into the image URLs list in WSP.
- Choose any other options or styles you wish to customize your image grid.
- Click “copy code snippet” when you’re done.
- In SquareSpace / Wix, create a custom HTML code block and paste the code you copied from WSP.
WordPress:
You can upload your HDR JPG gain maps to WordPress now and the media library will work fine as long as you choose the “full size” option (which avoids problems transcoding to smaller sizes).
WordPress v7.1’s roadmap includes native support for transcoding, which means we should have full support around August. That will allow your thumbnails, small images, etc to also show proper HDR. I’ve tested the underlying open-source library which will enable this and it works flawlessly, so things look very promising.
AppleTV (or direct on TV):
Nearly all big screen TVs support HDR and are an excellent way to show your work to friends and family. AppleTV does not yet support HDR photo formats, but does support HDR video.
Workflow for AppleTV:
- Export an HDR video slideshow via Web Sharp Pro v7 (see below).
- Play on AppleTV:
- The simplest option is to AirDrop the video to your phone and then use my free HDR Cast iOS app to stream it over AirPlay to the AppleTV. Unlike the native options in iOS, this app allows you to play the video in the background (so you can use other apps or lock the phone).
- Sync the video via iCloud and play it from the Photos app on the AppleTV.
Many TVs have native support for HDR Videos on a USB memory stick (I like the Sandisk Dual Drive, which has both USB-C and USB-A connections).
Every brand / model may vary, but here’s an example how how I show HDR on my TV:
- Export an HDR video slideshow via Web Sharp Pro v7 (see below).
- Encoding the video as HLG offers greatest compatibility (this is the default under the gear icon)
- Encoding as PQ offers the highest image quality as it best preserves highlight detail. However, you may need to encode with “good” quality to ensure playback on some TVs (which may only support 420 color sub-sampling for PQ).
- Copy it to a USB memory stick which has been formatted as exFAT (ideal as it supports files >4GB), FAT16, FAT32, or NTFS.
- Press HOME on the remote
- Go to Apps
- Open Media Player (purple icon): select the USB, open the folder, select the video file and press OK / Enter to play it.
iMessage (test messages on iPhone):
Apple was perhaps the first to support HDR gain maps and built their tools with a proprietary encoding that preceeded the ISO standard. Photos captured with the iPhone are natively supported, and Web Sharp Pro can export any image in this special format.
Workflow to export from Web Sharp Pro v7:
- Set HDR output to “JPG (w/ gain map)“
- Check “Apple map“
- This option makes the image compatible with iMessage / iCloud.
- However, due to the limits of Apple’s support, there may some loss of color fidelity in the HDR rendition of your image. So it’s generally best to turn this off or do a quick quality check of the results before leaving this on for all exports.
- However, this option does not reduce compatibility elsewhere (you could use the Instagram template and Apple map to create an image which is supported nearly anywhere).
Discord:
Discord supports HDR photos in the desktop app and browser (but not the mobile app).
Workflow:
- Export your HDR photo in the PNG format via Web Sharp Pro or Lightroom using P3 or Rec2020 colorspace (sRGB will not show as HDR on Discord).
- Drag the image into your Discord post.
Lightroom Web Galleries:
You can export your HDR photos directly from Lightroom (Classic or Cloud) directly to a very nice portfolio website at no extra cost as part of your Adobe subscription. See how to share to Lightroom Web Galleries.
Limitations: the grid does not show HDR, only when you view the images large.
Adobe Portfolio:
Adobe Portfolio supports JPG gain maps when you upload directly to your site.
You can see an example on Rikk Flohr‘s test page (click the second image to see HDR when you view large).
Limitations: HDR only when you view the images large and you need to upload manually (not from Lightroom).
YouTube:
YouTube has offers HDR video support for quite some time, including both regular videos and Shorts. When played back with support, you’ll see a red “HDR” badge over the gear icon.
Workflow:
- Export an HDR video slideshow via Web Sharp Pro v7 (see how to create HDR video slideshows).
- Upload to YouTube.
- YouTube transcoding can take up to 48 before you see the HDR version (these videos are both longer and higher resolution than Reels/Stories, so transcoding takes longer).
- However, this processing will occur while the video is unlisted. So the best approach is to upload ahead of time and then switch to public or use the scheduling option.
