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High Dynamic Range notes the difference between the darkest and brightest bits of a scene. It solves the contrast problem when a photo has too much brightness or darkness, or few saturation. This allows to display a photo in the Standard Dynamic Range (SDR).
Solution 1: HDR Mode
Capture many photos, merge them and display on onto an SDR screen.
Taste aside, average people don't like fiddling with sliders. Most people want to tap a button and get a photo that looks closer to what they see without thinking about it.
So Google and Apple went one step further: HDR Construction Followed By Automatic Tone Mapping. The smartphone makes the tone mapping automatically.
This solution is not a silver bullet as showed in https://www.lux.camera/what-is-hdr/#:~:text=Left%3A%20Merged%20from%20Multiple%20Photos%2E%20Right%3A%20A%20single%20exposure
When things move in the middle of a burst capture— which always happens when shooting handheld— these algorithms have to nudge pixels around to make things line up. This sacrifices detail.
AI-free HDR was exceptional back in the 1800 century.
Halid app developed its custom image lab, so users can play with the HDR and exposure as they want.
Solution 2: Genuine HDR Displays
Today screens are higher dynamic range. It's not widely used though because it costs billions od follars to the TV, film, and Photography industries to upgrade their infrastructure. Another is HDR is not for everyone. Many filmmakers are opposed to HDR since bad HDR (garishness) has left a bad impression. Influencers overuse them because it make people pause while swipping through their Instagram reels.
Apple turned out to be HDR's best salesperson though. The technology is not going to a dead end as 3D for television.
iOS 18 used the Adobe's approach: encode both SDR and HDR in the file. Browser support is halfway.
Solution 3: Embrace SDR and the lo-fi aesthetic.
So smartphones don't do HDR. They take multiple shots at different exposures, then combine them using an algorithm called "tone mapping" to create an image that is NOT HDR but looks like one.
