Google Photos gains support for Android 14's new Ultra HDR format

02 September 2023
Perhaps other apps will soon adopt Ultra HDR as well.

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I just tested this on my Galaxy S24 Ultra and realised Google Photos doesn't support Ultra HDR with .heic image formats properly. On Samsung Gallery it works perfectly fine, while in Google Photos it doesn't make any difference in brightness (although it does show up as Ultra HDR in the metadata.)

    alfamus, 05 Sep 2023jpeg is outdated. heic is the wayHEIC/HEIF is proprietary, Apple uses it because they are suckers for H265 - the proprietary video format it is based on, that they promote on their products such as Apple TV+ and because they hate the idea of being compatible with anything else as that would signal how their tech and products aren't made of magic and as special as they wish to keep some users believing.

    AVIF, based on AV1, is free, like the video codec it stems from, and has comparable quality and "compression" to its BS proprietary competitor.

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      • Anonymous
      • dVh
      • 21 Oct 2023

      ZolaIII, 04 Sep 2023Seams like Google is again reinventing hot water in order t... morewhat royalty fees are you talking about??

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        • Anonymous
        • L18
        • 10 Sep 2023

        There allready Is JpegXL...

          jpeg is outdated. heic is the way

            Seams like Google is again reinventing hot water in order to collect royalty fee's. HLG transform to display capabilities towards Rec. 2020 from Rec. 709/601 (including sRGB) in the mean time is widely adopteded in broadcasting industry and applys to pretty much anything displayed (while using such) and of course it's royalty free.

              DanielAyanfe, 03 Sep 2023Many android phones do it, especially the Chinese ones, Sam... moreAre you talking about normal HDR? Normal HDR has been around for years. It's talking about 10-bit HDR here, "Ultra". Unless you're capturing in raw format, your Chinese phone outputs in JPG is 8-bit. AFAIK, Google here is creating a new file format that also shows up as JPG.

                So? Still limited storage.

                  Anonymous, 03 Sep 2023I guess your specific phone also shoots images in a color s... moreMany android phones do it, especially the Chinese ones, Samsung and Google however do not do it. like on Xiaomi when you snap an HDR image you can enable to view the full HDR in the gallery.

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                    • Anonymous
                    • kXW
                    • 03 Sep 2023

                    Bigmeme, 03 Sep 2023The discord thing happens in my android 12 phone as well 🤷I guess your specific phone also shoots images in a color space that isn’t sRGB. But AFAIK, practically no other Android phones actually encode photos with HDR metadata, so the Pixel might be the first unless another manufacturer decides to beat them to it.

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                      • Anonymous
                      • kXW
                      • 03 Sep 2023

                      Anonymous, 03 Sep 2023Hang on, that's not quite right. Apple defaults to usi... moreDefinitely, I’m happy that there’s going to be an open standard for this instead of Apple’s weird proprietary HDR encoding system that literally nothing else supports.

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                        • Anonymous
                        • Iby
                        • 03 Sep 2023

                        Anonymous, 03 Sep 2023Just wanted to pop in and point out that this has been a “f... moreHang on, that's not quite right. Apple defaults to using a different container (.heic/.heif) that uses H.265 compression for photos, and as such, is not fully backwards compatible, since many devices cannot read those files. This Google solution is an extension to the existing .jpg/.jpeg container, and will be truly backwards compatible.

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                          • Facts
                          • QBk
                          • 03 Sep 2023

                          Actually with wider colour gamut support, the colours should be more natural and lifelike instead of the over-saturated look people tend to associate with it.

                            Anonymous, 03 Sep 2023Just wanted to pop in and point out that this has been a “f... moreI believe most flagship androids do aswell, can save 10bit hdr pics but if the app doesnt support it then itll convert the file so the app can read it still (8 bit sdr), nothing new really. A lot of android phones have upscalers aswell for sdr-hdr conversion on all content.

                            I'd be suprised if they bring to everyone using google photos, probably just the google one subscribers (would be a pain for most people and annoying, nice extra feature for the rest, being a google one sub already makes pixel phones pointless for pictures and vids lol).

                              Anonymous, 03 Sep 2023Just wanted to pop in and point out that this has been a “f... moreI guess that means Apple must be much better than Google.

                                Anonymous, 03 Sep 2023Just wanted to pop in and point out that this has been a “f... moreThe discord thing happens in my android 12 phone as well 🤷

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                                  • Anonymous
                                  • I0@
                                  • 03 Sep 2023

                                  Anonymous, 03 Sep 2023Just wanted to pop in and point out that this has been a “f... more"...and the color becomes overly saturated again."

                                  Fixed it for you.

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                                    • Anonymous
                                    • kXW
                                    • 03 Sep 2023

                                    Just wanted to pop in and point out that this has been a “feature” for a while on iOS devices. Photos taken on relatively recent iPhones use the wide Display P3 color space (more or less sRGB but extended with support for more saturated colors) and an embedded HDR gain map. Photos will look (more) striking in the iOS Photos app, but apps not supporting the HDR gain map will display the SDR version. Furthermore, apps not supporting the Display P3 color space will show a much more dull looking version of the image. One example of the latter is seen when you upload a photo to Discord on iOS. The tiny preview has dull colors until you tap on it to load the higher resolution image, where it will actually load the Display P3 colorspace and the color becomes properly saturated again.