On recent iPhones if you take a picture or video of a bright subject (e.g. the sun), this part of the image is displayed much brighter inside the stock photos app. This takes full advantage of the maximum possible brightness of the XDR displays.
In Darkroom, such photos and videos are displayed in the standard SDR range only.
Just take a picture of the sun and look at it in both apps on current iPhones.
Find more information about this here.
Darkroom should also preserve the HDR information when saving or exporting an HDR photo or video to other apps (i.e. save copy or as a new image).
Currently the HDR information seems only preserved when using the Save menu option (Replacing the original asset)
seems like none of the 3rd party apps out there can preserve the “HDR effect”, but i found out a app called “Radiance+” which can add highlight info back to a SDR HEIC file, but it’s quite expensive and quite annoying cause you have to edit the photo in darkroom,save it, open Radiance to add HDR and save it again. and for some reason, that app can only save a seperate file rather than replacing the original. I’m hoping Darkroom can add this feature which would make it the only HDR-capable editor on the app store.
iOS 17 includes the right APIs and standards to make this feature possible now; previously it was an Apple-only thing that required hacks to get it to work properly.
I’ve played around with it in Photomator and Lightroom (Desktop) and love the dynamic and realism you can achive with this. I take some RAWs from ten years ago and it’s like a complete new experience. But darkroom is still my favorite app for editinng. Hope it’s gainig some more track soon
Would love to see this! I edit photos and videos in Darkroom, but, in doing so, I lose the HDR effect. This is most notable when I upload reels to Instagram and my videos look dull compared to the HDR videos posted.