HDR (or high dynamic range) technology is designed to enhance the visual quality of your photos by capturing more detail in both bright and dark areas and expanding the color range. With HDR, your photos will feature exceptional contrast, brighter whites, and more vibrant colors, making them appear more vivid and lively, and bringing them closer to real life. In comparison, Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) photos may seem dull and flat because they lack the depth and range that HDR provides.
To work with HDR content in Photomator, you’ll need a compatible HDR display, and iOS 17 or iPadOS 17 on an iPhone or iPad, or macOS 14 Sonoma on Mac. Note that on non-HDR displays or displays not manufactured by Apple, the results may not be as striking, or HDR editing may not be available at all. See the list of supported displays.
In Photomator, you can open photos in a number of different file formats, and once you're done editing, export them keeping all the HDR data. See the list of supported formats.
You can easily switch between HDR and SDR photo views at any point during editing by clicking the HDR button in the Photomator toolbar, but you can also choose how Photomator loads image content by default — as HDR or SDR — in Photomator settings:
If your display has limited HDR support, you will see a note indicating this below the "Load HDR content" setting, or a notification will show up if your display is not supported.
Note: Some third-party displays may have a separate setting for turning the HDR mode on and off. If HDR mode is turned off, the Photomator may not recognize your display as compatible with HDR content. To turn on HDR mode, go to System Settings > Displays, and select your display there.