HDR
See the full light.
Every photograph here is served in JPEG-XL with an HDR gain map — a single file carrying both the standard image and the extra luminance from the original scene.
Whether you see it depends on three things. And each one can fail on its own.
- Read The browser has to decode JPEG-XL. Where it can't, an SDR JPEG fallback is served automatically — the same photograph, without the extra dynamic range.
- Render The browser also needs an HDR pipeline, meaning it needs to be able to render images with the extra dynamic range.
- Show Lastly, the physical display where the browser is rendering the image has to be able to display that extra brightness.
Where it looks best
All three hold most reliably on Apple hardware with an XDR screen — iPhone 12 and later, and MacBook Pro from 2021 or later. Those were built for this range, and Safari 26 drives them with nothing to configure.
Anywhere else, your mileage may vary. It comes down to the panel, a system setting and the browser. Where this site can tell that something in that chain doesn't work, it says so in the bottom right corner.
Enabling JPEG-XL in Chrome
Chrome can decode JPEG-XL, including gain maps. The support is just behind a flag.
- 1
Open a new tab and go to
chrome://flags/#enable-jxl - 2
Set Enable JXL image format to Enabled.
- 3
Click Relaunch at the bottom of the page.
When Chrome comes back, this site will serve the
JPEG-XL versions. Edge and other Chromium-based
browsers carry the same flag on their own
flags page.
Enabling JPEG-XL in Firefox
Firefox 152 ships JPEG-XL, but leaves it switched off. Turning it on gets you the JPEG-XL file at full quality — though not the HDR: Firefox has no HDR pipeline for still images yet, so the extra luminance stays out of reach either way.
- 1
Open Settings, then Firefox Labs — or go straight to
about:preferences#experimental - 2
Switch on JPEG XL.
- 3
Reload this page.