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Show HN: Make your logo extra bright on HDR screens
Certain logos started standing out to me on LinkedIn as brighter/whiter than everything else around them.
I dug in and found out this is accomplished by adding a gain-map to an existing JPEG, visible only on HDR screens like a newer MacBook Pro. LinkedIn is the only social network I've found that isn't stripping them out, but of course you serve them up on your own site.
I worked with Claude Code to turn it into a little browser-based utility (no registration) and hope you find it useful!
- mikeshi42 1mo agoI’ve always wondered why it happened, assumed it was a rendering bug. fwiw it seems like “reduce white point” overrides any of these effects - which is good.
- ris 1mo agoThis is why we can't have nice things.
- opengrass 1mo agoWaddabout an ImageMagick command or explanation how to export in Inkscape?
- froh42 1mo agoOooh fuuuuuuck. Do we now have the HDR screen version of the 90s/00s CD volume wars? MAX IT OUT?!? BE LOUDER! BE BRIGHTER! WTF.
- leni536 1mo agoIt goes up to 11
- telecuda 1mo ago"It's such a fine line between stupid, and uh" ... "Clever."
- madaxe_again 1mo agoOur new brand awareness strategy involves firing high power lasers directly into the prospect’s eyes, burning the logo into the centre of their fovea. This way we get to skip awareness, interest and desire and get the prospect straight to action.
- the__alchemist 1mo agoThose wars still are onmnipresent in recorded music. (But haven't hit theaters yet, JCBP)
- Stitch4223 1mo agoThis is fun and will try to embed it in our project next week.
- layer8 1mo agoPlease don’t. Your profile states that you’re an ethical hacker.
- dylan604 1mo agoI just noticed something similar today as an ad where the green oval button was so bright that the rest of the white screen felt grayish/dull than white. It could not be unnoticed playing on the notion that the eye is attracted to the brightest thing on the screen
- jonplackett 1mo agoPlease don’t do this. You know it will be annoying.
- masklinn 1mo agoOn the other hand it’s a great signal that whoever uses that is an obnoxious twat and should be plonked.
- fjlunky 1mo agoPretty sure Fifth Star Labs’ Sky Guide iOS icon does this. Not the whole icon, just the stars in it. Hiding the app in a folder helps but I’m looking for a better alternative just because of this.
- pbhjpbhj 1mo agoUninstall the app? Leave a review, tell the developer.
- layer8 1mo agoAs a workaround, you can use a home screen shortcut to start the app. But I agree that app developers shouldn’t do this, or should at least provide an option to turn it off. (Some apps allow customizing the app icon color, so it seems that should be possible.)
- fjlunky 1mo ago
- perryizgr8 1mo agoThe page says it should work on my phone but it doesn't. No difference between the SDR and HDR versions on my phone (S26 Ultra / Chrome).
- Jaxan 1mo agoIt also depends on your screen brightness. In my case, if it’s set to maximum, there is no difference between SDR and HDR.
- mattlondon 1mo agoCame here to say this. It just cranks the brightness up for the pixels. But if you are already at 100% there is not much headroom so all the "before and after" for me were pretty hard to differentiate. There was some minor difference if I studied it closely but I'd probably not notice it during normal use it was so slight. If I went down to say 50% brightness then it was much more pronounced, but who lives their life with their eyes only half open like that?!
- telecuda 1mo agoThat's what I'm finding as I researched it: Android's HDR brightness slider is low - The single most common "HDR does nothing" report on Android 15/16 devices. Samsung also has Super HDR/Extra brightness / Vision booster toggles under Display. Any of them at the conservative setting would have an effect.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- AaronAPU 1mo agoI’m known for having my brightness down to the minimum at all times. The demo page effect is very pronounced. Effectively, it is ignoring my system level preference which makes me hate it a lot.
- telecuda 1mo agoI was only able to test it on my iPhone. Let me see if the S26 needs a tweak (or confirm if it's not support)
- telecuda 1mo agoWorks for text too!
- anigbrowl 1mo ago> Every social network strips these tags except the worst one > Clearly we need more of it I do not in fact want sites trying to get around my display preferences to post their visual presence on screen.
- Grombobulous 1mo agoIf you own an HDR display then your display preference was to be able to display HDR. Settings > Accessibility > Display Text & Size > Reduce White Point
- illiac786 1mo agoI own an HDR screen to display HDR content *when and where I want it*. It has significant value in photography for example. But I certainly don’t want to be looking at hdr ads.
- DauntingPear7 1mo agoI witnessed my first HDR mobile game banner ads recently and it’s horrible and should honestly be illegal or something
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- Grombobulous 1mo agoHow can we expect to give out a technical ability like HDR but then gatekeep it to only “artistically-valid” endeavors? Who is the arbiter of taste? Ultimately, you choose what websites you go to, just like people who create websites choose how to present them.
- Retr0id 1mo agoWe gave websites the ability to auto-play audio, then they showed they couldn't be trusted with this privilege and we took it away again. We can do the same with HDR images, gating them behind a "click to view", or "allow this site to display HDR content" (plausibly someone could do this with a browser extension already)
- sbustelo 1mo ago[dead]
- daigoba66 1mo agoI’ve noticed this trend on LinkedIn just recently. Very noticeable at night, obviously, when my screen is naturally more dim. But these logos are like blinding headlights.
- uhoh-itsmaciek 1mo agoIn Firefox, the page tells me neither my browser nor my display support HDR. In Chrome, it works fine. Latest browsers on a Pixel 8.
- nvr219 1mo agoI noticed this as well on Firefox and I say, good, please don't fix.
- varun_ch 1mo agoIf you use HDR videos, you can get bright white even on soon browsers that don’t support HDR images
- keane 1mo agoFor an authoritative overview of high dynamic range on monitors, I recommend the 137 minute documentary Debunking HDR (Steve Yedlin, 2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44248968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44248968
- kccqzy 1mo agoI hate gain maps in JPEGs. I noticed that because I insisted on capturing JPEGs and not HEIF on my iPhone, and I found that the iPhone would also show overexposed parts (such as the sky) brighter than plain white. That's how I came to know gain maps. Fortunately on iOS, although I cannot disable the inclusion of gain maps in photos I take with Camera.app, I can stop Photos.app from rendering them: just turn off "View Full HDR" in the settings. The Metapho app on iOS seems to be a good app to view the gain map itself. I give it no access to my photos and use the share sheet to view gain maps of specific images.
- DonHopkins 1mo agoNow how can I draw Vantablack text on HD white for the highest possible contrast? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack
- wlesieutre 1mo agoPlease don't
- bigstrat2003 1mo agoThis seems like yet another reason to not run HDR. It is kind of annoying even when used responsibly, but now we'll have people using it irresponsibly too.
- Retr0id 1mo agoI'm on an SDR setup so I wasn't expecting to see the proper effect, but the square labeled "SDR White" is actually `rgb(220, 220, 220)`.
- suprjami 1mo agoNow someone vibe-code a browser extension which detects this and removes it. A uBlock Origin rule for the whole domain of anybody who does this would be fine too.
- portugueasey 1mo agoThis extra-bright-everything-on-HDR-screens crap makes me navigate away from sites every time. Immediate irritation and if I could setup an adblock rule to stop it somehow, I would. The worst cases give me the starting pangs of a headache, and make me adjust my display to account for it. Can we somehow make it a rule that a website has to ask if they can blind me first?
- alpaca9 1mo agoLook at the bright side, if it starts to get really overused then maybe the other platforms like LinkedIn will start stripping them too.
- dathinab 1mo agoand browsers might do so too like something on the line of "if (image small || partially covered || mostly transparent) then don't use HDR"
- laptoprabbit 1mo agoFor your uBO (Lite) custom filters soverybright.com##:style(dynamic-range-limit: standard !important) linkedin.com##:style(dynamic-range-limit: standard !important)
- jtbayly 1mo agoI hit an advertisement in Gas Buddy that was super bright, clearly using HDR yesterday. Bummer.
- nnevatie 1mo ago> Honest limits …and it’s slop.
- pentaphobe 1mo agoThis is why we can't have nice things.
- conartist6 1mo agoThanks, I hate it. This just makes me think that I don't want to use a browser that supports HDR...
- conartist6 1mo agoThat was the point, ...right?
- villgax 1mo agoAssaults the senses takes a new example now.
- solarkraft 1mo agoWhy would you want everyone to hate you?
- Voultapher 1mo agoCan't wait for the HDR max brightness red blinking notification bubble desperately begging for your attention. Please you must look at our advertisement!
- nikhilmishra01 1mo agoI just updated my brand's logo using this. thanks
- baptistemicl 1mo ago[flagged]