Credit: Joe Maring / Android Authority
- HDR photos in Google Photos now keep their full dynamic range and HDR metadata when edited with tools like Photo Unblur and Magic Eraser.
- The app now has an “Ultra HDR” tool for brightening images.
- SDR photos can now be enhanced to HDR.
Google is rolling out some improvements to how high dynamic range (HDR) and standard dynamic range (SDR) images are edited in the Photos app. The update will keep HDR photos from getting downgraded to SDR. Google is also updating a couple of its HDR tools.
In the past, if you used editing tools like Photo Unblur or Magic Eraser, a copy of your HDR picture would be created in SDR. As Google explained in 2024, this was because its editing tools were “developed for SDR images, with models expecting SDR images as inputs and producing SDR images as outputs.” However, the tech giant has now made improvements to these tools so your photos maintain their quality.
