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by masspro 188 days ago
MacOS does wash out SDR content in HDR mode specifically on non-Apple monitors. An HDR video playing in windowed mode will look fine but all the UI around it has black and white levels very close to grey.

Edit: to be clear, macOS itself (Cocoa elements) is all SDR content and thus washed out.
4 comments
crazygringo 188 days ago
Define "washed out"?

The white and black levels of the UX are supposed to stay in SDR. That's a feature not a bug.

If you mean the interface isn't bright enough, that's intended behavior.

If the black point is somehow raised, then that's bizarre and definitely unintended behavior. And I honestly can't even imagine what could be causing that to happen. It does seem like that it would have to be a serious macOS bug.

You should post a photo of your monitor, comparing a black #000 image in Preview with a pitch-black frame from a video. People edit HDR video on Macs, and I've never heard of this happening before.

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Starmina 188 days ago
That's intended behavior for monitor limited in peak brightness
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nodesocket 188 days ago
I don't think so. Windows 11 has a HDR calibration utility that allows you to adjust brightness and HDR and it maintains blacks being perfectly black (especially with my OLED). When I enable HDR on macOS whatever settings I try, including adjusting brightness and contrast on the monitor the blacks look completely washed out and grey. HDR DOES seem to work correctly on macOS but only if you use Mac displays.
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masspro 188 days ago
That’s the statement I found last time I went down this rabbit hole, that they don’t have physical brightness info for third-party displays so it just can’t be done any better. But I don’t understand how this can lead to making the black point terrible. Black should be the one color every emissive colorspace agrees on.
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kmeisthax 188 days ago
Actually, intended behavior in general. Even on their own displays the UI looks grey when HDR is playing.

Which, personally, I find to be extremely ugly and gross and I do not understand why they thought this was a good idea.

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robflynn 188 days ago
Oh, that explains why it looked so odd when I enabled HDR on my Studio.
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adastra22 188 days ago
Huh, so that’s why HDR looks like shit on my Mac Studio.
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