Is it normal for an HDR photo to look identical to the original sometimes?

Yes, in one specific case: if you're viewing on a display or app that doesn't render the gain map, you'll see the SDR primary exactly as it was designed to look — a normal, correctly-exposed photo, not a broken or dim one. "Identical to the original" and "the boost failed" are different things; the first is expected fallback behavior, the second means something's actually wrong.

How do I know for certain whether my screen supports HDR?

Don't guess from spec sheets alone — see how to check if your screen actually supports HDR for a real test, and Headroom's Display Tests page for a live pattern you can look at directly.

I used Superwhite mode and nothing changed at all, even after adjusting settings. Is that a bug?

Probably not — Superwhite only touches pixels above a fixed, very high near-white threshold. If your photo doesn't have genuinely blown-out highlights, there may be nothing above that threshold to boost, so intensity and peak brightness have nothing to act on. Encode surfaces this directly: if 0% of an image's pixels qualify, it tells you so instead of leaving you to guess.

Why Does My HDR Photo Look Washed Out or Dim?

You applied an HDR boost, exported the file, and it looks... exactly like the original. Or dim. Or washed out. Before assuming the boost failed, it's worth working through the possibilities in order — because at least two of them aren't actually failures at all, they're the format working exactly as designed.

1. Your display doesn't render HDR

A gain-map HDR file is built specifically to degrade gracefully. If the screen or app you're viewing it on doesn't understand the gain map, you see the SDR primary image exactly as it was exported — a normal-looking photo, not a broken one. This is correct behavior, not a bug: the whole point of the gain-map approach is that non-HDR viewers never see anything wrong, just the boost.

2. Your browser doesn't apply it, even on an HDR-capable screen

Having HDR hardware isn't the same as your current browser tab actually rendering HDR content — browser-level HDR image support is genuinely inconsistent right now. Check Compatibility for a real, live test of what your specific browser does today, rather than assuming based on your device's marketing spec sheet.

3. Nothing in the image qualified for a boost

Every HDR mode has a threshold — Superwhite's is fixed and deliberately conservative, Highlight HDR's is adjustable, Full HDR boosts everything proportionally. If your photo doesn't have pixels bright enough to cross that threshold, there's genuinely nothing for the mode to touch, regardless of how far you push intensity or peak brightness afterward.

This is common enough on ordinary, well-exposed photos that Encode checks for it directly — if 0% of an image's pixels are affected by your current mode and settings, it tells you exactly why instead of silently doing nothing.

4. A screenshot can't show you the real thing

This one trips people up constantly: a screenshot or screen recording captures the SDR-composited output of your screen, not the true HDR signal. Even a genuinely, correctly boosted HDR photo will screenshot as looking identical to its SDR version, because the screenshot pipeline itself can't capture brightness beyond SDR white. If you're judging a result from a screenshot rather than looking at the live display, you're not actually seeing what you think you're seeing.

5. An OS-level HDR toggle is off

On several platforms, HDR rendering for the whole display or a specific app has to be explicitly enabled at the operating-system level — it's not always automatic just because the hardware supports it. If everything else checks out, this is worth confirming directly in your system display settings.

These five causes are genuinely different problems with different fixes. Confusing "my browser doesn't render this" with "this file has a broken gain map" leads to debugging the wrong thing — use Inspect to check what's actually embedded in a file before assuming the export itself is at fault.

The fastest way to isolate the cause

Run the file through Inspect first — it reads the actual bytes and tells you honestly whether a gain map is present and valid, independent of what your current screen can show you. If Inspect confirms the file is genuinely fine, the problem is somewhere in your viewing pipeline (display, browser, or OS setting), not the export itself.

Why does my HDR photo look washed out or dim?