What Is HDR? HDR Photos, Video and Screens on a Galaxy

HDR means high dynamic range. Dynamic range is the span between the darkest and brightest parts of a scene that still show detail: think of a room with a bright window (a large dynamic range) versus a grey street on an overcast day (a small one). HDR is anything that captures or shows more of that span than a normal photo or screen can.

That’s why the term gets confusing: it’s used for three different things. HDR photography combines several images to keep detail in both bright and dark areas. HDR TVs and screens show brighter whites, darker blacks and often a wider range of colours. And HDR video records that extra range so an HDR screen can show it. Your Galaxy phone does all three, mostly without you needing to do anything.

What is dynamic range?

Dynamic range refers to the difference between the lightest and darkest portions of a scene. Dynamic range is expressed in stops, and since each stop represents a doubling of brightness, a scene with a dynamic range of 10 stops would have the brightest areas 1,000 times brighter than the darkest areas. Depending on who you ask, the human eye can perceive somewhere between 10 and 14 stops all at once, and considerably more as it adjusts to different situations. Outdoor scenes on hazy days might only have a dynamic range of a few stops, but indoors with a bright window could easily be 12 stops or more.

When a camera makes a single exposure of a scene with too large a dynamic range, it will either record the bright areas (such as the window) as featureless white (known as blown highlights) or the dark areas (the rest of the room) as murky black (known as crushed shadows). This can be avoided using HDR.

HDR photos: how the camera captures more range

The classic technique, known as bracketing, involves shooting several pictures at different exposures, combining them into a single image, and then “tone mapping” it back into a conventional range. Do it badly and you get the greyish, overdone, almost cartoonish images that HDR became known for.

Phones do this automatically and very quickly. A Galaxy merges a burst of frames, keeping highlight detail from the darker ones and shadow detail from the brighter ones, depending on the scene; Samsung describes it as combining images of different brightness to bring out more detail in highlights and shadows. You don’t see the separate frames, just one photo where the sky and the faces are both visible.

How HDR works on a Samsung Galaxy

• Photo mode: HDR is always on. Samsung removed the HDR switch from its flagship camera apps with One UI 4.0, so every Photo mode shot is blended from several frames when the scene needs it.
• Camera Assistant: the free Camera Assistant app has an Auto HDR switch that turns the blending off in Photo mode. On One UI 9 it sits under Photos. Some Galaxy A phones, such as the A36 and A56, have Auto HDR in Camera settings instead.
• Pro mode: Samsung's camera FAQ says HDR processing isn't applied in Pro mode, so you get a single exposure that you control.
• Expert RAW: it merges several frames into one RAW (DNG) file with extra dynamic range, which you then edit yourself.
• Night mode: it also merges many frames, which is a kind of HDR for the dark.

If your Galaxy photos look too flat or over-processed, our Samsung camera HDR guide covers which HDR settings to switch off, model by model.

HDR on screens and in photo files

An HDR screen can show much brighter highlights and richer colour than a standard one. Standard video is mastered for about 100 nits of brightness, while HDR formats allow 1,000 nits and more. Recent Galaxy screens go well past that: Samsung quotes up to 2,600 nits peak for the Galaxy S24 Ultra. On an HDR screen, the sun glinting on water or a lamp in a dark room can look genuinely bright rather than flat white.

Photos need a special file to take advantage of that brighter display. Enter Android 14’s Ultra HDR format: essentially a JPEG with an extra set of instructions, a so-called gain map, on how to show the image brighter on capable displays. On screens and in apps that don’t support it, the photo appears as a normal JPEG. Samsung’s Super HDR, which debuted with the Galaxy S24 in January 2024, uses the Ultra HDR format, as Google confirms. It works in Samsung’s Gallery app and in some other apps, including Instagram, and from One UI 7 you can switch it off for the whole phone in Settings › Advanced features. That doesn’t affect how photos are captured, only how they look on your phone.

HDR video on a Galaxy

Samsung lists HDR10+ support for the Galaxy S24, S25 and S26 series, and says HDR10+ recording isn’t available at 60fps or with the front camera. HDR10+ is similar to HDR10 in that both record extra highlight information and use 10-bit colour (so more colours), but HDR10+ applies that information dynamically, scene by scene, whereas HDR10 applies static metadata to the whole video. Samsung announced HDR10+ in April 2017 with Amazon Prime Video as its first partner, and it’s now a royalty-free standard also backed by Panasonic and 20th Century Fox. Other HDR video formats include Dolby Vision and HLG. To turn HDR recording on or off on the Galaxy S26, and on our S25 Ultra since its One UI 9 update, go to Camera settings › Video format.

It’s worth remembering that HDR videos look best when played back on HDR displays and, on some non-HDR displays or apps that don’t play them back particularly well, can look too bright or washed out. So if you’re unsure about how an HDR video will look, you could consider uploading another version that’s been shot with HDR turned off. Our Instagram video quality guide covers the common problems.

HDR on TVs and streaming

When people talk about HDR TVs or HDR on Netflix, they mean the display side. HDR isn’t a screen resolution like 4K. It’s about contrast: according to Samsung’s guide to HDR TVs, it improves the contrast between very dark and very light colours on screen. That’s why HDR content on Netflix can look so much better on a TV that supports HDR than on one that doesn’t, and why HDR photos and videos may look brighter on your Galaxy’s HDR-capable screen than on an older laptop display.

When HDR helps, and when to turn it down

If skies look washed out or grey and shadows look brighter than you’d like, HDR may be part of the reason, along with Scene detection and noise reduction. Turning off Auto HDR in Camera Assistant, or adding some contrast while editing, brings back depth and punch. Other causes are covered in our natural-looking Samsung photos guide.

Frequently asked questions