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Show HN: Make your logo extra bright on HDR screens (soverybright.com)

2 points by telecuda ↗ HN
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!

78 comments

[ 17.9 ms ] story [ 1048 ms ] thread
froh42
Oooh 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
It goes up to 11
telecuda
"It's such a fine line between stupid, and uh" ... "Clever."
madaxe_again
Our 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
Those wars still are onmnipresent in recorded music. (But haven't hit theaters yet, JCBP)
Stitch4223
This is fun and will try to embed it in our project next week.
layer8
Please don’t. Your profile states that you’re an ethical hacker.
dylan604
I 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
Please don’t do this.

You know it will be annoying.

fjlunky
Pretty 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.
layer8
As 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
That’s a good idea, I haven’t used the shortcuts feature. I think this app also abuses the ability to change the app icon to provide subtle animations - but there’s no option to turn it off or customise.
telecuda
I mean, use it responsibly. Of course people won't, it's the internet, but a skilled designer may use it to highlight a word or an accent to draw your eye. It can be tricky in dense interfaces to draw focus to something (little tooltips or big buttons aren't the best answers). This is just another tool in the toolbox.
dawnerd
It’s bad because it dims the entire display. You’re assuming your app is more important than whatever else might be displayed. It can also take a bit for the os to go back to the sdr state. I’ve had a few cases where safari gets stuck in hdr mode and won’t revert u til I force closed.
Grombobulous
Dimming the entire display is not how HDR works especially on OLED phone displays.

If you are not outside in bright sunlight it’s almost certain that your screen is not at its highest brightness in the first place.

All HDR is doing is adding more range between the darkest element and the brightest element.

Basically if you go to this webpage and maximize your screen brightness the HDR effect goes away because you’re already telling your screen to maximize brightness everywhere. Put the screen brightness at 50% and the HDR effect is visible.

dawnerd
Just tested it, everything but the bright dimmed. That’s very annoying. On an iPhone 14 Pro…
tjoff
We haven't had dense interfaces for decades at this point.

Still, even with the best intent what you suggest is still annoying. Okay, you got my attention, i now know what you wanted me to know. Are you going to nag me for all eternity?

telecuda
> We haven't had dense interfaces for decades at this point

GovTech is still full of them. But B2B/B2C, you're right.

The nagging will continue until morale improves.

gerdesj
The <blink> tag's spiritual successor.
telecuda
If you want to opt-out of the second coming of <blink>:

chrome://flags/#force-color-profile -> sRGB

hyperhello
Oh, I bet the author is kicking himself for not including a blinking high-brightness class.
shaky-carrousel
Or better, a blink tag that switches between HDR and non HDR text.
madaxe_again
Ain’t no use unless you wrap that bad boy in a <marquee> too.
gerdesj
Have you no mercy within you ... you ... web developer.
madaxe_again
We found that user engagement was substantially increased by making the home page just rapidly flicker between red and green. Some users stared at it for hours!
danillonunes
Didn't worked so well for the Pokémon show.
HWR_14
Pokemon is the most valuable franchise IP on the planet. Maybe it did work well.
perryizgr8
The 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).
anigbrowl
> 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
If 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
I 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
I witnessed my first HDR mobile game banner ads recently and it’s horrible and should honestly be illegal or something
Grombobulous
I prefer my advertisements to be in black and white but I bought a color TV…

Do you not have any choice of what websites you go to? Is someone picking up your phone and putting it in your face and making you use it?

Retr0id
We 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)
Grombobulous
I’d certainly be happy to see more controls in the browser side to help control this.

I personally don’t consider this anywhere near as problematic as auto-play audio, but I recognize that that’s subjective.

IshKebab
There's a pretty simple solution - gate it on full screen mode.
hombre_fatal
Impressive, wrong on both counts.

(1) HDR display (e.g. you bought a macbook/iphone) doesn’t mean you want random videos in the instagram feed to be full brightness despite setting your screen brightness to minimum in a dark room and (2) reducing white point just darkens stuff across the display, it doesn’t disable the thing people are complaining about.

Grombobulous
I just figured out that low power mode also disables HDR and that’s a one-click toggle.

So to me the user has a clear off switch and the content creator also gets to express their creative freedom to use the feature or not.

If you don’t want to see HDR content you can do something else with your day. Nobody is holding us hostage to use our phones in a dark room or scroll Instagram.

solarkraft
iOS does not have this switch and it’s a pretty common platform. Low power mode also disables other things. You can of course do what you want with your creative freedom, you’ll just have to live with peoples’ reactions for non-consensually showing them something they passionately do not want to see.
Grombobulous
I just disagree with this concept of “non-consent” in this context.

This would be like buying a color TV and getting upset that the commercials don’t remain in black and white, and saying you didn’t consent to that.

But unlike in the color TV analogy we have two methods of disabling (low power mode and reduce white point setting) and we don’t just have 3 TV channels to choose from.

solarkraft
Nope. It’s like buying a TV that suddenly gives content publishers the ability to show blindingly bright pictures regardless of the device’s brightness setting.

To become more metaphorical again, compare it to suddenly playing a loud, screeching sound or displaying porn or gore. The technology allows you to do it, but it’s offensive and you deserve the resulting anger.

That there is no viable setting to turn it off means there is no basis for consent.

Grombobulous
Sudden porn or gore doesn’t seem like a close analogy. That’s way more extreme. This is a mobile phone screen, they really don’t even get that bright. Showing bright elements on your screen is not going to harm you in any way (and if it does due some kind of medical issue, you’d already have reduce white point enabled in your accessibility settings regardless of HDR content).

A better analogy is honestly more like “I don’t like the HN website because the top part is orange and I don’t like that color.”

“Sudden and unexpected” isn’t really how I would describe affirmatively choosing websites to visit. Sure, I guess it’s possible to click on a link with something unexpected, but it’s not like a TV channel where content is being sent to you in real time with no control over what is happening. If you are aware that a website uses HDR and you don’t like it you can stop using it.

This idea of a lack of consent is not really possible to be applicable because you can leave the website and do something else.

This is exactly why the FCC regulates antenna transmissions to disallow things like porn and gore on terrestrial television. Those radio transmissions are something we aren’t consenting to and they literally enter our homes. But if HBO shows you some skin and some blood you can’t complain about that because nobody forced you to view that content.

The analogy here would be “non-consensually hearing heavy metal music” because you decided to go to a heavy metal concert. Nobody twisted your arm and forced you to go there.

I provided two different viable settings to turn it off, low power mode and reduce white point, so this idea that there’s no basis for consent is bunk.

m463
Maybe it would be more acceptable if you added louder 24-bit music to the logo?
opengrass
Waddabout an ImageMagick command or explanation how to export in Inkscape?
uhoh-itsmaciek
In 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
I noticed this as well on Firefox and I say, good, please don't fix.
varun_ch
If you use HDR videos, you can get bright white even on soon browsers that don’t support HDR images
kccqzy
I 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, I can stop Photos.app from rendering them: just turn off "View Full HDR" in the settings.
bigstrat2003
This 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
I'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
Now 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
This 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
Look at the bright side, if it starts to get really overused then maybe the other platforms like LinkedIn will start stripping them too.
dathinab
and browsers might do so too

like something on the line of "if (image small || partially covered || mostly transparent) then don't use HDR"

laptoprabbit
For your uBO (Lite) custom filters

soverybright.com##:style(dynamic-range-limit: standard !important)

linkedin.com##:style(dynamic-range-limit: standard !important)

jtbayly
I hit an advertisement in Gas Buddy that was super bright, clearly using HDR yesterday. Bummer.
mikeshi42
I’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.

nnevatie
> Honest limits

…and it’s slop.