HDR Comes Into Focus
Oct 6, 2025
6 min read
Apple, Hasselblad, and photographer Greg Benz on why ‘High Dynamic Range’ is the next leap in imaging.
Written by Laura Beeston
Illustration by Lívia Prata
Cameras and displays are finally catching up to the human eye. Greg Benz—a renowned photographer, software developer, and HDR expert—has become one of the most trusted voices in explaining how dynamic range is reshaping visual storytelling, from lifelike shadows to dazzling color.
Notably, HDR has been in the news recently: Apple made a significant Safari update to better support HDR photography across its iPhones, iPads, and computers. And the iconic Swedish camera manufacturer Hasselblad launched the X2D II 100C, “the first medium format camera capable of taking true HDR photos.”
[HDR is] the biggest leap forward in display technology since color, in my opinion.”
A technology more widely used than many people realize (social media platforms like Instagram and Threads, for instance, have supported HDR photos since 2024), Benz argues that dynamic range is so special—“such an expressive medium”— because it allows photographers to recreate the moments and the emotions of ‘being there.’
“I feel like I am trying to explain hi-fi stereo to people who are on an AM radio,” he laughs. “There is just no substitute for seeing it for yourself.”
View Greg’s HDR gallery on at gregbenzphotography.com
Benz, a leading champion of display quality, came to photography in 2000. “I’m kind of on my third incarnation of my career,” he explains, “but the throughline in all this is [passion] for making and developing great products.”
After a mechanical engineering undergrad, followed by an MBA parlayed into medical device marketing and sales, Benz transitioned to photography while briefly living in London: “I started taking a gazillion pictures and it became this incredible snowball from there.”
He is possibly most renowned for developing Lumenzia, a premium Photoshop plugin that simplifies and enhances luminosity masking—the ability to more accurately direct Photoshop to make changes by targeting the light and color in the image.
“The solutions at the time were very cumbersome and technical,” he says, “so I ultimately reached the conclusion that I needed to build some software and then use it as an artist. I couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time.”
After launching Lumenzia in 2015, he quickly realized that software on its own was not something people get the most value from, and that developing online courses would allow him the independence and flexibility to “row my own boat.”
“I love to teach and want to make sure that I’m supporting the software I create,” says Benz. He launched a popular YouTube channel, email newsletter, and series of tutorials and speaking gigs that sustain him to this day. “I have a passion for the deep end of Photoshop but most people can’t spend full time on it like I do.
What drives me is [when] I see people getting results,” he adds. “Whether it’s education, software, or both together, that’s what gets me fired up—seeing someone getting excited about their own work.”
In the three years since going full time, Benz says he has witnessed tremendous growth and acceleration of HDR: “It’s moving so fast that, even as someone who spends basically his entire time on this topic, I can’t keep up with it.”
Every movie now has it, videogames have gone that way, too. And photography is the last to come, he says. He speculates that Apple’s Safari integration is “one of the last big missing pieces.”
Get the latest from Nanosys every Monday at 10:00am.
By his rough math, 1.3 billion Apple devices now have support for HDR photos, which Benz says “massively expands the potential audience you can speak to, and awareness. It’s not something that changes impressions overnight but it starts to [generate] interest.”
Same with Hasselblad: “When the world’s most renowned, high-end brand [says] the most important thing about our new flagship camera is HDR, that gets attention . . . it’s starting to wake people up that [HDR] is different and they should probably take a look.”
Benz hopes that the recent developments start a “virtuous cycle” of curiosity and experimentation. “Once a critical mass of people are saying they need this technology, websites will support it. And once websites support it, it will explode.”
The last HDR bottleneck he believes is what is known as transcoding—when websites convert digital media from one format to another and reprocess, compress, or crop images during its upload.
“Most do not properly process the HDR files yet,” Benz explains, “so those tools are the last thing that needs to be updated.”
What HDR could mean for art
Benz also believes that this is an interesting moment for photography, and fine art in general: “Whenever there is a new technology, art changes,” he says, pointing to impressionism as an example: the new technology—putting paint into tubes—unlocked a movement.
“Before that, [artists] were stuck in a studio mixing paint. Then, suddenly, you could travel out into the wilderness and paint a landscape onsite…”
Benz is particularly excited to see what pro photographers eventually do with HDR since “it will unlock the ability to create more realistic images.”
There is no other media like it,” he adds. “Photography and painting aren’t that dissimilar historically and, suddenly, photography has something that’s unique.”
In his experience, though, few people truly appreciate the opportunity here: while today’s TV displays are incredible, monitors for photography sometimes “don’t have the technology.”
In his experience, Benz sees a lot of focus on movies, video, and gaming industries since those are the more established markets, “but people don’t realize how close we are to photography being unlocked. Or that this is going to be the future.”
He still feels pretty good that HDR is about to get some traction.
Until now, photographers have made a “historical tradeoff” compromising their content. “We spend enormous amounts of energy trying to dumb our images down to the capabilities of the screen [and] these displays.”
Fixing a blown-out sky, recovering quality highlights, shadow detail and mid tones, running a wider, more dazzling color gamut; brightening pixels without dulling blacks: “The benefits of HDR are seeing all those things,” Benz says, “and we’ve always just thrown that information away.”
Today, seeing is believing.
To get set up with HDR is easier than ever, and Benz welcomes anyone interested to his growing repository of all things dynamic range at gregbenzphotography.com/hdr/ where they can watch tutorials, choose gear, and find answers to all the main questions.
For him personally, the next era of growth will be to focus on art and be a photographer for a while: “I have these long, multi-year arcs of building software, understanding how it works, and building out these capabilities but I’d love to lean into it,” he says about his immediate HDR future.
“I’ve spent a lot of time on technical tools and teaching, and as those challenges get solved, I’m excited to get back to more travel and photography out in the field… Rarely do I have a week where I just get to be an artist; I’m excited to do that.”
Follow his adventures @gregbenzphotography
Gain clarity on Quantum Dot technology.
Excited about Quantum Dots but unsure to apply them to your tangible product? Our team answers your big questions about this tiny technology.
