What is HDR Effect?

HDR Effect gives any photo the high dynamic range look. It lifts shadows, tames highlights, and sharpens local contrast so you get more detail across the whole image. Processing happens privately on your device.

Nine sliders shape the look. Intensity sets overall strength, Shadows recovers dark areas, Highlights compresses blown-out skies and windows, Local Contrast adds the crisp micro-detail HDR is known for, Saturation pushes the colour mood from greyscale up to twice as vivid, Sharpness crisps edges with an unsharp mask, Vignette darkens the corners to draw the eye inward, Brightness lifts or drops the whole image, and Temperature warms or cools the white balance. Four named presets (Landscape, Portrait, Dramatic, Subtle) dial in a full look in one click. The split-view shows before and after side by side, and you can export the result as PNG, or as JPEG or WebP at the quality you pick, all at the source resolution, or copy it straight to your clipboard.

How to use

1. Step 1 — Upload a photo or drag and drop an image file onto the canvas.
2. Step 2 — Pick a style preset for a one-click look, or fine-tune the intensity, shadow, highlight, local contrast, saturation, sharpness, vignette, brightness, and temperature sliders by hand.
3. Step 3 — Compare the before/after with the split view, then download the processed image as PNG, JPEG, or WebP.

When to use

• Rescuing photos shot at noon when the sky burns out and the shadows go black.
• Real-estate listings where windows are too bright and interior corners too dark.
• Landscape shots that look flat straight out of the camera and need depth.

Result

A real estate photographer uploads a living room photo where the windows are blown out. She increases shadow recovery to 70% and sets highlight compression to 60%, revealing details in both the dark corners and bright windows.

FAQ

Is this real HDR or just a fake tone-mapping filter?

It's tone-mapping on a single image. True HDR needs multiple exposures merged together. The math here approximates the look on one JPEG or PNG by remapping the existing tonal range, useful but unable to invent detail that was never recorded.

Why does my image look noisy after I push the Shadows slider?

Lifting shadows amplifies whatever sensor noise sat in the dark areas of the original. Phone photos at high ISO show this fastest. Keep Shadows below 60% on noisy sources, or denoise the photo first.

What is the difference between Intensity and Local Contrast?

Intensity scales the global tonal remap, how aggressively shadows and highlights move. Local Contrast adds edge sharpening and micro-detail using a small-radius unsharp mask. You can have low Intensity with high Local Contrast for a subtle but punchy result.

Will it work on RAW files from my camera?

No, the tool reads PNG, JPEG, WebP, and GIF only. Export your RAW from Lightroom or Darktable to JPEG first, then bring it here for the HDR pass. Working from RAW would need a desktop app like Photomatix.

Does it keep the original photo's EXIF metadata?

The processing canvas strips EXIF when re-encoding. If you need GPS, date, or camera info preserved, use a separate EXIF transfer tool after downloading the processed image.

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