I was a bit surprised despite HDR displays having been released to the consumer market since 2017 that taking screenshots that correctly captured the HDR tone mapping was very limited in terms of software availability; JPEG XR (JXR) is the most readily available HDR format in Windows via Xbox Game Bar and NVIDIA App for screenshots and native viewing in the Windows Photo App. Unfortunately JXR is hardly supported outside Microsoft meaning that the files are not viewable on mainstream photo sharing platforms or browsers.
In addition, I was surprised that it was extremely difficult to convert JXR files that had HDR to any modern next gen image formats such as WebP and AVIF. I wanted my HDR screenshots to be shareable/viewable on the Internet and through hours of searching for GUI apps to convert JXR to AVIF while correctly retaining the HDR tone mapping, I was unable to find any; I settled for this command line tool, but the converted files are only viewed properly in Chromium-based browsers, not any Windows image viewing or editing apps.
Apps For Viewing or Editing JPEG XR
- Windows Photo App (The default)
- IrfanView (Can view JXR with plugin pack, but HDR lost)
- Gimp (Can view JXR with a very old plugin, but HDR is lost)
Apps For Viewing or Editing JPEG XL
- ImageMagick (Command line)
- Xnconvert
- XnView MP
- Gimp
Apps For Viewing or Editing AVIF
- Windows Photo App (Requires this AV1 extension since AVIF is related to AV1)
- Paint.net
- Gimp
- Krita
Photo Sharing Platforms For AVIF
- Google Photos (Doesn’t work for files that were converted from JXL ones with HDR)
- Zonerama
Furthermore, I find it a bit frustrating that standardized HDR image support is in Windows very lacking despite the sheer and growing amount of devices and content featuring HDR.