Ultra HDR Photography: Android 14 Empowers Third-Party Apps with CameraX API

Starting with Android 14, Google has introduced a new image format called Ultra HDR in the Pixel 8 series smartphones, enabling the devices to display more realistic HDR images and significantly enhance contrast between bright and dark details. Additionally, Android 14 now includes an API resource called Camera 2, allowing third-party camera apps to capture Ultra HDR images. Recently, the Ultra HDR image format has been integrated into another API resource named Camera X, enabling third-party service apps, such as Instagram, to also capture Ultra HDR images using the phone’s camera.

The Ultra HDR image format proposed by Google allows smartphone cameras to produce more natural HDR images, avoiding the traditional method of directly altering the image brightness curve, which often results in an artificial appearance. Instead, it authentically presents the details in both the bright and dark areas of an image.

By making the Ultra HDR image format accessible through API resources, more third-party camera and service apps can utilize this format, indicating Google’s intention to promote this new image format. This initiative aims to facilitate the capture of images on Android phones that more closely reflect true lighting conditions.

Currently, the Ultra HDR image format is based on the JPEG format, with additional HDR information embedded in its metadata. This allows any device capable of reading JPEG files to apply HDR effects based on the metadata, enhancing even standard SDR images with HDR effects to produce a more realistic contrast between light and shadow.