Hasselblad HDR Demystified, Part 5 of 5: Print, Archival, and Practical Recommendations

This is the final part of a five-part series exploring Hasselblad's HDR implementation for RAW shooters. Part 1 covered what HNCS HDR is, Part 2 explored output formats and the Trilemma, Part 3 walked through the complete Phocus 4.x workflow, and Part 4 covered display requirements and in-camera limitations. If you're joining at the end, you might want to start at the beginning - but this post also stands alone as a practical reference.

By now you hopefully have a better understanding of what HNCS HDR is, what your output format options are, the trade-offs involved, how to process and export HDR images from Phocus 4.x, and where people can actually see your HDR work. What remains are the physical realities of print, the archival considerations that HDR introduces, and concrete recommendations for when HDR export makes sense versus when SDR is the better choice.

This final installment brings it all together with practical guidance you can apply immediately.

A note on support: This post represents my personal exploration and does not constitute official technical support or guidance from Hasselblad. If you need assistance with your Hasselblad camera, Phocus, or any other Hasselblad product, please contact Hasselblad directly: customersupport@hasselblad.com for global support, support.us@hasselblad.com for the Americas, or visit hasselblad.com/support for your regional contact options.

HDR and Print: Understanding the Physical Limitations

If your primary output is print - fine art, commercial work, or even personal albums - you might reasonably wonder whether any of this HDR discussion matters to you. The short answer: it doesn't, at least not for the prints themselves. But understanding why can help you make better workflow decisions.

Why HDR Cannot Be Printed

The limitation isn't technical - it's physics. Paper is a reflective medium; it can only show you light that bounces off its surface from the environment. A display, by contrast, emits its own light and can make individual pixels genuinely brighter than their surroundings. This fundamental difference means paper has a hard ceiling on the contrast ratios it can achieve.

The numbers are stark. A high-quality glossy inkjet paper maxes out at roughly 300:1 contrast ratio - the brightest white it can show is about 300 times brighter than its deepest black. Matte paper is worse, typically 150:1 or below.¹ For comparison, a standard SDR monitor already exceeds paper's dynamic range. HDR displays, which can push individual pixels to 1000+ nits while keeping blacks near zero, operate in an entirely different realm - contrast ratios in the hundreds of thousands to one.

This isn't a gap that technology will eventually bridge. You cannot illuminate paper from within. There's no printer firmware update coming that will make your inkjet output HDR. As one Adobe forum commenter put it bluntly: "By definition you cannot print HDR. Ink on paper does not have that extended dynamic range."¹

What Happens When You Print an Ultra HDR JPEG

The good news is that Ultra HDR JPEGs are designed to degrade gracefully. When you send one to a printer - whether a professional lab or your own inkjet - the printer driver or RIP software simply uses the embedded SDR base image. The gain map, which contains all the HDR-specific instructions about how much to boost each pixel on capable displays, is ignored entirely.

The result is a perfectly normal print. You don't get the highlight boost that makes HDR images pop on screens, but you also don't get any artifacts or errors. The SDR base image was designed to look good on its own - it's not a degraded or compromised version of the HDR. It's simply the image as it would appear on any standard display or in print.

Implications for Fine Art and Commercial Print Work

For photographers whose primary deliverables are prints, the workflow implications are straightforward: continue preparing print-destined work with SDR output in mind. TIFF remains the appropriate master format for print workflows - it's lossless, widely supported by labs and RIP software, and can carry full 16-bit color depth in whatever working color space you prefer.

HDR processing in Phocus offers no technical advantage for printed output. The extended luminance range that makes HDR compelling on screens simply can't be reproduced on paper. If anything, enabling HDR mode for print work adds unnecessary complexity - you'd need to ensure your SDR version looks correct, and the HDR data would be ignored anyway.

Two exceptions worth mentioning for emissive "print" alternatives: backlit displays, LED light boxes, and similar emissive media can display HDR content because they generate their own light - but these aren't prints in any traditional sense. They're displays masquerading as wall art. If you're producing work for backlit display, you're effectively back in the digital display realm, and HDR becomes relevant again.

Conversely, e-ink digital picture frames - increasingly popular for home display - sit firmly in SDR territory despite being electronic. E-ink is a reflective technology like paper; it shows you ambient light bouncing off its surface, not light emitted from within. Current color e-ink panels have even more limited dynamic range and color gamut than quality inkjet prints.² If anything, they're less capable of representing your images' full tonal range than a traditional print would be. Don't let the "digital" label fool you into thinking HDR applies here.

Archival Considerations for HDR Workflows

HDR introduces a new dimension to the archival question that photographers have grappled with since the transition to digital. The traditional answer - keep your RAW files and a high-quality TIFF of your edited interpretation - covered all bases. But HDR adds a wrinkle: the luminance relationships that make HDR images compelling exist only in HDR-specific formats. If you want the option to display an image in HDR years from now, you need to think about this now.

The practical reality is more complex than "keep RAW plus TIFF plus HDR JPEG." Your 3FR RAW file remains the master source - it contains all sensor data, all adjustments remain non-destructive in sidecar files, and future software may extract even more from these files than current tools can. This is your insurance policy, and it should never be deleted.

Your 16-bit TIFF serves as the "print master" and edit-ready interpretation. Lossless compression means no quality degradation over time or through repeated saves, and the 16-bit depth preserves enough tonal information for future adjustments without banding. However, TIFF archiving in an HDR workflow is more nuanced than it first appears - and this is where the Trilemma discussed in Part 2 creates real archival complexity.

When you export a TIFF from Phocus with the HDR checkbox enabled, the resulting file is not the same as an SDR export. Phocus processes the image through its HDR pipeline, which seems to make different tonal placement decisions than the standard SDR pipeline. The algorithm "knows" it has extended luminance headroom to work with, which affects highlight recovery and tonal transitions throughout the image. Even though TIFFs don't support gain maps (and therefore won't trigger HDR display modes), HDR-processed TIFFs often look noticeably better than their SDR equivalents — highlights retain more detail and tonal transitions appear smoother.

The catch: HDR-processed TIFFs are exported with HDR color profiles that some software cannot interpret correctly. Capture One, Adobe Bridge, and other applications without HDR color management will display these files with severely blown-out highlights - they interpret pixel values meant for 400+ nits as if they were already at maximum SDR brightness. The files aren't corrupted; macOS Finder, Preview, and Photos will display them correctly because they have native HDR color management. But if your workflow involves editing in Capture One or Photoshop, an HDR-processed TIFF may be unusable.

This creates a genuine archival dilemma. For comprehensive preservation with maximum future flexibility, you may actually need two TIFFs: an HDR-processed version (preserving the superior highlight handling for Phocus re-editing or macOS viewing) and an SDR-processed version (ensuring compatibility with external editors). A clear naming convention becomes essential - something like _HDR and _SDR suffixes - to distinguish between versions that will look dramatically different in certain applications.

The Ultra HDR JPEG fills the new gap. This is a delivery format, not an archival editing format - its lossy compression means you would not want to use it as a starting point for future edits. However, it is the only way to preserve your HDR rendering intent for display purposes. As HDR displays become increasingly common in homes, galleries, and commercial spaces, having this version archived means your work can take advantage of that capability without requiring you to re-process years-old files.

The following table summarizes how these formats serve different archival purposes. Note that the full four-tier approach may be overkill for most images - many photographers will choose either the HDR-processed or SDR-processed TIFF based on their primary workflow, not both:

The storage cost of comprehensive archiving is modest but not trivial. Ultra HDR JPEGs are approximately 30% larger than standard JPEGs due to the embedded gain map, but they remain far smaller than TIFFs or RAW files.³ The bigger question is whether you need both TIFF variants. If your workflow stays entirely within Phocus and macOS-native applications, the SDR TIFF may be unnecessary. If you rely on Capture One or Photoshop, the HDR-processed TIFF may cause more problems than it solves. For work you consider truly important, archiving both provides maximum future flexibility - but for most images, choosing one based on your primary workflow is a reasonable compromise.

Practical Recommendations

With the technical foundations covered, here's how all of this translates into practical workflow decisions. The right approach depends on how you shoot and where your images ultimately end up.

Recommended Processing Order for HDR Export

If you're planning to export as Ultra HDR JPEG, the order in which you process matters more than you might expect. Ultra HDR JPEGs contain both an HDR render (via the gain map) and an SDR base layer for backward compatibility. Phocus maintains separate settings for each - that's what the ghost markers on the Recovery slider are for. But this means if you only ever work with the HDR checkbox enabled, your SDR fallback may be essentially the unprocessed default.

This matters because a substantial portion of your audience will see the SDR version, or a blend weighted toward SDR. HDR headroom on mobile devices is often only 1.5–3 stops depending on conditions, and many platforms still strip gain map metadata entirely.

Based on how Phocus's UI appears to be designed - though Hasselblad doesn't explicitly document this - the recommended workflow is:

1. Process your image with HDR unchecked first. Get exposure, white balance, recovery, and toning looking right for SDR output.
2. Then enable HDR and fine-tune the HDR-specific controls (Limit, HDR recovery position, histogram levels).
3. Toggle HDR on and off to verify both versions look good before export.

This ensures your Ultra HDR JPEG has a strong SDR foundation, not just a compelling HDR layer. The few extra minutes spent on SDR optimization pay off in consistent quality across the full range of viewing conditions your image will encounter.

For RAW-only shooters, the message is reassuring: continue shooting exactly as you have been. Your workflow at capture time doesn't change at all. The HDR capabilities live entirely in post-processing, meaning you can experiment with HDR export in Phocus 4.x for portfolio pieces or social sharing without committing to anything different in the field. The key consideration is your target display - if you know an image will primarily be viewed on HDR-capable devices (increasingly common for social media and portfolio review), exporting as Ultra HDR JPEG gives viewers on those devices a genuinely better experience while still looking correct on SDR displays.

For dual-format shooters - those capturing RAW alongside JPG or HEIF - the X2D II's in-camera HDR capabilities offer immediate benefits. Ultra HDR JPEG gives you a sharing-ready HDR file straight from the camera, useful for quick turnaround work or instant social posting. HDR HEIF provides better quality retention if you're staying within a Phocus-only workflow. But remember that RAW still provides maximum flexibility: the in-camera HDR output is a rendered interpretation, while the RAW file preserves all your options for later processing.

When considering whether to use HDR export, think about image content and destination together. HDR export makes the most sense for images with challenging highlight detail - chrome reflections, water catching sunlight, dramatic sky and cloud formations, candle flames, or any scene where luminance range exceeded what SDR can represent. It's also worth considering for content destined for HDR-capable social platforms or portfolio work that clients will likely view on modern displays.

Skip HDR export when the output is destined for print (which remains SDR regardless of source file), for web galleries on platforms known to strip gain map metadata, or if your workflow involves Windows-based processing where HDR viewing and editing support remains limited. In these cases, the extra file size from the embedded gain map provides no benefit, and standard SDR export is the appropriate choice.

Conclusion

The most important takeaway from all of this is that HDR in the X2D II ecosystem is fundamentally about output options, not capture restrictions. Nothing about HDR requires you to change how you shoot. Your RAW files contain the same sensor data they always have - what's new is the ability to deliver that data in formats that modern displays can actually reproduce.

For RAW shooters specifically, this represents pure capability gain without workflow sacrifice. You can continue shooting exactly as you have been, ignore HDR entirely if it doesn't interest you, and lose nothing. But when you want to share an image where highlight detail matters - where you want chrome to genuinely gleam or clouds to have that luminous quality they had in reality - you now have a path to deliver that experience to viewers with HDR displays.

The technology is maturing rapidly. ISO 21496-1 standardization means this isn't a proprietary format that might become orphaned - it's an international standard with backing from major players including Apple, Google, and Adobe. Display support is expanding across platforms, and the tooling in Phocus 4.x is surprisingly capable once you understand what the interface elements are actually doing.

Even if you're skeptical of HDR - and healthy skepticism is warranted given how poorly "HDR" has been implemented in other contexts - it's worth experimenting with a few images. Find something with challenging highlights, process it in Phocus 4.x with HDR enabled, export as Ultra HDR JPEG, and view it on an HDR-capable display. The difference might surprise you. And if it doesn't move you, you've lost nothing but a few minutes - your RAW files and your workflow remain exactly as they were.

Series Navigation

This post is part of a five-part series on Hasselblad's HDR implementation:

• Part 1: What Is HNCS HDR and Why Should RAW Shooters Care?
• Part 2: Output Formats and the Trilemma Every Shooter Faces
• Part 3: The Complete Phocus 4.x Workflow
• Part 4: Displays, In-Camera Limitations, and Platform Support
• Part 5: Print, Archival, and Practical Recommendations (you are here)

References

1. Adobe Community Forums, "HDR in Photoshop and printing it," October 2023. "By definition you cannot print HDR. Ink on paper does not have that extended dynamic range. A good inkjet print on high grade glossy paper has a contrast range of at most 300:1, but most prints on matte paper will be down in the 150:1 range or even below." https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/hdr-in-photoshop-and-printing-it/m-p/14179344
2. Color e-ink displays currently achieve contrast ratios of 10:1 to 30:1 at best (E Ink Gallery Plus reaches 14:1; Spectra 6 targets 30:1), compared to 150-300:1 for quality inkjet prints on matte or glossy paper. The technology has also been described as having "limited color gamut" with colors that "appear muted and lack vibrancy." See E Ink Corporation product specifications and "The Advantages and Disadvantages of Color E-Ink Screens," GooDisplay. https://www.good-display.com/news/166.html
3. Zoner Studio, "Printing and Sharing HDR Photos Online," August 2025. "One minor disadvantage of HDR JPEGs is that they are about 30% larger than the same images without a gain map." https://learn.zoner.com/printing-and-sharing-hdr-photos-online/