hdr-canvas

This module contains a collection of functions and classes to work with the HDR support for HTML canvas elements in chromium based (like Chrome, Edge, Opera and Brave) browsers.

All changes and a bit of context are part of the release notes for 0.1.0.

This should only be considered as proof of concept or alpha code, don't use it in production environments!

Even if the display of HDR images works, the HDR support for the canvas element needs the browser flag enable-experimental-web-platform-features to be enabled. For example, open chrome://flags#enable-experimental-web-platform-features in Chrome to activate it.

Especially operations on the ImageData arrays are not optimized, e.g. quite slow.

Feature detection

Import the required function(s):

import { checkHDR, checkHDRCanvas } from "hdr-canvas";

Example checkHDRCanvas()

The functions return true if HDR is supported, example:

const canvas = document.getElementById("canvas");
if (checkHDRCanvas()) {
  canvas.configureHighDynamicRange({ mode: "extended" });
} else {
  console.debug("hdr not supported");
  return;
}

This can be useful to add a warning (using the fillText() method) to the canvas if it doesn't support HDR content.

Example checkHDRCanvas()

const hdrCanvasStatus = document.getElementById("hdr-check-status")! as HTMLDivElement;
if (checkHDRCanvas()) {
  hdrCanvasStatus.innerText = "HDR Canvas are supported";
  hdrCanvasStatus.style.color = "green";
} else {
  hdrCanvasStatus.innerText = "HDR Canvas are not supported";
  hdrCanvasStatus.style.color = "red";
}

Example checkHDRVideo()

const hdrCanvasStatus = document.getElementById("hdr-check-status")! as HTMLDivElement;
if (checkHDRVideo()) {
  hdrCanvasStatus.innerText = "HDR Video is supported";
  hdrCanvasStatus.style.color = "green";
} else {
  hdrCanvasStatus.innerText = "HDR Video is not supported";
  hdrCanvasStatus.style.color = "red";
}

Canvas

Note: Currently the Chrome flag enable-experimental-web-platform-features needs to be enabled to have HDR support for the canvas element. You need to tell your visitors about that.

The HDR canvas support is activated by initializing a canvas context using the following snippet:

const colorSpace = "rec2100-hlg";
canvas.configureHighDynamicRange({ mode: "extended" });
const ctx = canvas.getContext("2d", {
  colorSpace: colorSpace,
  colorType: "float16"
  // Use this for Chrome < 133
  //pixelFormat: "float16"
});

Canvas setup

The snippet above is also available as function:

import { initHDRCanvas } from "hdr-canvas";

Implicit Canvas setup

It's now also possible to use a HDR enabled Canvas by wrapping the browser internal getContext() function, by calling defaultGetContextHDR().

import { defaultGetContextHDR, checkHDR, checkHDRCanvas } from "hdr-canvas";

if (checkHDR() && checkHDRCanvas()) {
  defaultGetContextHDR();
  console.log("Enabled HDR Canvas");
}

Note: This example wraps the call to defaultGetContextHDR() into a check (checkHDR() && checkHDRCanvas()), because calling the function in a browser that isn't HDR-capable will break every subsequent call to getContext().

Resetting default HDR canvas

Use the method resetGetContext() to undo the changes by defaultGetContextHDR().

import { resetGetContext } from "hdr-canvas";

resetGetContext();

Importing Float16Image

Afterwards one can use ImageData with a float16 array, first the Float16Image needs to be imported:

import { Float16Image } from "hdr-canvas";

Example: Loading an image

This example assumes image to be a HTMLImageElement including an existing image.

const offscreen = new OffscreenCanvas(image.width, image.height);
const loadCtx = offscreen.getContext("2d");
loadCtx.drawImage(image, 0, 0);
const imData = loadCtx.getImageData(0, 0, image.width, image.height);
console.log(imData);

var hdrCanvas = document.createElement("canvas");
hdrCanvas.width = image.width;
hdrCanvas.height = image.height;

const rec210hglImage = Float16Image.fromImageData(imData);

const ctx = initHDRCanvas(hdrCanvas);
ctx.putImageData(rec210hglImage.getImageData(), 0, 0);

Three.js WebGPU

Note: Make sure to have Three.js added as a dependency.

This is just a drop-in-replacement for the regular WebGPURenderer of Three.js.

import HDRWebGPURenderer from "hdr-canvas/three/HDRWebGPURenderer.js";

Note: Starting Three.js 167 the WebGPU renderer is the new default renderer. This has several consequences for the required imports. Use this import instead of the official one and if your using Vite don't provide an import map of resolver alias configuration.

import * as THREE from "three/src/Three.js";

Use it as you'll do with a WebGPURenderer.

renderer = new HDRWebGPURenderer({ canvas: canvas, antialias: true });

Updating textures

Starting from Three.js version 167 you need to fix imported UHDR Textures, otherwise they will appear black:

model = gltf.scene;
model.traverse((element) => {
  if (element?.material?.type != undefined) {
    let targetMaterial = new THREE.MeshBasicMaterial();
    THREE.MeshBasicMaterial.prototype.copy.call(targetMaterial, element.material);
    element.material = targetMaterial;
  }
});
scene.add(model);

Compatibility

This currently doesn't work with Firefox, due to missing support for HDR and only partial WebGPU support. One can import WebGPU and use also a HDR check to guard from errors:

import WebGPU from "hdr-canvas/three/WebGPU.js";

Only use the provided renderer if the browser supports WebGPU and HDR:

if (WebGPU.isAvailable() && checkHDRCanvas()) {
  renderer = new HDRWebGPURenderer({ canvas: canvas, antialias: true });
} else {
  renderer = new THREE.WebGLRenderer({ canvas: canvas, antialias: true });
}

Examples

Bundled examples

Some of the examples above are also part of this repository.

npm i
npm run dev

Open This URL in your browser: http://localhost:5173/, you can also access them directly from GitHub.

Old examples on my blog:

All examples requires a Chromium based browser (like Chrome, Edge, Opera and Brave) and a HDR-enable monitor.

• Contrast enhancement for UV images using HDR
• HDR IIIF
• Ultraviolet Photogrammetry

TODO

The following things might be improved:

• [x] Change pixelFormat in HTMLCanvasElement.getContext("2d") to colorType (["unorm8", "float16"]) while keeping some downward compatibility - #151
• [ ] Try to detect change of screen for HDR detection - #107
• [ ] Remove Uint16Image
• [ ] Improve speed
  • [ ] Provide WebWorker
• [ ] Documentation
  • [ ] Link to browser HDR support
  • [x] Document Uint16Image
• [ ] Tests and examples
  • [x] Provide examples from blog
  • [x] Provide simple sanity tests

References

Browser HDR

• dynamic-range Media Query
• HDR Capability Detection
• HDR HTMLCanvasElement

Older

• Adding support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) imagery to HTML Canvas: a baseline proposal
• HDR Canvas Example

Sources

This section contains different definitions, which can be helpful to impkement HDR related things

• CanvasRenderingContext2DSettings in Chromium
• ImageData in Chromium
• TypeScript DOM reference

Workflow on related changes to web APIs

This is considered to be experimental, currently we're waiting for TypeSript to pick up the changes made to the web APIs. See microsoft/TypeScript-DOM-lib-generator#2107

Along the spec

1. Change to the WhatsWG spec - Issue Tracker
2. Change apporoved
3. MDN picks up spec change - Create an issue
4. Changes are popagated to the TypeScript generated DOM library

By custom TypeScript types

1. Extend src/types, try to extend existing interfaces

Generating updated TypeScript types

Starting with one of the next monor versions (maybe 0.2.0) the prefered way is to update the browser / DOM types instead of adding our own HDR types. The existing types will continue to exist for now. This change reflects improvements in browser support and should make transitioning to standard base types later on.

The basic workflow is as follows:

• Update the definitions
• Regenerate the types (needs the MDN submodule to be checked out)

To make this repaetable add patches to this repository:

Edit the types, for example to change existing definitions, see Update the definitions

cd node_modules/@typescript/dom-lib-generator/
vi inputfiles/overridingTypes.jsonc

To generate a patch pmake sure, that the Git submmodule is remove, otherwise patch-package will fail.

node scripts/git-submodules.js -c -d node_modules/@typescript/dom-lib-generator/
npx patch-package @typescript/dom-lib-generator