ISO 22028-5 finally gives HDR stills a shared language
A new standard published in May defines how to encode and store HDR photographs with colour you can trust across devices.
ISO 22028-5 landed in May 2026 as the first international standard built entirely around high dynamic range and wide colour gamut still images. Until now, the industry operated on fragments: Rec.2100 handles HDR video, Rec.709 governs SDR stills, and moving between them meant custom LUTs, manual tone mapping, and everyone inventing their own metadata rules. This standard changes that for stills.
What matters is that it works with a shared colour space (Rec.2020), defines minimum bit depth (10-bit, 12-bit for masters), and requires embedded metadata that describes colour intent and how the image should render. For studios building product animation or graphics for HDR displays, this is the moment when one set of rules replaces the ad-hoc conversions that have silently cost everyone money in metadata hand-offs and re-grading.
Single pipeline instead of parallel tracks
The standard enables what you actually want: one HDR master that serves both SDR devices and HDR displays. No parallel renders. No doubled QA work. The metadata approach means tone mapping adjustments can happen downstream without re-grading the whole grade, which matters when a campaign ships across cinema DCP, broadcast, and Instagram from a single source.
Vision For Xperiences works on interactive installations where real-time HDR output to public displays is becoming the norm, not the exception. A standard reference for colour encoding means metadata travels with the work instead of getting burned into LUTs and then lost the moment the client asks for a revision. That friction , rebuilding colour instructions on every handoff , is what makes HDR delivery expensive right now.
What a standard actually does and does not do
ISO 22028-5 covers encoding and storage, not the entire problem. Cameras embed their own colour science. Displays have their own gamut and peak brightness ceiling. A phone screen and a cinema projector will always render differently. The standard is a lingua franca, not a guarantee.
Here is the catch: the standard assumes 10-bit depth everywhere in the pipeline. If you are still running 8-bit workflows, the metadata becomes less useful. This has quietly become a dividing line. Studios that upgraded to 10-bit pipelines a few years ago will adopt this without friction. Others will be constrained by tool versions and cannot deliver to spec.
For measurement-dependent work , architectural visualization, product photography, scientific imaging , the standard provides genuine framework. For stylized, look-driven work, it gives you a foundation to build the grade on top of. That distinction matters when you quote HDR work, because peak brightness in cinema is a creative tool, in broadcast it is a technical requirement.
Adoption is still the real test
ISO standards do not enforce adoption. They enable it. What happens next depends on whether software vendors ship ISO 22028-5 export by default, whether camera manufacturers embed the metadata on capture, and whether streaming platforms start requesting it as a delivery spec.
We are at the moment where the standard exists but has not yet reshaped how studios buy tools or quote deliverables. Rec.2100 took years to move from broadcast into production software. The still-image standard is narrower , it aims at photography, graphics, and visual effects, not all of video , so adoption may be faster. Vision For Xperiences is watching this one closely. If vendors implement it and clients start asking for it in briefs, it changes how we scope HDR delivery across our services. Until then, the value is real but the pathway is still undefined.
Quick answers
Do I need to change my workflow if I'm delivering SDR only?
Not immediately. The standard applies to HDR/WCG content. If your deliverables are Rec.709 SDR, the standard doesn't mandate changes. However, if your client later asks for HDR delivery from existing masters, ISO 22028-5 metadata embeds the tone-mapping intent, so you won't need to re-grade.
What colour space does the standard use?
Rec.2020, the same wide-gamut colour space used in Rec.2100 video. Transfer functions are either PQ (for mastering) or HLG (for broadcast). Metadata describes which and lets downstream tools apply the right conversions.
Does this replace DaVinci Resolve's HDR10+ workflow?
No. Resolve's HDR10+ is a video delivery format. ISO 22028-5 is a still-image encoding standard. They're complementary. A compositer exports stills as ISO 22028-5, and those can be imported into a Resolve timeline and graded as HDR video.
Referenced
Image: “HDR” by PAULO HUMBERTO, via source. Licensed CC BY-SA 2.0.
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