Mastering, calibration, and the room.
On calibration.
Each Hall is mastered on a reference display calibrated to the Rec.2100 standard with a PQ transfer function. Calibration is a condition of authorship: the mastered file is a description of light that depends on the display being able to render it.
Where the viewer's display falls short of the reference, the work gracefully degrades — but it is not the same work. This is true of prints under unfamiliar lighting, and it is true here.
Mastering specifications.
Plates are delivered as 16-bit PQ-encoded files, mastered for defined peak luminance and a known viewing environment. The following is the standard mastering profile, applied unless the Hall states otherwise.
- Container
- HEIF · from 16-bit TIFF masters
- Colour primaries
- Rec.2020 / BT.2020
- Transfer
- SMPTE ST 2084 (PQ)
- Peak luminance
- Up to 1,000 nits · per-Hall
- Reference white
- 203 nits, diffuse
- Bit depth
- 16-bit · rendered work in linear ACEScg
- Tone mapping
- Per-Hall, declared in the mastering note
Display recommendations.
TheHall is best read on a calibrated reference monitor or a recent OLED panel capable of rendering the PQ transfer accurately. The following are not requirements but conditions under which the work is most fully visible.
- Panel
- OLED or reference LCD with local dimming
- Peak luminance
- ≥ 1000 nits sustained, ≥ 1500 nits peak
- Black level
- ≤ 0.005 nits
- Colour volume
- ≥ 95% DCI-P3, ≥ 75% Rec.2020
- Calibration
- D65, ΔE ≤ 2, PQ EOTF verified
- Viewing environment
- Dim ambient, ≤ 5 lux, off-axis sources controlled
- System
- HDR enabled at OS level, browser PQ pass-through verified
The PQ workflow.
Photographic plates are mastered to Rec.2100 PQ from the 16-bit TIFFs; rendered plates are composed in linear ACEScg. The mastering pass is non-destructive: highlights are preserved through composition, and only at the final step is the image encoded against the display's transfer function.
For rendered plates, lighting is authored in the same linear workspace and the same display reference. For photographic plates, scene-referred capture is preserved through to the final encode; no SDR intermediate is introduced.
On the room.
A display is not separable from its room. Ambient light, viewing distance, the temperature of nearby surfaces — these are part of the work's condition. The recommended posture is that of a small cinema: dim, attentive, undistracted.
Fallback.
No separate SDR version is served. On a display without HDR headroom, Safari tone-maps the plate itself. It is not the work, but it is a record of it.