The acronym HDR stands for "High Dynamic Range" and describes a technical format that stores and displays a higher luminance contrast. Today's graphical output devices largely work with a "Low Dynamic Range" with 255 tones per colour channel for RGB (8bit). In a scene with a very high luminance contrast, as may be caused by the sun, for example, some areas can be 100,000 times brighter than shaded areas. If the image is saved as a TIFF or jpg file, the contrast range is compressed such that the sun is only 255 times brighter than the shadow. The sun and a white vase can both be white in an image and thus fail to reproduce the luminance contrast correctly. Because the full range of contrast levels is maintained in HDR format images (32bit), new possibilities arise for a subsequent exposure or for renderings. Where this is common practice already, the development of HDR-compatible monitors will raise this technology to even higher levels. In the medium term, the HDR format will replace the current image formats. The RAW photo format is already a step in this direction.