xhdr Built by @tolimarchuk

By Toli Marchuk ·

How to make an HDR profile picture for X

You can make the file on your device. Getting X to keep the HDR is the part that needs care.

1. Make your profile picture

Open xhdr and choose your photo. Frame it so your hair, face and shoulders fit inside X’s circular avatar. Use the comparison to check the crop, then adjust Glow, Contrast, Color, Highlights and Background pop. More brightness is not always a better portrait. Keep texture in skin and hair.

The photo is processed in your browser. An SDR original gets a creative HDR grade; that does not recover scene detail the camera never captured. Already-HDR inputs can behave differently, so check the import notice and start gently.

2. Download X-ready PNG

Choose X-ready PNG for your avatar. It is a 400 × 400 indexed PNG with PQ color metadata, up to 256 palette entries and one transparent corner outside the visible circle. Palette quantization trades some color precision for the format that worked in our X upload test.

Full-size HDR PNG is the 16-bit master for other uses. It is not interchangeable with the X-ready file: our earlier truecolor upload was converted by X to an SDR JPEG.

ZIP contains the X-ready PNG byte for byte. Use it when moving the original between devices, then extract it before uploading. Messaging apps may re-encode images sent as photos. Screenshots are not a reliable way to preserve this file’s HDR.

3. Replace your photo on X

  1. For the tested route, open Edit profile on x.com in desktop Chrome.
  2. Click your profile photo and select xhdr-pfp.png.
  3. Leave the crop untouched. Don’t zoom or move it in X. Click Apply, then Save.
  4. Check the saved avatar on a display and browser that actually show HDR.

Desktop Chrome is our verified path, not a claim that desktop is mandatory. Mobile upload paths may process the file differently. An HDR-looking camera-roll image does not prove the saved X avatar retained HDR.

If it looks ordinary or washed out

Try xhdr’s visual HDR check first. A browser capability badge alone cannot confirm active HDR. Brightness headroom, display settings, browser rendering and X’s processing all matter. Recheck which download you used: a saved session may remember Full-size or ZIP instead of X-ready.

If the local original looks right but the saved avatar does not, keep the original and compare the file served by X. Don’t keep increasing exposure to compensate for an upload conversion.

Next: why an HDR profile picture can flicker beside video · the build story.