SoVeryBright converts logos into HDR JPEGs while CSS catches up

Why it matters

SoVeryBright turns HDR gain maps into a free workflow for logos, social assets and headlines while retaining an SDR fallback. Its usefulness still depends on compatible displays, browsers and image pipelines that preserve the metadata.

Chris Bennett built SoVeryBright around a narrow promise: upload ordinary artwork, choose the colors that should glow, and download a JPEG capable of exceeding normal white on a supported HDR screen.

SoVeryBright is a focused piece of product work from a builder whose public profile associates him with a stealth AI startup, technology work around emergency management, and Motorola Solutions innovation programs. Bennett's LinkedIn profile also references Harvard Graduate School of Education. The available sources do not establish his degree, graduation dates, specific job titles or employment dates.

The SoVeryBright homepage credits Bennett as its maker. It does not establish when the product first went live.

A new image standard, wrapped in an upload box

For web exports, SoVeryBright says it adds metadata defined by ISO 21496-1:2025, a gain-map standard published in July 2025. A gain map places a second, small grayscale representation inside or alongside an ordinary image. Software that understands the metadata uses it to calculate how much brighter each pixel can become. Software that does not understand it displays the base image.

That fallback is central to Bennett's pitch. SoVeryBright accepts PNG, JPEG, or WebP artwork and outputs a conventional-looking JPEG whose selected whites or brand colors can use the extra headroom of an HDR display. A logo does not become an unreadable experiment for everyone else. It simply loses the glow.

The workflow is aimed at a particular graphic pattern: light elements on dark backgrounds. SoVeryBright automatically selects whites and lets the user identify additional colors, as demonstrated by an orbit logo that boosts both white and blue pixels. The site says dark colors tend to turn into washed-out neon, a useful restraint in a category where the obvious temptation is to make every pixel brighter.

SoVeryBright recommends a setting of plus 2.9 stops, or roughly 1,500 nits, which the site equates to roughly 7.5 times the brightness of ordinary #FFFFFF. SoVeryBright's target is suited to logos and headlines rather than body text: the site warns that a paragraph at 1,500 nits would be hostile.

For the web, SoVeryBright produces an ISO 21496-1 gain-map JPEG. Bennett also supplies a separate BT.2100 PQ export with a matching ICC profile for LinkedIn, which SoVeryBright says the platform preserves. The homepage says uploads are processed in memory and never stored.

Bennett found a way around CSS's HDR gap

The more interesting part of SoVeryBright is its treatment of live text. Standard CSS #FFFFFF stops at reference white, while the CSS Color HDR specification remains a working draft. Bennett works around that limitation by using a tiny white gain-map JPEG as paint, then clipping the image to the shape of the text with background-clip: text.

SoVeryBright provides a downloadable 64-by-64-pixel swatch weighing about 1.3 KB, along with CSS that gates the effect behind the dynamic-range: high media query. Compatible HDR screens paint the headline through the image. Other visitors retain a normal text color, avoiding an unnecessary download and reducing the risk of clipped text.

The technique uses an image pipeline browsers already understand instead of waiting for authors to gain native access to HDR color values. It also carries limits. Bennett recommends headlines and accents, warning that a full paragraph at the proposed brightness would be hostile. Text selection needs its own visible color, and overflowing lines can be clipped by the background technique.

Browser support remains the constraint around the entire product. SoVeryBright lists Chrome 137 and later plus Safari 26 and iOS 26 on HDR hardware. WebKit's Safari 26.3 release notes document compatibility work involving HDR images. Rendering support has arrived, though ordinary CSS layout choices can still expose edge cases.

The advantage is the workflow, not exclusive access to HDR

Bennett is working in a field with existing technical building blocks. The open-source gainmap-js project can encode and decode HDR gain maps in JavaScript, while superwhite demonstrated brighter-than-white browser content using a tiny HDR video. Professional photo tools offer deeper HDR editing for photographers.

SoVeryBright narrows those ideas to brand assets. It chooses likely highlight colors, preserves an ordinary base image, creates a LinkedIn-specific version and provides a copyable method for HDR text. A designer does not need to understand transfer functions, luminance maps or metadata containers to produce the file.

That simplicity also defines the immediate ceiling. Many social and publishing pipelines recompress images, strip metadata or normalize HDR content. The result still works as a normal JPEG, though the feature Bennett built disappears. SoVeryBright therefore depends on platforms preserving the information and on viewers owning compatible displays.

The homepage presents SoVeryBright as free. Its clearest value today is as a compact demonstration of how a gain-map standard can support a browser-based branding tool. Designers can test HDR logos, social assets and headlines without rebuilding their image workflow, while the ordinary base image remains available when the HDR data is unsupported or removed.