Built an HDR image generator in AI Studio. Turns out it doesn't generate HDR anything. The app calls Gemini's gemini-3.1-flash-lite-image model with a prompt, gets back a standard JPEG, and slaps CSS brightness() / contrast() / saturate() filters on it. That's not HDR — that's Instagram circa 2012. The real effect I was chasing — those "flash-bang" images where highlights physically push your phone's OLED to 1600 nits while the rest of the UI dims — requires Ultra HDR gain maps baked into the JPEG file. Completely different technology. The CSS filters change nothing about the actual image data. Download it, and it's just a regular photo. The rescue session fixed the usual AI Studio export issues (missing dotenv import, dead scaffold), but the core realization was that the app's entire premise needs a rewrite to do what I originally intended.