Glowing logo on LinkedIn: why logos glow, and how to make yours

superwhite.app · by Nimrod Yarkoni · updated 18 September 2026

The short answer

A glowing logo on LinkedIn is an ordinary JPEG with an HDR colour profile embedded in it. The white parts of the image are stored as HDR luminance values, often 1,000 to 3,000 nits, and the file carries a Rec.2100 PQ ICC profile that tells the browser or the LinkedIn app how to read them. On a screen with HDR headroom, which means most recent iPhones, iPads, MacBooks and OLED Android phones, the display pushes those pixels above the brightness of the white page around them. On a normal screen the same image looks like the normal logo. Nothing is animated, nothing is faked with a halo, and a screenshot of it looks completely flat.

Where the glowing logos came from

The first widely noticed case was the Wiz logo in July 2026, which lit up in feeds and had people asking whether their screens were broken. Port had shipped a glowing company logo slightly earlier and got less attention for it. Within weeks the effect spread across the security and sales-tech space: Taboola, Lusha, DoiT and Prime Security all followed. The trend write-up tracks the sightings as they land.

The underlying technique is older than the trend. Tom Nick documented the ICC-profile approach to rendering brighter-than-white pixels, and the display behaviour is the same one HDR video relies on. What changed in 2026 is that someone put a PQ-tagged JPEG through LinkedIn and noticed it came out the other side still glowing.

How the glow is actually produced

There are three things happening inside a glowing logo file, and all three have to be right or the image looks broken instead of lit.

1. The pixels are PQ encoded

PQ is the SMPTE ST 2084 transfer function used by HDR10 and Dolby Vision. Instead of storing relative brightness from 0 to 100 percent, it stores absolute luminance from 0 to 10,000 nits on a curve that matches how eyes perceive light. A pixel that was sRGB white becomes a code value that means, say, 1,600 nits. The dark and mid-tone parts of the logo are mapped to roughly the brightness they had before, so they do not glow. Only the whites move.

2. The file carries a Rec.2100 PQ ICC profile

An ICC profile is a small block of data inside the JPEG's APP2 segment that describes the colour space of the pixels. When it says Rec.2020 primaries with a PQ transfer curve, Safari, Chrome and the LinkedIn mobile apps hand the image to the operating system's HDR pipeline. The display then uses its extra brightness range for the pixels that ask for it. Remove or replace the profile and the same pixels render as a dull, slightly purple version of the logo.

3. The image survives LinkedIn's re-encode

LinkedIn decodes the upload, resizes it if needed, and writes a new JPEG at around quality 90. Gain-map HDR (the Ultra HDR format Photoshop and Camera Raw export by default) stores its HDR in an extra hidden image plus XMP metadata, and both are discarded in that step. PNG with a cICP chunk is converted to JPEG and the chunk is lost. HDR video is transcoded to SDR entirely, even though the composer preview plays the original file. The ICC profile is the one HDR signal LinkedIn preserves.

The full mechanism, with the profile bytes and the display headroom maths, is in How Superwhite works.

Which LinkedIn surfaces glow

How to make your own logo glow on LinkedIn

1. Start from a flat source. A PNG or JPEG with the parts you want to glow at or close to pure white, on a solid background. White wordmarks on dark or saturated fields glow most cleanly. Transparency does not survive into JPEG, so pick your background now.
2. Convert it to an HDR JPEG. Superwhite does this in the browser: drop the file in, choose which pixels count as white with the glow threshold, choose the brightness with the strength slider, and export. Around 1,000 to 1,600 nits reads as clearly lit in a feed without looking blown out. There are also free tools and scripts that do a simpler version of the same encode; the tools comparison lists all of them with what each one does to the pixels.
3. Check it on an HDR screen. Open the exported file in Preview on a recent Mac, or on an iPhone or OLED Android phone. It should visibly out-glow the white of the window around it. If you are not sure your screen is HDR, the HDR display test settles it in one second.
4. Upload that exact file. Post it as an image or set it as the company page logo. Do not screenshot it, do not pass it through another editor, do not send it to yourself over WhatsApp or iMessage first, and do not crop it in LinkedIn's composer. Any of those rewrites the file and drops the profile.

Why some glowing logos look clean and some look like a glitch

Tagging an image as PQ without touching the pixels boosts everything that was near white, including JPEG compression noise you could not see before. A speck at RGB 254 that was invisible on an sRGB screen becomes a bright grain when it is rendered at 1,600 nits. Anti-aliased edges pick up coloured fringes because standard JPEG chroma subsampling smears colour across the boundary. Gradients band because eight-bit PQ has fewer code values in the highlights than sRGB does.

This is the difference between the free scripts and a tool built for the job. Superwhite runs a flattening ramp that blends near-white pixels toward true white before encoding, applies Floyd-Steinberg dithering in PQ code space so gradients stay smooth, and writes true 4:4:4 chroma at quality 97 so edges stay sharp. The result reads as a lit logo rather than a broken image. It also detects when you drop an already-HDR export back in, which would otherwise double-encode it into flat grey.

Who actually sees the glow

Only people on HDR-capable displays with HDR active. In practice that covers iPhone 12 and newer, every recent iPad Pro and MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air with the Liquid Retina display, Pixel and Samsung flagship phones, and most OLED laptops. Windows desktops with HDR switched off in Display settings, older monitors, and any phone in battery saver mode show the ordinary logo. On a typical B2B LinkedIn audience that is roughly half the viewers on each side, which is why the image has to work as a normal image too. The glow is a bonus for the half that can see it, not the whole design.

Is a glowing logo a good idea for your brand

It is a small trick that works because it is rare and because attention in the feed is scarce. It gets noticed most on company logos, where the tile is small and a lit mark stands out against dozens of flat ones. On full-width post images it works best when the glowing area is a small fraction of the frame: a wordmark or a single word, not the whole background. A full-frame white flash reads as an error. Treat the glow as a spotlight, keep the rest of the composition doing its normal job, and it stays on the right side of premium.

It is also platform-specific for now. The same file does nothing special on Instagram, X or Facebook, which either strip the profile or want a gain-map JPEG instead. Read how to make an image glow online for what the other platforms need.

Frequently asked questions

Why are some logos glowing on LinkedIn?

Those logos are HDR JPEGs. Their white pixels are encoded at luminance values above normal screen white and the file carries a Rec.2100 PQ ICC profile. On HDR-capable displays the phone or laptop renders those pixels brighter than the page, which looks like the logo is lit from behind. On a standard screen the same logo looks normal.

Is the glowing logo effect a LinkedIn feature?

No. LinkedIn did not build it and does not advertise it. It works because LinkedIn preserves ICC colour profiles when it re-encodes uploaded images, which is a side effect of its image pipeline rather than a feature.

How do I make my logo glow on LinkedIn?

Convert your logo to an HDR JPEG with a Rec.2100 PQ profile, then upload that exact file as an image post or as your company page logo without cropping, filtering or re-saving it. Superwhite does the conversion in your browser in one step and handles the pixel cleanup that keeps the glow from looking like noise.

Why can't I see the glow on my screen?

Your display has no HDR headroom, HDR is switched off in your system settings, or your phone is in battery saver mode. The image itself is fine. Try it on a recent iPhone or MacBook, or run the free HDR display test on superwhite.app to check your screen.

Does a glowing logo work as a LinkedIn profile picture?

Company page logos and feed posts are reliable. Personal profile photos go through a more aggressive pipeline that independent testers report strips the colour profile, so treat that surface as unreliable and check your own upload from an HDR phone.

Does the glow survive if someone screenshots or shares the image?

No. Screenshots, re-saving in an editor, and messaging apps such as WhatsApp and iMessage all rewrite the file and drop the colour profile. Only the original file posted directly to LinkedIn glows.

Can I make a glowing logo for free?

Yes. Several free scripts and browser tools apply a basic PQ encode and ICC profile. Superwhite charges from 3 euro one time because it also flattens near-white noise, dithers in PQ code space and writes full 4:4:4 chroma, which is what keeps the result clean on a real feed. The tools comparison on this site covers every option.