The disclosure relates generally to the field of high dynamic range (HDR) imaging and addresses the way of expanding the dynamic range of low dynamic range images. A method having the steps of obtaining expansion exponent map data for each one of a plurality of clusters of reference images, obtaining, for each cluster, one feature, called visual feature, representative of the luminance of reference images of the cluster, obtaining a visual feature for the image, comparing the visual feature of the image with the visual features of the clusters according to a distance criterion, selecting the cluster, the visual feature of which is the closest to the visual feature of the image, and applying an expansion exponent map defined by the expansion exponent map data of the selected cluster to the image is described.