Systems and methods for tone mapping of high dynamic range (HDR) images for high-quality deep learning based processing are disclosed. In one embodiment, a graphics processor includes a media pipeline to generate media requests for processing images and an execution unit to receive media requests from the media pipeline. The execution unit is configured to compute an auto-exposure scale for an image to effectively tone map the image, to scale the image with the computed auto-exposure scale, and to apply a tone mapping operator including a log function to the image and scaling the log function to generate a tone mapped image.