Histograms

Understanding the graph of your photos

http://robmyers.org/weblog/2010/12/31/exploring-art-data-13/
What is it?
A graph of the distribution of tones in a
photograph.
Why do we need it?
The view finder increases brightness on a
camera so the picture is visible in bright
sun light.
This means the exposure that your seeing
is not accurate.
A histogram will help you to determine if
the photo has effective exposure.
An Example

http://gavtrain.blogspot.com/2010/06/quick-guide-to-reading-
Described
Itis a simple graph showing how much of
each shade of gray is in the image.
Black is at the left end while white is at
the right end.
Described

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This picture is rather well exposed.

There is a good range of tones from black to light gray.
Most of the tones are toward the dark end because the background is full of
shadows.
Despite the dark background there is a lot of middle gray tones from the body
of the flamingo.
The shadow areas do not clip
This is when the shadow or highlights suddenly get cut off rather than fading
smoothly
Described

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There is actually very little to no solid black.

There is a good dynamic range in the photo.
It has a large number of overall tones.
This means that it has a lot of potential for
editing.
Histograms and Color
We started with a monochrome image
because it’s easier to see how a histogram
works.
◦ Blacks whites, and grays
◦ It’s a simple graph of all of the gray tones.

http://photog4beg.blogspot.com/2011/05/about-histograms.html
What about histograms and Color?
However, most of your shots are in color.
For color, the histogram is a composite of
the red, green and blue channels in an
image.

http://alessandramigliorini.wordpress.com/2012/02/23/thursday-tutorial-histograms/
Over Exposed
This picture is rather over
exposed.
There is a no black in the
image.
Most of the tones are
toward the light end
because the background
is so bright.
The white is clipped.
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Under Exposed

Thispicture is rather under exposed.

There is a no white in the image.
Most of the tones are toward the dark
Complete Digital Photography, Long end and shadows are black not dark
The black is clipped.
Histograms and Contrast
Using a histogram you can also see if an
image has good contrast.
This image lacks contrast.
◦ Using the histogram it’s obvious that the
colors lack punch because their bunched in the
middle
◦ They don’t cover a broad range

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Histograms and Contrast
This image has more contrast.
◦ One stop of over exposure made the histogram
more wide spread
◦ The image has more contrast
◦ With this larger amount of data, editing is
much more dynamic, less limited

Second shot
Original image (over exposed)

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 Don’t sweat the shape
There is not a right or wrong shaped
histogram.
◦ Even if the tones are heavy on one end and
sparse in the other, it’s ok
◦ It’s not necessary to force the image to have
contrast in it’s histogram, some images lack
high contrast, it just limits the flexibility in
editing
Low contrast image

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http://www.wildlifesouth.com/Photography/Raw_Versus_JPEG.html
3 Channel Histograms
If your camera, or editing software shows
a histogram for each color, it can show
bad white balance
◦ Notice how the second image has a blue cast
◦ A quick check of the blue histogram shows
that there is too much blue in the image from a
poor WB setting

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Let’s Review
Histograms are graphs of an images tone
It can be used to determine if the exposure or contrast are
good
Clipping is when the tones are not allowed to gradually
fade, but get cut off
Dynamic range is the amount of tones that are in a photo
If the tones are bunched together there is a lack of contrast
that can making editing difficult (and lead to
posterization)
There is no right or wrong shape
If over exposed, the tones are bunched on the light side
with no full shadows