Camera Histogram Explained for Beginners
Michael • updated June 29, 2022 • 8 min read
Michael • updated June 29, 2022 • 8 min read
One of the best things about digital photography is the histogram, which can be a little scary for people who are just starting out. But there’s no reason to be afraid of it. Once you know how it works, it’s pretty easy to use.
Before digital photography, we had to wait until the film was developed to make sure the exposure was right. With the help of the histogram, you can see this information before you take the picture (if your camera has an electronic viewfinder), after you take the picture, and also when you are editing the picture.
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Camera histogram explained. the histogram is a graph that shows how dark and light tones are spread out. Simply put, how light or dark are your image’s pixels?
The X-axis shows the brightness of the tones from left to right, and the Y-axis shows the frequency distribution from top to bottom (Y-axis).
“The histogram shows in a graph how the brightness values are spread out, from pure black to medium gray to pure white.”
Here, the darkest values (called “lows”) are on the left, and the brightest values (called “highlights”) are on the right. In the middle, you can see tonal values with a medium amount of brightness.
If you can see a high deflection in an area near the top, it means that this area has a lot of tone values of the same brightness.
In some cameras or in image processing, the histogram is also divided into its color channels: red, green, and blue. The histogram is thus supplemented by the information that certain colors occur at a certain brightness.
In the image below, you can see the balanced histogram of an optimally exposed image: The tonal values are distributed over the entire histogram.
The first third of the histogram is very skewed, but it flattens out a lot as you move to the right. The picture is underexposed because most of the tones are dark.
Photography tip:
How to edit images:
So, set your exposure compensation to -0.3 or -0.7 EV and underexpose your photos on purpose.
The right third of the histogram goes up a lot, and the left third goes down sharply. The mountain goes all the way to the left side of the graph. Most of the tones in the picture are bright, and there aren’t many dark areas.
The parts of the clouds that are very bright are “burned out.” That means they no longer have any details and are just white.
The right part of the histogram shows it. The “mountain” of tonal values is close to the right edge, and many of the pixels are pure white.
Photography tip:
How to edit images:
The histogram shows that the numbers are spread out evenly across the whole width. In the right third, there is a yellow slope that starts to show.
If the histogram shows the color channels as well, you can also see color casts and how the colors are spread out.
Photography tip:
How to edit images:
Contrast describes nothing more than a difference between light and dark. If the image lacks contrast, the histogram looks like this:
The histogram has a high deflection in the center and flattens out to the left and right without touching the edges.
So, an image with such a histogram consists mainly of middle tonal values – there is hardly any pure white or black. The image looks flat!
So an image with such a histogram consists mainly of middle tonal values – a pure white or black is hardly present. The image looks flat.
Photography tip:
How to edit images:
There are some images for which the way the histogram works won’t help us process them.
On the contrary, if you try to fit these pictures into a “balanced histogram,” they will look terrible.
The following pictures will help make it more clear:
Photos of snow: On a histogram, images of snow always look too bright. If you darken the whole picture, the snow will look dirty and unnatural.
When you take a picture at night or of a sky full of stars, most of the picture will be black. This is common and must be the case.
Fog shots: If you take a picture in heavy fog or rain, the contrast will be lost.
Shots with a high or low key are ones where you purposely underexpose or overexpose the image. You shouldn’t use the histogram as a guide because it affects how the image looks.
In the situations above, you should only talk about your main point. Just move the sliders and ignore the rest of the picture. Look at your subject by itself and adjust the exposure until it looks right.
This feature shows you part of the image that is too bright and could burn out and lose details. The bright spots are marked by diagonal stripes, which is how the animal got its name “zebra.”
The zebra stripes show the areas that are right next to the white right edge of the histogram. The zebra function can be found in your camera’s settings.
This function is great for taking pictures of landscapes. Clouds that are lit up by the sun burn out quickly. The zebra stripes warn you of danger, and you can do something about it.
Simple histograms (luminance histograms), like the first two, list the red, green, and blue values for each pixel in an image and show how the total brightness is spread out. Here’s another picture with a lot of colors.
The RGB histograms show how the three primary colors, red, green, and blue, are spread out in terms of how bright they are. Then, the sunset shows a red curve to the right, because the red part of the image is much brighter than the green and blue parts.
If you enlarge the picture, you can see the red peak in the histogram on the right side. It shows that red has reached its brightest point in one part of the picture. This red comes from the sun in the picture.
On cameras with a display preview, you can often see the histogram before you take the picture (available on all compact cameras and some newer digital SLR cameras with LifeView technology).
In this case, the display is either split into two parts to show the subject and the histogram, or the histogram is added on top of the image on the display.
However, the display of the histogram must be activated in the settings options of your camera. Please check the camera manual of your camera.
The histogram is simply a graphical representation of the distribution of brightness values according to their number. The higher the graph is in one place, the more pixels of the photo has the same brightness value.
The light tonal values are shown on the right, the dark ones on the left. On the far right is pure white, and on the far left is pure black.
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