Histogram
- Jan 20, 2017
- 1 min read
How to read the histogram
The left side of the graph represents the shadows, The middle part of the graph represents the midtones and the right side represents the highlights. The closer to the left edge the pixels are, the darker they are, and the closer they are to the right side, the brighter they are.
In the graph above, we can assume that we have a nicely exposed image, with lots of pixels in the midtones, not too many dark shadows, and very few highlights. In an ideal shot, the histogram should cover the whole graph from edge to edge. This means that you are covering a wide tonal range which makes it easier to work on images.
Sometimes, there are many pixels that are pressed against the very left or very right edges of the graph. This is called “clipping” and is something you should try to avoid, since it means that those pixels are either pure black or pure white and contain no information, making them unrecoverable during post-processing. Keep in mind that sometimes clipped highlights are unavoidable, especially when you have the sun in your image :)
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