hey guys welcome or welcome back thanks so much for joining me today we're going to
be talking about histograms which is just kind of vitally important
so we're going to discuss histograms today because i realize that i mentioned them all
of the time histograms histogram histogram histogram histogram with the histogram
histogram but some people don't know what they mean so we're just going to run through them
in terms of what i look at them for why they're vitally important why everything you need to know
is in your histogram if you haven't already please do remember to press the subscribe button and hit
the bell icon i haven't asked you to do that in a while but if you haven't already please
do remember to subscribe makes a big difference to me and i appreciate it first things first what is
a histogram histogram is just a graph just think of it as a graph so you've got two sides to the
graph and like a line down the bottom do you know i'll just draw a graph somewhere on the screen now
it should probably be easier what you need to know is that the left side of the graph always i mean i
think it's always the left side of the graph is black think of it as no data zero percent color
zero percent brightness it's completely black okay the right hand side of the graph is always i think
white so think of it as no data at all because it's just completely 100 brightness it's white
those two values are what we call the edges of our histogram so you've got the left side of the
histogram and the right side of the histogram this is going to be confusing because you guys
are watching this and this is left and this is right the histogram itself usually i would suggest
not paying too much attention in terms of the mountains that are made in the middle okay so
i've heard of it referred to as mountains it's a really good way of thinking about it so on any
histogram there will be peaks and troughs all that represents is a count of the pixels in the scene
so think of it as the camera lightroom whatever it is it's taking all of the individual pixels
from an image and then in terms of their brightness from black to white it then
stacks them in a graph so you can see which brightness level is the majority of the image
i hope that makes sense so if you can see anything on your histogram then then you've got data in
there okay if it's pressed all the way up against the left hand side that means that you've got
loads of black pixels no data clipped shadows usually bad unless you're photographing on a
black background and that's what you're going for the other side of that would be if all of
the image data that mount in the trough everything was pressed up against the right hand side that
would mean that all of the pixels in the image are white completely white we don't want that's
clipped highlights blown highlights it's kind of bad there's no detail there it's just white
the perfect histogram read sarcasm technically is a bell curve a bell curve just means that
the peak's right in the middle and it fades off to the sides now a bell curve is the ideal histogram
but it's very rare that you'll take a shot or finish a shot or whatever with a bell curve as the
histogram that's like not normal unless you're like a landscape photographer and then maybe
but usually even then probably not different images will have the data pushed or stacked
in terms of its mountains into one side or the other the important point to know about histogram
is nothing's touching the sides if it's touching the sides and you're not deliberately flipping
blacks clipping blacks or clipping whites then something's gone wrong and your exposure is out
now you might hear people saying why do you always expose to the left i've used that because that's
what people ask me all the time exposing to the left just means that your peak the main bulk of
your data is in the shadows portion it's to the left of the center of the histogram
so if you're exposing to the left it means technically you're under exposing
if you're exposing to the right it means you're technically overexposing but i want to just kind
of like discuss this a little bit because it's not that important it doesn't matter so don't
worry too much about where that mountain is as long as it's not got any parts touching the sides
that way you know you're in for a winner so what we're going to do is i'm going to show you talk
you through a few images which i've popped up on the screen here which show you this in action
okay so these are edited i mean actually i don't think that okay some of them are raw files
that's fine what we're going to do is we're going to look at them so just to illustrate
the point that i was making in terms of the image itself might be quite light and therefore it will
look like it's overexposed but actually it's not because it's not clipped that was long you're
using this image of alpha as an example i'll walk you through the histogram so the histogram
is split into five five chunks so you've got your blacks at the far left then next to them you've
got shadows then next to that you've got mid tones next to that you've got highlights and then
right to the right hand side you have got whites okay so you've got those five sections now they're
not all equal in width the blacks and whites are much thinner the midtones is the largest section
okay so when we're in lightroom or adobe camera raw or whatever imaging program you use it doesn't
matter you'll have a histogram show so this is a super bright image but with highlight clipping
on there are no clipped pixels in this shot now really could have been half a stop under
if we're being honest but in terms of your blacks there's no data pressed up against the black side
it looks like there's some data pressed up against the white side but there are no clipped
areas showing when we put our clipping flag on so i'm quite confident that we're okay however
you can just click and drag and pull them down if you want to that would be clipped so you can see
when you look at an image like this even if we expose that probably you know about kind of right
ish kind of there it's not a good image but it demonstrates the point well so here you can see
we've got a massive peak now if you were to look at just histogram you say well this is really
overexposed but actually it's not it's snow snow is white snow is bright and therefore it's kind of
right let's look at an image that is much darker so the other side of this is is an image like this
we've got no clipped shadows in there but the histogram is weighted the mountain is very much
to the left-hand side that means basically this is underexposed but actually you know it it's it's
not it's not underexposed you could lift it a bit but then you lose the impact so there's a decision
that's been made there to drop it more darker into the shadows and therefore pushing or editing
to the left not the right or central as it were that's a pretty solid bell curve there on that
shot that's a pretty good even histogram nothing in the clips either side is looking good we like
this shot there's not much you would change in terms of the exposure on this it's a good overall
exposure but in camera if you can view your histogram either on your viewing so like when you
review the images or you can view it when you're shooting if you're using a mirrorless camera
for example keeping an eye on it and just seeing how far it's shifting from side to side is there
data up at either end i personally shoot slightly to the left to protect my highlights which means i
slightly under exposing camera to then be able to control and lift my shadows but retain all of my
highlight detail that's just a personal preference i think it comes from shooting nikon to be honest
highlight is not great with nikon with canon you've got a little bit more flexibility there
to pull the data back but that's not the point the point is is that histograms are vitally important
any question that you need to ask is my screen brightness too bright is this image overexposed or
underexposed do i have any clipped data do i have clipped highlights do i have clip shadows all of
those questions can be answered by just looking at your histogram so learn it understand it you don't
need to you know pray to it or have it in a holy shrine but it is important to understand if that
was helpful for you please do let me know drop it in the comments box below please do subscribe
because it makes a world of difference for me and i'll see you all again really really soon