I own D850. The histogram looks different in my camera DSLR screen and different in the ACR, while editing; Usually throws it to the left dark site. The shadows are deep, the colours are darker. Is it incompatibility of the equipment, high mgpxls camera or..? What shall I do to avoid this?It is ruining my pics. Thx
Tony, you make histograms so chill. You're just a chill dude editing some chill photos with some chill histograms. If there was a chill histogram you'd be all the way to the right. Keep up the chill work, man.
Much good information. Where the RGB histogram has advantages over the luminance histogram is where there is a disproportionate amount of one colour. Imagine taking a close-up shot of an orange flower, surrounded by dark green leaves (don't sound like a very exciting shot, but plenty of people take images like that). If you expose to the right using the luminance histogram you may well find that the petals look rather flat and lack contour. Look at the RGB histogram and you will probably see that the red channel is blown and the exposure needs to be reduced to avoid this. Small point but can save your bacon in some circumstances. Otherwise, nicely put.
Excellent explanation Tony! Love your content, though I am curious about why you would want to expose to the right- I always thought it was best practice to expose to the left in order to be able to recover highs later in post.
There are professionals who don't know how to explain the technicalities of photography but you are not one of them. I can't thank you enough for excellent and informative tutorials. I wish you did underwater photography so I could learn more about that area.
Many don't use histogram or just ignores it these days but the benefits of it are amazing...you can correct your picture's contrast, brightness etc then and there from just seeing the histogram, and changing the camera settings. Then there is not much need to edit every photograph
I tried searching for a video on your channel a few weeks ago and couldn't find anything like this but now it's here! Really makes more sense now - I'll have to put it to use now, appreciate all the good content you guys put out! :)
How often you can find a pro teaching photography features like this on youtube? Different screen calibrations is never a problem after Tony's explanation of histogram.
Great video and information. Amazing how small knowledge gems such as this will make the understanding your camera simpler and improve our photography. Thanks Tony
thank you for a great and informative video. I had no knowledge of how histograms worked before watching this, and now it really makes sense. keep up the great work
Histograms are a dark art, but you have just enlightened me. Thank you Chelsea's assistant for exposing me to this tutorial. It's as clear as black and white now. :p
Guys, thank you very much! Your videos are just treasure for a newbie like me. The more I watch the more I understand I was a monkey with camera, and now finally I evolve :)
Very useful. Regardless of how much I think I know about a particular element of photography, I was learn something new about it from your videos :) Although, I was waiting for the part where you talked about live histograms shown on the camera screen and how to react to what they're showing.
Thanks Tony 😊 ... this is the single most important post you've done (to me). I actually picked up skill that I never bothered with and it is awesome. I tried what you discussed and played with some images that I thought were throw aways, and fixed them; some with stunning results 🤔. Big props 👏 Alvin
These videos are amazing! So informative and really well thought-out. I love your content and the books you are selling are at such a great price point. It really shows that you're trying to make photography accessible to everyone.
Thanks and I was aware of the histogram but didn't use it much. And yes I have been fooled by looking at the screen on my camera so let's ad this tip to my bag of tricks. On a separate note our big screen TV has RUclips built in great.... but I do not see a like button or way to add coments so I jump back to the phone... any suggestions.
He says that color histogram is not very useful. I think it's very useful, because the luminosity histogram is just an overage of the colors and does not tell if some color component is overexposed. It's quite common that especially sunlit faces get overexposed in the red color, sky in blue, and vegetation in green. Overexposed areas are flat and post-processing is impossible. Another issue is with the recommendation that you should shoot bright, because there's less noise in the upper part. This is true in the sense that while CCD or CMOS cells themselves are mostly linear, the signal-to-noise ratio is better in the bright end. In JPEG images, you also have less noise in the bright end, because they are flattened out in the logarithmic scale. However, logarithmic flattening and packing into 8 bits also loses much of the linear information, which is why it's better to either shoot raw or underexpose. Further, shooting in raw does not always save from the problem, because the CCD and CMOS cells have an internal _antiblooming_ feature, which makes images nonlinear in the brighter end and hence you lose information.
Hi Tony and Chelsea, Great channel and by far one of the best among the photographers! Keep up the good work! Said that, do you know if the Nikon D610 has a histogram in live view? I can't really find info about that on the net...
I use the histogram all the time if I'm shooting in bright conditions, or else take a test image and dial in any required compensation after checking it. Whichever method I use, the histogram is at the heart of it.....
So it’s like an eq for audio but for an image instead? Low end is on the left, high end is on the right, and you can adjust each “pitch” to add more “black” or “white”. An image needs dynamics, just like an audio track.
Hi, Tony . First congratulations for all your hard work is very helpfull. ofcourse I am your follower in all plataform. I am very new on this world of photography. My question: Using a Canon mirrorles M50 in manual mode when I read the histogram some time is overxpose or under. I use the shutter speed or aperture until I see the histogram in my camera display right. Even when is fine on the display I can see on the exposure bar maybe one stop over or under. I took the picture and looks great. My question is when the histogram is fixed it doesnt matter the exposure display bar in my camera. Sorry maybe is a silly question, but you are the master
Hi! Your videos are awesome. Thanks so much! In Lightroom when I look at the histogram....if the triangle on the right is white, that means something is blown out. Sometimes when I bring down the highlights a bit, the white triangle disappears and I've gotten rid of the blown out area (?), but then the triangle turns to a color...like red, blue or yellow. What does this mean and is it a good or bad thing?
Tony, I have your book SDP. and watch many of you videos, but all your adjustments are made in either Lightroom or Photoshop. I have neither. But I do have Adobe "Elements 12". Can you do some videos using that?
This was helpful, but it seems like it is a guideline and not a rule for all shots. For instance, I was not able to have it "shoot to the right" on some hummingbird pictures I recently took. If I did, the white on his neck was completely blown out (even though it wasn't touching the far right) - making the picture look really bad in my opinion. If I shifted the histogram more to the left, so that there was a bigger gap between the edge of the histogram and the far right side (which you said would be underexposed) - the neck was no longer overexposed, which got all the detail back on the neck. The rest of the bird mostly looked sharp and detailed as well. Although on some of the black feathers on the edge of the wing did loose some detail. So a worse looking histogram, made the better looking picture in this case.
Tony & Chelsea, really enjoy all your videos there so helpful and interesting! Was just wondering how can I send in a couple of photos for you to review on one of them videos you do photos of 2016? Iv got about 3 photos that I would really love you to have a look at 2 that iv taken on my 1100D and 1 on my new 7D both using the same 50mm F1.8 and edited in Lightroom.. Keep giving us these videos all the best for 2017 from Giles in UK London
Hey, thanks for the good content. Do you happen to have a video about organizing old photos? I inherited a massive dataset of old family photos (digital and scans of old developed photographs) with duplicates and different formats and file sizes. I have a hard time to sort them since I don't know where to start. I really would appreciate if you could recommend some software or make a vid about this. Thx.
I've been to Peru probably 6 times but is been over 12 years since being to Machu Picchu :( Need to go back I can't even find my original (6MP) images!
Unfortunately the histogram can be misleading in very specific situations because it averages out the three primary colours. I got pictures where the histogram was perfect but one colour was blown out completely. Sadly most cameras don't show "RGB" histogram in live view so you need to take the picture first and then check the levels of the primary colours. If one colour is blown out, you can underexpose a bit and retake the picture.
Hi, Tony. Love your videos and tutorials. I'm looking for a little more hands on training with DSLR photography and Lightroom editing. I'm in Columbia, SC. Do you have any recommendations? Thank you for any guidance you can offer.
i know hitting the left and right clips blacks and whites respectively but what happens if the histogram hits the top anywhere in the plane? i've been searching for the answer but haven't been able to find it anywhere
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I own D850. The histogram looks different in my camera DSLR screen and different in the ACR, while editing; Usually throws it to the left dark site. The shadows are deep, the colours are darker. Is it incompatibility of the equipment, high mgpxls camera or..? What shall I do to avoid this?It is ruining my pics. Thx
Tony, you make histograms so chill. You're just a chill dude editing some chill photos with some chill histograms. If there was a chill histogram you'd be all the way to the right. Keep up the chill work, man.
Tony, I really find your style of teaching to be very soothing and informative. Thanks for doing what you do.
Nicely explained Tony! Keep making great content!
Peter Bucek фиффффффффффффффффффиффффффффффффффффффффффффффф
Like your proflile pic; I'd guess that's a recent eclipse photo?
Mac Battle Indeed, took it with my telescope last year.
thank you, finally i got the whole histogram mystery cleared in my head. keep up the good work, greetings from germany.
Much good information. Where the RGB histogram has advantages over the luminance histogram is where there is a disproportionate amount of one colour. Imagine taking a close-up shot of an orange flower, surrounded by dark green leaves (don't sound like a very exciting shot, but plenty of people take images like that). If you expose to the right using the luminance histogram you may well find that the petals look rather flat and lack contour. Look at the RGB histogram and you will probably see that the red channel is blown and the exposure needs to be reduced to avoid this. Small point but can save your bacon in some circumstances. Otherwise, nicely put.
Great info Tony!! I love your presentation skills as well, very well said!
Wow, I just learned so much about the histogram. Thank you so much! The information you give us is priceless and so is SDP book!
Excellent explanation Tony! Love your content, though I am curious about why you would want to expose to the right- I always thought it was best practice to expose to the left in order to be able to recover highs later in post.
Check out ruclips.net/video/MfvwqcmM6FQ/видео.html
There are professionals who don't know how to explain the technicalities of photography but you are not one of them. I can't thank you enough for excellent and informative tutorials. I wish you did underwater photography so I could learn more about that area.
Solid explanation on histogram values. Really enjoyed this video. Keep it up, Tony.
Many don't use histogram or just ignores it these days but the benefits of it are amazing...you can correct your picture's contrast, brightness etc then and there from just seeing the histogram, and changing the camera settings. Then there is not much need to edit every photograph
6:18 that noise scared the hell out of me haha
Thanks Chelsea and Tony...
following all your videos with a lot of attention and trying to repeat your tips and tricks..
Hug from Portugal
Thanks for the refresher. My new D7200 offers this in the field. Very handy.
This is probably the best explanation of histograms I have come across. Thank you!
Thank you so much for this one! I always knew to use the histogram but I needed to really understand it before being able to use it.
As a phtpgrapher, you never stop learning. Today, i learned the importantes of the right side of the histogram. :)
I think some washed out image looks really good and adds a stylistic look or vintage style.
Yeah there are some instances where you just just ignore the histogram. It's just down to personal preference in the end.
Got the book last month and love it! Joined the group and loving it! And now thinking of buying the book for a friend on his birthday!
Well explained Tony! altough I sometimes prefere washing out the black tones, I think it gives a more relaxed feel to an image.
Tony... I cannot tell you how much I enjoy your videos! So much good info!
Thank you for the videos you and Chelsea uploaded, I learned a lot from both of you.
I tried searching for a video on your channel a few weeks ago and couldn't find anything like this but now it's here! Really makes more sense now - I'll have to put it to use now, appreciate all the good content you guys put out! :)
Thanks, Kelvin!
one of my most useful youtube subscriptions .
thanks Tony.
I enjoyed this video. It was explained in a simple easy to learn way. Thanks Tony.
Fantastic!! I'm a beginner & have been trying to grasp the histogram....this was very informative & easy to understand! Thanks you!
How often you can find a pro teaching photography features like this on youtube? Different screen calibrations is never a problem after Tony's explanation of histogram.
Excellent advice as usual. One of these days I'm going to buy both your books I promise!
Great video and information. Amazing how small knowledge gems such as this will make the understanding your camera simpler and improve our photography. Thanks Tony
I am fan of you Mr. Tony, i have learnt alot from your videos and still learning.
Thanks alot for your efforts also thanks to Ms. Cheksea 😊
Thanks!
Tony & Chelsea Northrup and
thank you for a great and informative video. I had no knowledge of how histograms worked before watching this, and now it really makes sense. keep up the great work
Thanks Tony, you're video explanations are always great.
Histograms are a dark art, but you have just enlightened me. Thank you Chelsea's assistant for exposing me to this tutorial. It's as clear as black and white now. :p
Guys, thank you very much! Your videos are just treasure for a newbie like me. The more I watch the more I understand I was a monkey with camera, and now finally I evolve :)
As always, very clear and distinctly helpful. Thanks.
On 9:22 you probably meant 4 times more NOISE, rather than 4 times more IMAGE. :)
I want more image. Now.
i hate it when my image has too much image!
I hate it when my image has too much image!
Thanks. Your usual in-depth excellent coverage. You did present some precise/ideas I hadn't yet dealt with. Good stuff!
Very useful. Regardless of how much I think I know about a particular element of photography, I was learn something new about it from your videos :)
Although, I was waiting for the part where you talked about live histograms shown on the camera screen and how to react to what they're showing.
Thank you for the tip regarding noise coming from pixels on the left of the histogram.
Thanks Tony 😊 ... this is the single most important post you've done (to me). I actually picked up skill that I never bothered with and it is awesome. I tried what you discussed and played with some images that I thought were throw aways, and fixed them; some with stunning results 🤔. Big props 👏
Alvin
Thank you Tony. Excellent explanation and remainder.
Love your video's man, easy and pleasent to follow and understandable explanations. I will be buying a book of you someday soon :D
These videos are amazing! So informative and really well thought-out. I love your content and the books you are selling are at such a great price point. It really shows that you're trying to make photography accessible to everyone.
Great Explanation - I didn't know anything about it - Thanks ✌
Another really useful video, thank you!
This great, great advice. You'll never want to edit your photo without Histograms again
Another great tutorial. Thanks!
Very good introduction to histograms. Thank you!
Very nice. We learned something today. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks and I was aware of the histogram but didn't use it much. And yes I have been fooled by looking at the screen on my camera so let's ad this tip to my bag of tricks. On a separate note our big screen TV has RUclips built in great.... but I do not see a like button or way to add coments so I jump back to the phone... any suggestions.
I never knew how to figure that funny 'graph' chart looked like. Thank you for helping with that!
I'm going to make myself use the histogram thank you for showing me the importance
thanks for clarifying histograms, great intro
top notch help... thanks
got your book too
I'm so glad you made this video I've been waiting for you to do this one
Excellent explanation. Thanks so much!
amazing video. thanks for helping me understand
Do you have a video on how you calibrate your monitor or apply color profiles along your picture workflow?
Thumbs Up! I want more of this type of content. (Sharpening, Tone Curve, etc)
Thanks a lot +Tony for this video, cleared a lot of doubts!!
Thank you , Great information. I am wondering how do you read histogram before taking picture if you doing a long exposure or a night photography ?
He says that color histogram is not very useful. I think it's very useful, because the luminosity histogram is just an overage of the colors and does not tell if some color component is overexposed. It's quite common that especially sunlit faces get overexposed in the red color, sky in blue, and vegetation in green. Overexposed areas are flat and post-processing is impossible.
Another issue is with the recommendation that you should shoot bright, because there's less noise in the upper part. This is true in the sense that while CCD or CMOS cells themselves are mostly linear, the signal-to-noise ratio is better in the bright end. In JPEG images, you also have less noise in the bright end, because they are flattened out in the logarithmic scale. However, logarithmic flattening and packing into 8 bits also loses much of the linear information, which is why it's better to either shoot raw or underexpose. Further, shooting in raw does not always save from the problem, because the CCD and CMOS cells have an internal _antiblooming_ feature, which makes images nonlinear in the brighter end and hence you lose information.
Hi Tony and Chelsea,
Great channel and by far one of the best among the photographers! Keep up the good work! Said that, do you know if the Nikon D610 has a histogram in live view? I can't really find info about that on the net...
I use the histogram all the time if I'm shooting in bright conditions, or else take a test image and dial in any required compensation after checking it. Whichever method I use, the histogram is at the heart of it.....
So it’s like an eq for audio but for an image instead? Low end is on the left, high end is on the right, and you can adjust each “pitch” to add more “black” or “white”. An image needs dynamics, just like an audio track.
Thank you for in-depth histogram vid.
Hi, Tony . First congratulations for all your hard work is very helpfull. ofcourse I am your follower in all plataform. I am very new on this world of photography. My question: Using a Canon mirrorles M50 in manual mode when I read the histogram some time is overxpose or under. I use the shutter speed or aperture until I see the histogram in my camera display right. Even when is fine on the display I can see on the exposure bar maybe one stop over or under. I took the picture and looks great. My question is when the histogram is fixed it doesnt matter the exposure display bar in my camera. Sorry maybe is a silly question, but you are the master
Great vid.
I suggest you put a one-dollar foam windscreen on the mic, will cut down sibilance.
Understood thank you, you are great teacher!
Thank you very much! Finally understood fully how histogram works. :)
9:00 - Now there's a little gem! Thanks, Tony!
Cool video... what does it mean when a luminance histogram is 'flat'; as in little vertical (Y axis) development across the board?
Very informative. Thank you.
I don’t know if you’ll answer but I was told to shoot underexposed is better then over since blown out can’t be fixed
As always awesomeness, gracias Tony...
Thanks for explaining it cleary
Great video, one question: what does it mean if the histogram has lots of smaller jagged peaks or just fewer big smooth peaks? Thanks
Hi! Your videos are awesome. Thanks so much! In Lightroom when I look at the histogram....if the triangle on the right is white, that means something is blown out. Sometimes when I bring down the highlights a bit, the white triangle disappears and I've gotten rid of the blown out area (?), but then the triangle turns to a color...like red, blue or yellow. What does this mean and is it a good or bad thing?
Outstanding video!
This was actually helpful! Thanks guys!!
Wow, this was revolutionary. Thank you!
Thank You Tony!
Tony, I have your book SDP. and watch many of you videos, but all your adjustments are made in either Lightroom or Photoshop. I have neither. But I do have Adobe "Elements 12". Can you do some videos using that?
This was helpful, but it seems like it is a guideline and not a rule for all shots. For instance, I was not able to have it "shoot to the right" on some hummingbird pictures I recently took. If I did, the white on his neck was completely blown out (even though it wasn't touching the far right) - making the picture look really bad in my opinion. If I shifted the histogram more to the left, so that there was a bigger gap between the edge of the histogram and the far right side (which you said would be underexposed) - the neck was no longer overexposed, which got all the detail back on the neck. The rest of the bird mostly looked sharp and detailed as well. Although on some of the black feathers on the edge of the wing did loose some detail. So a worse looking histogram, made the better looking picture in this case.
This was very much needed, thank you! :)
Tony & Chelsea, really enjoy all your videos there so helpful and interesting! Was just wondering how can I send in a couple of photos for you to review on one of them videos you do photos of 2016? Iv got about 3 photos that I would really love you to have a look at 2 that iv taken on my 1100D and 1 on my new 7D both using the same 50mm F1.8 and edited in Lightroom.. Keep giving us these videos all the best for 2017 from Giles in UK London
Hey, thanks for the good content. Do you happen to have a video about organizing old photos? I inherited a massive dataset of old family photos (digital and scans of old developed photographs) with duplicates and different formats and file sizes. I have a hard time to sort them since I don't know where to start. I really would appreciate if you could recommend some software or make a vid about this. Thx.
I've been to Peru probably 6 times but is been over 12 years since being to Machu Picchu :( Need to go back I can't even find my original (6MP) images!
Unfortunately the histogram can be misleading in very specific situations because it averages out the three primary colours. I got pictures where the histogram was perfect but one colour was blown out completely. Sadly most cameras don't show "RGB" histogram in live view so you need to take the picture first and then check the levels of the primary colours. If one colour is blown out, you can underexpose a bit and retake the picture.
Thanks for the sharing ❤
Tony, have you mentioned when the "hills" cropped on the top of the histogram? What does that mean?
I love this, thanks
excellent information
You guys are like the Captain & Tenille of Photography.
I would love to have a live view overlay histogram showing in the viewfinder,
you can if you have a mirrorless camera (which has, of course, an electronic viewfinder )EVF))
Hi, Tony. Love your videos and tutorials. I'm looking for a little more hands on training with DSLR photography and Lightroom editing. I'm in Columbia, SC. Do you have any recommendations? Thank you for any guidance you can offer.
Thank you again Tony!
histogreat video dude!
i know hitting the left and right clips blacks and whites respectively but what happens if the histogram hits the top anywhere in the plane? i've been searching for the answer but haven't been able to find it anywhere