Understand the Histogram (VERY IMPORTANT)

LEARN HOW TO USE AND READ A HISTOGRAM IN THIS VIDEO! | Histograms can be difficult to understand, but they’re so useful! Learn all about them in this video using Photoshop.

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In this Photoshop tutorial, we’ll break down the histogram in Photoshop and I’ll show you how to read it and why it’s so important. You can use the histogram in Photoshop, Camera RAW editor, Lightroom, Premiere Pro, Davinci Resolve, or even in the flesh on the back of your camera or monitoring screen while out on a shoot. The histogram is important!

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[drewnix]

Another interesting thing you can do in curves menu is to hold alt while dragging sliders to see which RGB values are being manipulated from light to dark.

[RileyBanksWho]

Hey Daniel,

I know you receive a thousand comments a day but I just want to take this moment and thank you for these videos. I started watching a cpl years ago as I worked for DJI as a young n starting graphics designer, back then I was already familiar with Adobe and their apps but I was always looking for tips and tricks to work faster in photoshop, illustrator etc, luckily your vids helped me tons.. fast forward I now have my own cinematography company (was my childhood dream). The point I'm getting at is that your tips and tricks helped me a lot and basically helped me to become who I am today.

Thanks and much love brother.

[tyroneshoelace]

I've watched serval videos on histogram use, and none provide any useful information. All anyone demonstrates is that you can move the sliders via the "histogram" graphic. So what. How does this help me? I mean, I can see the changes in the photo if I use the sliders alone.

[subhajitkundu]

What is the banana 🍌 below the zoom 🔎 tool of your Photoshop interface?

[PlanetIscandar]

*tutvid* You explained pretty good the horizontal axis, but not very well the vertical axis...

[rodolfonetto]

Great video! Thanks!

I'd like to add that histogram is a tool from statistics and exists for different types of data. I can measure the height of 100 people and put on the x-axis height from 0 to 7 feet, divide it into bars 1 foot wide and then the height of the bars will be how many people have a height within that range. We often hear, for instance, that "in three days it's rained 90% of the rain expected for October" and say 'wow' but then we look at the histogram for rain in March for the past 20 years and notice that we had most of the rain - on the right side of the histogram - concentrated in 3 days during the month and then we'll say 'wait, why is this news?".

The histogram in images shows how many pixels (y-axis) have that value of brightness (x-axis). The thing about most statistics tool is the meaning comes from what it's being used for - study height, analyze rain for public infrastructure work or process images and though I knew what histograms were I had no idea how to use them for photos so: thanks for the video!

[SambitPhD]

Very impressive way of explaining it in such a lucid manner in such a short time!

[kennynvakehve]

At 3:18 why is the blown out white in the histogram not showing in the center, a line to the top? The histogram in my opinion should cover the entire photo, so the histogram is the same as the photo from left to right...in other words...in the middle of the photo, your histogram would show what is happening in the middle of the photo, so if blown out the middle of the histogram would show a line to the top being pure white at the top...to me my way of a histogram would show you more..

[nickfanzo]

you show cover the RGB histograms independently, this is important for color corrections

[qzorn]

histograms are a fast way to get results in lots imaging processes as in x-ray pictures... thanks a lot...:)

[vaidyanathan]

Show what's is the correct histogram .. instead of explains what is the wrong histogram, !

[LaurieMillerSoldbyLaurie]

Great tutorial, quick, informative and to the point. Thank you.

[Toni]

Great! Histogram is really important, and just what I wanted to learn. Keep it up 👍

[dipaldesai]

What is y axis for in histogram
Is it for luminosity for black or white

[LashanR]

Something I've kind of just ignored in my 5+ years of photography haha. Super useful!

[rylvestersolon]

all I want to know is what is the histogram channel: color used for

[RenzorTheRed]

What's that magnifier tool you're using?

[lukelarson]

hey idk what your experience with film photography is but if you did a video on the different approach you might take to editing film photos vs digital, that would be interesting!

[abhishekdubey]

Thank you for a fantastic tutorial. Good Luck!

[jayjefferson]

rat-a-tat machine gun it a couple of times to fully understand what he's it is very good!