What Does a Histogram Tell Us? Basix
basixvideos

What Does a Histogram Tell Us? Basix

on Jan 5th 2011 with 43 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Program: Adobe Photoshop
  • Difficulty: Beginner
  • Estimated Completion Time: 9 Minutes

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

This entry is part 5 of 29 in the Photoshop Basix Session
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Are you new to Photoshop? Have you been trying to teach yourself the basics of Photoshop but have found the amount of educational material available on the net a bit overwhelming? As the world’s #1 Photoshop site, we’ve published a lot of tutorials. So many, in fact, that we understand how overwhelming our site may be to those of you who may be brand new to Photoshop. This tutorial is part of a 25-part video series demonstrating everything you will need to know to start working in Photoshop.

Photoshop Basix, by Adobe Certified Expert and Instructor, Martin Perhiniak includes 25 short video tutorials, around 5 – 10 minutes in length that will teach you all the fundamentals of working with Photoshop. Today’s tutorial, Part 5: What Does a Histogram Tell Us will explain the Histogram panel; specifically the Shadow/Highlights and Levels adjustments. Let’s get started!

 
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Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

Martin is a Hungarian graphic designer, digital artist and an Adobe Certified Expert and Instructor (Design Master). He is currently teaching and working in London but usually travels around the UK and share his love for Adobe products and graphic design. You can follow him on his blog or on Twitter.  

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  • PieterG

    nice series

  • http://pasxal.nl pasxal

    This entry is part 12 of 5 in the series Photoshop Basix ?
    I think you mean part 5 of 12?

  • http://www.psd-dude.com PsdDude

    That is really useful information! I have so much things to learn!

  • http://www.backlinkswarehouse.com Shannon T Cox

    Thanks for this. Learning more on PS every day.

  • Liz

    Thanks for this tutorial, very informative. The tip about showing the heatmap of clipped colors was new to me!

  • nykeri

    thanks for this series i’ve gotta relearn Photoshop from scratch as i haven’t used it in quite a while

  • RayCornelius

    Thanks for the Tutorial, Seen the Histogram but never knew what it really did.

  • Tatyana

    Thank you very much for this lesson!

  • godbout

    Nice. Love those tutorials, very useful as I’m a big noob. But in this one, I don’t really understand the clipping. What is that? I mean except two big bars on the sides of the histogram? I read stuff about, but I can’t get a simple explanation to understand…

    • http://www.inspiks.com loswl

      “Clipping” means that the color value of a pixel has either been pushed to pure black (0, 0, 0 RGB) or pure white (255, 255, 255). When a large area of pixels is clipped, it contains no detail. Hope that helps.

      • godbout

        thx, it does!

  • http://www.newsever.com newsever

    awesome this is best for me learning

  • http://www.inkvector.com Inkvector

    Very good! Thank you.

  • http://www.yesimadesigner.com Martin Perhiniak
    Author

    Thanks a lot Ioswl for your professional answer!

    I’m so glad that you all enjoy learning from this series. Thanks a lot for your comments!

  • xanark

    Good tutorial, I like the fist part.

    I would prefer for the last picture to not “sacrifice” big parts of nuances.

    You get 26, 0, 225. I see more something like 0, 0.90, 237 (0.90 with ithe grey arrow, the middle tons for the contrast).

    I also use the Option (Alt) key on the arrows but I stop immediately when I see the saturated colors coming.
    I prefer to use the curves for the middle tons and get a better contrast with this tool, but it’s not the point of this tutorial.

    This tutorial is more appropriated for “normal” pictures, so careful with this technique on a snowy pictures.

  • http://fairheadcreative.com Adam Fairhead

    Such a misunderstood area, the Histogram. Great job of writing up a door-opener on this. Maybe less people will look at me funny in future when I tell them that their photograph is “bleeding”!

  • Luis F

    Great series Just what I wanted
    waiting the next tuts

  • http://www.wpgallery.com IrfanSt

    Nice video, thanks.

  • ng

    I always wonder if, there is any “filter” or “plug-in” that can help me sorting photos based on histogram info, instead of file name, date, modified date etc. , anyone knows? thanks a lot on this!

  • http://www.vegatopia.com Machteld

    Hello Martin, thank you for your tutorials.

    I was wondering when to use Levels and when to use Shadow/Highlights? Is this a personal preference or is it absolutely necessary to use the one or the other in a certain project?

    @Adam Fairhead: bleeding means clipping?

  • Cemil

    thanks… nice video…

  • sheshu

    What kind of accent is that? Scottish?

    • Gosh

      Hahaha! I do hope this comment was made in jest.

    • http://essereluminoso.deviantart.com/ essereluminoso

      He is from Hungary.

    • neil

      yes, it is a Scottish/Hungarian accent.

  • niko

    thank you very much, indeed fundamental ;)

    like the hofbräuhaus münchen cap! ;)

  • http://www.mklouie.com M.K. Louie

    Wonderful video tutorial.

    I’ve been using Photoshop for years and it’s just refreshing to re-learn these basics. Thank you.

  • knuckles

    small question- What’s the difference between “cached” and “uncached” with the histogram? I don’t see much difference, but I’d like to understand the terminology at least.

    (And thanks much for these videos! It’s almost refreshing to find such clear & simple explanations of these basic concepts and tools.)

  • http://essereluminoso.deviantart.com/ essereluminoso

    Awesome series!! I like them a lot!! They’re sooo usefull!!
    Thaaaank you!! ^__^

  • Maran

    Excellent Tutorials… Please make other video’s As soon as Posible :) Thanks.
    Once again thanks for providing such tutorial in your valuable time.

    Thanks
    Maran

  • pauch

    thank you so much, very helpful.. :)

  • toby

    thank you very much ! that was helpful :):):):)

  • Gabby

    how do we get rid of the long line on the highlight section of the histogram if we have one?

  • http://www.illuminate-it.co.uk Edinburgh IT Support

    histograms are very useful but many times forgotten by anybody

  • http://www.brettwidmann.com Brett Widmann

    This is a really nice video. Thanks for the information.

  • http://facebook.com pamei

    That was really hlpfull…

  • mohamed

    awesome vid

  • http://giventaken.tumblr.com Will

    Thanks for introducing me to Shadow/Highlights! I’m saved from Levels limitation! <3

  • leo

    great tutorials,very simple to understand and very instructive…can you make a tutorial on colouring hand-drawn sketches such as manga or comics.., i need help for this session…

  • mohamed omar

    you are the best of all martin ….you are awesome!!!

  • Katy

    Thank you for this tutorials! I’m a graphic design student and i believe i’m learning more from you than from my teacher! :)
    You have now idea how greatful i am! :)

  • Carol Little

    I called up one of my photos as I was viewing this tutorial and put the lesson to use! I was really able to improve one of my photographs. Thank you!

  • Jck

    I was wondering why I didn’t get a “heat image” while holding alt but it only works in RGB mode, doesn’t it (I was in CMYK)?