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What is a Histogram?

I don't know much about it.Can someone tell me what it is?


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: A hsitogram is a graphical representation of the dark, light and midtones of an image. It looks much like a curve.

The left hand side deals with teh black or darker tones, the left hand side deals with the white or brighter tones, and the middle deals with the middle tones.

If your histogram is left heavy, then generally speaking, your image has a lot of dark areas or it is underexposed. If the histogram is right heavy, then you have overexposed or have a large amount of white or bright spots in your image.

Generally, you want a good mix of ups and downs throughout the histogram.

You will on occassion have a slightly lopsides histogram, and that is OK. If doing a night shot, you could have a left heavy histogram, or if you are shooting a snowy field, or water with a lot of sunlight reflecting off of it, you would have a right heavy histogram. In these cases, if the rest of the image is properly exposed, then you could still have a good image.