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Histogram

The histogram is a graphical display of the brightness values in the picture. The darkest tones are at the left and the brightest on the right, and the vertical bars show the number of pixels for each brightness value. Histograms are an invaluable exposure aid when taking pictures, and when editing them later.

Dynamic range and exposure

June 1, 2020 by Life after Photoshop

Dynamic range is the camera sensor’s ability to capture detail in very bright and very dark parts of a scene. Cameras (or sensors) with a low dynamic range record dark shadows as a solid black or bright highlights as a featureless white.

Filed Under: Editing A-Z, Featured, GeneralTagged With: Dynamic range, HDR, Histogram, JPEG vs RAW, RAW file

Histograms aren’t sacred: shadows and highlights CAN be clipped

September 5, 2019 by Rod Lawton

Histograms just show you what’s happening in your images, they’re not there to tell you what to do. But there’s an old adage from the days of film photography that you should still be able to see some detail in the darkest and brightest parts of your pictures, and that’s carried through into digital photography. […]

Filed Under: Capture One, FeaturedTagged With: Histogram, Levels

Levels vs curves vs luma curves: ways to adjust contrast in photos

July 26, 2019 by Life after Photoshop

Levels and curves can both be used to adjust the contrast in photos, but how are they different, which should you use and is one better than the other?

Filed Under: Capture One, Editing A-Z, Featured, General, TutorialsTagged With: Curves, Histogram, Levels

How to preview and control histogram clipping in Lightroom

July 30, 2013 by Rod Lawton

Lightroom levels and clipping

There’s this idea in digital photography that your histogram must never be clipped, and that it should always fit – just – within the maximum width of the scale. And sometimes we work so hard to recover shadow and highlight detail to prevent clipping, that we end up with an image that has lost its […]

Filed Under: Lightroom, TutorialsTagged With: Histogram, Levels

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