CAMERA HISTOGRAMS: TONES

& CONTRAST
Understanding image histograms is probably the single most
important concept to become familiar with when working with
pictures from a digital camera. A histogram can tell you whether or
not your image has been properly exposed, whether the lighting is
harsh or flat, and what adjustments will work best. It will not only
improve your skills on the computer, but as a photographer as well.

Each pixel in an image has a color which has been produced by

some combination of the primary colors red, green, and blue (RGB).
Each of these colors can have a brightness value ranging from 0 to
255 for a digital image with a bit depth of 8-bits. A RGB histogram
results when the computer scans through each of these RGB
brightness values and counts how many are at each level from 0
through 255. Other types of histograms exist, although all will have
the same basic layout as the histogram example shown below.

TONES
The region where most of the brightness values are present is called
the "tonal range." Tonal range can vary drastically from image to
image, so developing an intuition for how numbers map to actual
brightness values is often critical—both before and after the photo
has been taken. There is no one "ideal histogram" which all images
should try to mimic; histograms should merely be representative of
the tonal range in the scene and what the photographer wishes to
convey.
 
 


The above image is an example which contains a very broad tonal

range, with markers to illustrate where regions in the scene map to
brightness levels on the histogram. This coastal scene contains very
few midtones, but does have plentiful shadow and highlight regions
in the lower left and upper right of the image, respectively. This
translates into a histogram which has a high pixel count on both the
far left and right-hand sides.
Lighting is often not as extreme as the last
example. Conditions of ordinary and even
lighting, when combined with a properly
exposed subject, will usually produce a
histogram which peaks in the centre, gradually
tapering off into the shadows and highlights.
With the exception of the direct sunlight
reflecting off the top of the building and off
some windows, the boat scene to the right is
quite evenly lit. Most cameras will have no
trouble automatically reproducing an image
which has a histogram similar to the one
shown below.

HIGH AND LOW KEY IMAGES

Although most cameras will produce midtone-centric histograms
when in an automatic exposure mode, the distribution of peaks
within a histogram also depends on the tonal range of the subject
matter. Images where most of the tones occur in the shadows are
called "low key," whereas with "high key" images most of the tones
are in the highlights.

Before the photo has been taken, it is useful to assess whether or

not your subject matter qualifies as high or low key. Since cameras
measure reflected as opposed to incident light, they are unable to
assess the absolute brightness of their subject. As a result, many
cameras contain sophisticated algorithms which try to circumvent
this limitation, and estimate how bright an image should be. These
estimates frequently result in an image whose average brightness is
placed in the midtones. This is usually acceptable, however high
and low key scenes frequently require the photographer to manually
adjust the exposure, relative to what the camera would do
automatically. A good rule of thumb is that you will need to
manually adjust the exposure whenever you want the average
brightness in your image to appear brighter or darker than the
midtones.

The following set of images would have resulted if I had used my

camera's auto exposure setting. Note how the average pixel count
is brought closer to the midtones.

Most digital cameras are better at reproducing low key scenes since
they prevent any region from becoming so bright that it turns into
solid white, regardless of how dark the rest of the image might
become as a result. High key scenes, on the other hand, often
produce images which are significantly underexposed. Fortunately,
underexposure is usually more forgiving than overexposure
(although this compromises your signal to noise ratio). Detail can
never be recovered when a region becomes so overexposed that it
becomes solid white. When this occurs the highlights are said to be
"clipped" or "blown."
The histogram is a good tool for knowing whether clipping has
occurred since you can readily see when the highlights are pushed
to the edge of the chart. Some clipping is usually ok in regions such
as specular reflections on water or metal, when the sun is included
in the frame or when other bright sources of light are present.
Ultimately, the amount of clipping present is up to the photographer
and what they wish to convey.

CONTRAST
A histogram can also describe the amount of contrast. Contrast is a
measure of the difference in brightness between light and dark
areas in a scene. Broad histograms reflect a scene with significant
contrast, whereas narrow histograms reflect less contrast and may
appear flat or dull. This can be caused by any combination of
subject matter and lighting conditions. Photos taken in the fog will
have low contrast, while those taken under strong daylight will have
higher contrast.
Contrast can have a significant visual impact on an image by
emphasizing texture, as shown in the image above. The high
contrast water has deeper shadows and more pronounced
highlights, creating texture which "pops" out at the viewer.

Contrast can also vary for different regions within the same image
due to both subject matter and lighting. We can partition the
previous image of a boat into three separate regions—each with its
own distinct histogram.
The upper region contains the most contrast of all three because
the image is created from light which does not first reflect off the
surface of water. This produces deeper shadows underneath the
boat and its ledges, and stronger highlights in the upward-facing
and directly exposed areas. The middle and bottom regions are
produced entirely from diffuse, reflected light and thus have lower
contrast; similar to if one were taking photographs in the fog. The
bottom region has more contrast than the middle—despite the
smooth and monotonic blue sky—because it contains a combination
of shade and more intense sunlight. Conditions in the bottom region
create more pronounced highlights, but it still lacks the deep
shadows of the top region. The sum of the histograms in all three
regions creates the overall histogram shown before.

Histogram is the name given to a two-dimensional graph

showing the quantity and distribution of pixels within a digital
photograph.

You may have seen them right at the start of the digital
photography process whilst scrolling through the different
display modes on your camera.
Further down the line, in applications such as Lightroom,
Aperture and Photoshop, histograms are a constant feature.

At first sight, understanding histograms may seem like a

technical and perhaps complicated exercise but, don't worry,
it's much simpler than you might think.

1
So what does the histogram mean and why do we need it..?

Firstly, the Histogram shows us the total quantity of

pixels in a photograph.

Secondly, we know that a photograph generally contains:

• Dark pixels, or shadows;

• Light pixels, or highlights;
• Everything else in between, or midtones.
So, on the left of the graph are the darker pixels,
the shadows...

...and on the right are the highlights:

In between, you guessed it, are the midtones:
If the furthest pixels on the left don't reach the end of the
scale, leaving a gap, then there are no true blacks in the
photograph.

Similarly, if there is a gap on the right, there are no true

whites (not necessarily a bad thing by the way!):
Taking this a step further, if the pixels are ramped up against
the left, there are true blacks in the photograph.

In this case, shadow detail has likely been lost forever (or not
even captured in the first place).

At the other end, if pixels are all bunched on the right,

there are true whites in the file.

This time, highlight detail has likely gone (or not captured),
never to be seen again:
The latter is often most apparent in subjects such as white,
fluffy clouds. Another example is hot spots on skin tones...

The technical term for this loss of detail at the shadow and
highlight extremities of the scale is known as clipping.

Again, this is not necessarily bad but is generally less desirable

at the highlight end of the scale where clipping can be
unsightly.

For the moment, the last thing I would like you to consider is
that the scale stretches from 0 (the darkest possible value on
the left) to 255 (the lightest possible value on the right).

0 to 255, that's 256 tones (or shades) altogether.

That's quite a lot of information to digest in one hit!

Don't get too bogged down by histograms, though — they're a

useful tool to assess your masterpieces but, as someone once
said:

"Remember, nobody's hanging histograms on the gallery wall!"

In understanding histograms, they are simply showing the
total number of pixels in a photograph: Dark pixels on the left,
light pixels on the right and midtones in between.

There's more to learn but that's all I want to cover for the
moment in this initial overview.

In the meantime, more tips on understanding histograms crop

up throughout the site — for example, in this Levels Tutorial.

Tonal Range
In photography, tonal range refers to mid-tone values
expanding to occupy the scale between the lightest and
darkest points of an image. The wider the range
expands, the more contrast there is, and the more mid-
tone values would be represented in the image. An image
with a narrow tonal range would cover a more restricted
area between its lightest and darkest values, thus mainly
consisting of mid-tones and in turn, having less contrast.
The histogram gives us a really good idea about the tonal
range of an image on a scale of 0 to 255. The white point
(the point on the right-most side of the scale) has a value
of 255 and is purely white, and the black point (the point
on the left most hand-side of the scale) has a value of 0
and is purely black, as well as a number of points between
pure black and pure white that constitute the mid-tones.

If the tonal gradation between successive mid-tone values

was smooth with no areas with absent values, the tonal
separation would be continuous and you would have an
image with smooth transitions where brightness appears
consistent and uninterrupted from one value to the next.

If, however, there were blank areas between successive

mid-tone values on a histogram, this would yield a visible
stepping of shades in a gradient constituting graduated
colors that break into larger blocks of a single color,
reducing the smooth look of a proper gradation.
Dynamic Range
Dynamic range is the difference in light between the
brightest value and the darkest value that the camera
can capture. The human eye can see 24 different stops
of light difference, taking into account the pupil dilation
and contraction as a result of variation in light levels from
highlights to shadows.

Cameras, however, only make instantaneous exposures,

with film and expensive medium format digital cameras
being able to capture 12 different stops of light variations,
while most other digital cameras can only capture about 5
stops of light variations or even less (more on this here).
One of the many important things that sensor size
affects is the dynamic range of a digital camera. This
is why it is sometimes better to have a larger sensor
with a lower resolution, than to have a smaller sensor
with a higher resolution.

This has to do with the size of the pixels on the sensor

that are used to collect light. In every pixel there is a small
pit called a photosite that measures photons, which are
little bundles of energy in which light travels, to determine
how bright or dark something is. So the larger the
photosite, the more photons it can measure (more on this
here).

Now, if a scene is too bright, then the number of photons a

photosite will need to measure for the dark areas is small,
so it will be able to accommodate them all. However, for
the bright areas, there are more photons than the
photosite will need to measure. So the smaller a photosite
is in size, the more quickly it becomes saturated.

This means that it hits a white point, and all highlights get
blown out much faster than it would with a larger sized
photosite which would give your camera a larger dynamic
range. Another solution would be to measure for the
highlights - we would have great highlight details, but then
our shadows will be with no detail and represented as too
dark.
Dynamic Range Contraction and
Expansion
If you're not looking into shooting HDR photos, another
way of working around insufficient or unsuitable available
dynamic ranges would be to manually alter the actual
dynamic range of the scene if it was too high or too low, to
fit your needs.

One example of contracting the available dynamic range

of a scene would be the use of fill light. Instead of
exposing with slower shutter speeds and consequently
blowing out brighter areas of your scene, you could use a
fill light (a strobe or reflector) to lower the contrast
between the dark and light areas of your scene, thus
contracting the dynamic range so that your sensor can
handle it.

On the other hand, an example of expanding the available

dynamic range would be the use of special effects filters,
like a polarizing filter for instance, which as we've
mentioned earlier enriches colors and expands the tonal
range thus ending you with a higher dynamic range
version of your scene.

Conclusion
The most significant factor in taking any photo is to find
the exposure that best suits the situation, and accentuates
your intentions and the effect you're after all at the same
time.

There are some technical issues involved here such as

scene and sensor dynamic range, key parts and priorities
of your scene, measurements and so on. But the true
essence of any one photo you take is way beyond all that.
You won't be able to capture it until after you get a
complete grasp on the more technical stuff, but a true
photographer takes all this technical jargon and tempers it
with judgement and creativity.

Of course it might be safe to say that for every situation

there is one rendition that most people would agree upon
as being correct. The truth is, limiting yourself to what's
correct and what isn't is risky, in that it will prevent you
from what achieving what you, as a true photographer and
individual, are really after - self-expression and creativity.