Photoshop - CS4

Lesson 22: Color Corrections (2)

22/84 Lessons 

Histogram

In Photoshop, we have the “Histogram” panel. When you do color corrections, you would have a histogram that you should understand. So a word of explanation. 
To open the pane, click “Window” in the menu bar and select “Histogram” in the drop-down menu.

A histogram can help you determine whether or not an image contains enough detail to make a correction.

We can adapt the display of “Histogram” panel.

Just click the downward pointing arrow in the title bar of the pane (1) and choose one of the following options from the dropdown menu:

  1. Compact View:
    Displays a histogram without statistics. The histogram contains data on the entire image.
  2. Expanded View:
    Displays the histogram with statistics.
  3. All channels View:
    There will be separate histograms for all channels displayed.
    If you wish to have different channels in color display, you select this option.

If you wish to hide the statistics (3), click the option “Show Statistics”.

If you want the histogram to contain the data of the entire image, that is a color view in the upper histogram, click the downward pointing arrow next to the box “Channel” (2), and select “Colors” in the drop-down menu .

As an example, I have an enlargement made from a diagram (1) here, we see the shadows, or rather the dark colors of the photo on the right, the midtones in the middle, and the highlights (bright colors) on the left.

Far left is black and has an RGB value 0, and the far right is white and has an RGB value of 255.

Advanced explanation of this is a black pixel (2) is Red 0, Green 0, Blue 0

And a white pixel (3) is Red 255, green 255, blue 255.

With the chart below, you see that there is no black (4) and no white pixels (5) present in the photo.

While you make color adjustments to the picture, the diagram in the “Histogram” panel adjusts automatically.

If you go too far with the change, a yellow warning icon is displayed in the upper right corner of the diagram.

As you can see in the picture below, when I increase the brightness, midrange is brought more to the right, that is whiter, the shadows are eliminated and the highlights reinforced.

Awesome!
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