We’ve talked about how to read a histogram and how to use the histogram to get perfect exposures, now let’s talk about the three different types of image histograms you might run into.
The RGB is the first of the three types of histograms, and it’s the one we’ve been talking about so far in this series.
RGB stands for Red, Green and Blue.
Color on digital devices is created by mixing some combination of the colors red, green and blue together.
Every individual mix of red, green and blue produces a specific color that has a specific brightness value, and it’s the brightness values of all the different colors that’s represented in the RGB histogram.
The second most common type of histogram is the color histogram.
The color histogram is kind of confusing to look at because you’re actually seeing three overlapping histograms. One for red, one for green and one for blue.
Some cameras separate this one confusing histogram into three separate histograms which makes it much easier to evaluate the brightness of each color channel.
The final type of histogram is called the luminosity histogram.
The luminosity histogram shows you brightness values, similar to the way an RGB histogram does, but the way those values are calculated is different.
The RGB histogram shows you the brightness value of the specific colors created by the mixes of red, green and blue throughout the image.
The Luminosity histogram shows you the brightness values of the colors based on how our eyes perceive light.
Now if you’re not sure how to read a histogram, check out the part one of this series, and if you’re not sure how to use a histogram, check out part two.