From the course: Inkjet Printing for Photographers

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Understanding the histogram

Understanding the histogram - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Inkjet Printing for Photographers

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Understanding the histogram

So this image here has a bunch of pixels in it, and each one is colored a shade of gray. If I zoom in here, we can actually see individual pixels. Now, some of these pixels might be the same color. There might be a black pixel here and a black pixel there. But because they are spread all over, it's difficult for us to see how many of each there might be. Well, why do we care? you might be thinking. It just looks like the image. We care because a good print has certain characteristics. Among those, it has blacks that are truly black, it has whites that are truly white, and if we don't have those things, we're going to get a weaker print. But, you might be thinking, I can see those on screen. There is some, some black right there. The thing is, black and white are actually specific quantifiable phenomena. The tone might look black onscreen; it might not actually be true black. It might simply look black because of the way your monitor is adjusted, or it might look black to you because…

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