Digital BW, The Print

Thanks Martin ;)

I don't have the history on Photoshop, let alone PS Histograms. I know that
as a programmer a couple of years ago, I wouldn't have had the sensibilities
that I now have as a photographer and part-time scanner operator.

However, a little thought suggests a few basic things:
Like:
Why did Nikon make their NikonScan histogram resizeable - but not resizeable
up to 256 pixels across <doh>
And:
I suspect that a bit of programming effort goes into ensuring that 'the
graph' fits onto the available space. However, it would be nice if there was
an 'actual data' mode... most values in this case would clip (especially in
8 bit mode) - but it would be fantastic for seeing where there were actual
'shadow' / highlight data. IOW- the scale of many histograms forces this
data into being indistinguishable from the X axis. This isn't a big deal -
but would enable the user to visually decide what is 'noise' data and what
is real texture data. The user could then set end-points by inspection,
where the computer can physically count the pixels to clip 0.05% of pixels,
or whatever.

This last suggestion may be what I sometimes see as 'auto clipping'
selection on a histogram... but I suspect this is not the case as it just
alters the curves SLIGHTLY, mostly. Thought experiments suggest that even
with a small picture, showing real data would clip the majority of values on
the graph.

All this has me thinking - are there other ways to draw our data, and would
it be useful? e.g. for colour images - could you draw a 3d graph of where
the data in your image is in the colour space? Think it might be a nightmare
to come up with that, but if you could... ??? Maybe we shouldn't go there!

Nij


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Martin Wesley [mailto:mwesley250@...]
>
> Nij,
>
> An excellent idea and another example of what could be done with the
> histogram in Photoshop that seems like a rather trivial piece of
> programming. Has the histogram always been like this? At what version
> level did it appear and has it evolved at all?
>
> Martin