STEP by STEP / A look at some common histogram shapes

1 Symmetric (unimodal)

This looks like a bell-curve as it raises gradually in the middle. This type of image has no deep shadows or bright highlights, which is commonly seen with soft, even lighting, against subjects of low contrast, as you can see above in this portrait taken on an overcast day.

2 Positive skew

A histogram steeped to the left means plenty of darker tones, and that’s what we want to see if photographing dark subjects, or shooting at night. However, if, in reality, you notice the scene is actually quite bright then you’re likely underexposed.

3 Negative skew

Steeping to the right tells us the scene contains plenty of bright areas, such as a snowy scene, photos with plenty of sky included in the shot, or a bride in a wedding dress. However, it could mean overexposure if the scene or the subject isn’t naturally bright.

4 Bimodal

As the name suggests, there are two distinct peaks in the histogram reading. This can be a result of a subject having dark and light areas, such as landscape on a sunny day with no clouds, or with comparatively bright off-camera lighting for a portrait.

5 Multimodal

This histogram occurs when there’s lots of exposure detail randomly placed throughout the scene, with no particular bias towards one area of the graph. It doesn’t tell us much about the image, only that there’s a lot of tonal values throughout the frame.

6 Engage Highlights

In the Playback display options menu tick the Highlights box and then click OK. Once you’ve done that, open a photo and press up or down on the multi-selector. Any clipped highlights will now flash, making it easy to spot clipping issues in your images.