Why do I have twin peaks?

[syburn]

Look at these pics below. (I think they have all the camera details still inside them).

The dark one has not been PPed yet. The other one has had a bit of PP. But both have very aggressive steep twin peaks. I was a bit worried at the time of shooting, but actualy even the dark one looks ok after some PP. You see I was trying to get the blue sky without it going white.

So why do they have lots of their historgram mising and only 2 high peaks. Is it nothing to worry about?

Simon

[ohenry]

A histogram is merely a graphical display of which tones are present in a scene. The horizontal axis is 0-255 with 0 being pure black and 255 being pure white. The vertical axis is a scale of amount. The peaks that you are seeing are the tones represented in the image. If there are tones that are not present in the scene, there would be nothing at that tonal value in the histogram. For instance, if you took a close up picture of a blue poster board so that the entrire viewfinder was filled with the solid color, the histogram would be a simple single spike with no data in anything along the horizontal axis other than whatever tone the blue color was represented by.

Having two spikes simply tells you that there is a lot of information contained in two significant tonal areas.

There is no right or wrong histogram, but be aware that significant spikes at or near the 0 and 255 values will indicate that you could be underexposing (0) or overexposing (255) your pictures.

Looking at your picture, you underexposed your shot and had to adjust it in Photoshop. You should strive to correctly expose your image in your camera and not have to make major tonal adjustments in PS in order to obtain the best possible images.

Refer to this article for a better understanding of your histogram: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understanding-histograms.shtml

[SWPhotoImaging]

[/Tongue in cheek]
FWWM
WKLP?

Twin Peaks can't be ignored.

"Diane, take a memo ' . . . . .

[/end tongue in cheek]

Nothing is wrong with twin, or even triple peaks. If all you have in an image is two major areas of light/color, then you have two "peaks". No mystery.
Now "Twin Peaks", THAT was a mystery!!!