Histogram

This panel contains the histogram of the frame buffer image. To open the histogram, pull the slider from the rightmost side of the image to the left, or double-click on the right slider.

 

The histogram enables you:

• to visualize the color data within the frame buffer

• to set the highlight and shadow clamping points for viewing the buffer by using the Shadow and Highlights sliders at the bottom of the histogram

• to increase the dynamic range of the buffer you are viewing, so you can better see the data inside by linearly scaling the colors between the clamp ranges

• to distinguish more quickly between small bars and zero-height bars: the histogram bars that have zero height have light gray below them
   

Histogram Color Channel Selection Drop-down List

This drop-down list enables you to configure the channels viewed for the selected frame buffer.

• RGB mode – ignores the alpha channel if one is present

• RGBA mode – weights the color values by the alpha channel; if all the alpha values of the image are 0, then no color information will be visible, so the image will appear white

• Red/Green/Blue Color Channels – shows the image information in red/green/blue color

• Grayscale – a grayscale conversion of the RGB data that was present in the buffer

• Alpha Channel – a grayscale conversion of only the alpha data of the buffer

Auto Clamp Button

This button automatically adjusts the Shadow and Highlighted sliders of the current histogram; they will clamp the view of the buffer to the lowest and highest data points in the histogram respectively. Note that a Grayscale version of the image is used for this clamping, so for some data sets the clamping will produce non-obvious results.
Highest/lowest point refers to the rightmost/leftmost histogram data values that contain non-zero data.

See Also

Introduction to the Render Target Viewer
Render Target View
Render Target Thumbnail List
Image Information Bar
Visualization Configuration Options
Zoom in and Zoom out Buttons

Histogram