Histogram of image

I have 2 images that look nearly identical. The histogram for one (256 bins) has intensities distributed pretty evenly throughout. The other has in开发者_如何学运维tensities at the lowest and highest bin. Why would this be? Then wouldnt it appear binary (thats not the case)?

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Think about it this way: Imagine you are taking a histogram of two grayscale images with each pixel represented by a color value 0-255. One image contains pixels that all have gray levels of 128. The second image contains a "checkerboard" pattern (pixels alternate between 0 and 255). If you step back far enough that you no longer see individual pixels, they will appear identical to the naked eye. Your brain "averages" the alternating black and white pixels into a field of gray.

This is what your images are doing. The first image has colors distributed evenly throughout the range and the second image has concentrations of specific colors, but if you calculate an average color for the image (and also for sub-sections within the image) you should see similar values for both.

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Never trust in your eyes! They will always lie to you.

Consider this silly example that can be illustrative here. An X-Ray 'photo' is nothing more than black and white dots. But as they are small and mixed along the image, your eyes see different shades of gray.

The same can happen in a digital image, where, although the pixels may have the same size, then can be black and white and 'distributed' in the image in such a way that you see it as having more graylevels. This is called halftone.

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Without seeing the images it's hard to say, but it sounds like the second may be slightly clipped.

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The difference also could just be a slight difference in contrast in the images that's no visible to the naked eye.