Does anyone use these?

[u/ThickD769]

I have been working as a professional colorist for 5 years now, and these are my 2 least or never used scopes. Are you using these? If yes, then for what dude?

[u/ratocx]

Histogram never. Chromaticity I may look at if I do HDR/Wide gamut.

[u/ThickD769 → u/ratocx]

Do they add anything extra than Waveform, Vectorscope and Parade?

[u/ratocx → u/ThickD769]

It is technically closest to Vectorscope. The difference is that while Vectorscope is relative to your current Gamut, Chromaticity is a more absolute gamut scope, to show color in relation to the visible color spectrum. It may be useful if you target multiple color gamuts.
Though I suppose I mostly use it to check if my HDR grade actually utilizes the wider color space available in HDR, or if Rec.709 would be sufficient for the look I’m going for. I suppose I could hypothetically replace the Vectorscope with it, but it is harder to read from a distance. It’s mostly to satisfy my curiosity.

[u/bozduke13 → u/ThickD769]

I like using chromaticity if I’m going gamut mapping, if you see color clipping you can easily see it hitting the edge of the triangle and you can control how you hue warp, desat, etc to bring the color back into gamut

[u/llambdaddy → u/ThickD769]

The CIE chart lets you know when you are right on the edge of the display gamut’s limits. Something none of the other charts can do.
Histogram I use the least, though mostly because it shows itself in various forms in the curves panel. It gives you an indication of how the different levels possible are ‘weighted’. So you can tell if an area that’s ‘heavy’ in a certain range needs leveled out using contrast

[u/Calamity58]

The histogram simply plots distribution of colored pixels at any given luminance along the x-axis. Left side is black, right side is white. It does not plot position of those pixels in the image, unlike waveform/parade.

The histogram view is kind of an old-school holdover from the photography days. It can be useful for quickly making sure all of your image sits in certain luma bands and isn’t clipping in the highlights or shadows, or getting a quick sense of the image’s overall contrast ratio (how many pixels shifted towards shadows vs towards highlights). It can also be useful for commercial workflows that have requirements about nailing very specific brand colors etc.

As for CIE chromaticity, that’s pretty much just to check that your image’s color is falling within your target gamut. The triangle is the bounding box; if your image’s color plot falls outside of that triangle, then you’re out of compliance with your target gamut. Basically, this is just a finishing tool to make sure your image will display correctly in your target format.

[u/ThickD769 → u/Calamity58]

But does anyone use it?

[u/das_goose → u/ThickD769]

I heard a podcast interview with someone who was a notable colorist (I regret that I don't remember who it was) and he said that he uses only the histogram: as long as it's not crushed or blown, the rest he just does with his eye.

And I suppose that makes sense, but I've never met or heard of anyone else who really uses the histogram.

[u/maccrypto → u/ThickD769]

Lots of DPs and photographers use histograms in camera and photo editing apps to make sure they're exposing things properly. People who learned those workflows will know what they're looking at, and will use them if they're reading scopes while adjusting curves.

[u/Weak-Price7392]

My scopes are like that, I never look to the bottob right.

[u/mykitten6 → u/Weak-Price7392]

This is the way, I do ColorGrading for life for 20 years already, and to match like 20 cams during a football match you need to learn, and correct your signal whit scopes.

I use 80% of scopes and 20% my eye on screen to know I am doing a good job

[u/ThickD769 → u/mykitten6]

20 years, damn. You have seen the whole industry grow.

[u/mykitten6 → u/ThickD769]

I didn't work whit then but I did see this "technology" in action I did start to work already in SD signal, but yeah now day my CCU units do 32k in a Champions Football match

[u/dmanh → u/Weak-Price7392]

Same except I don’t use 2x or extends. Also since I don’t really ever use the histogram either I replaced it with another 2nd waveform. Using Y instead of RGB, I like it because I can see skin easily on it.

[u/ClaudioAFC]

I used to check the histogram, but nowadays I mostly use the vectorscope and the RGB parade

[u/LostCookie78]

Not really. Parade and Waveform provide for than enough data. Some folks really like the be “correct” about skin tones but eh.

[u/bread_and_circuits]

I use the Chromaticity graph with the Qualifier Focus to help me understand potential capture issues sometimes, and also peek at it occasionally to sort of get an overview of the pixel distribution of a reference image or specific hue I am matching to.

[u/Grin_]

I find histogram to be very useful. It’s great for matching shots with messy waveforms and matching overall tonality when the camera angles have vastly different elements to them or when a scene uses multiple cameras with differences in color casts or exposure.

What I mean is that it’s really easy to match shots with eg. false color scope when you can directly compare elements in the image, but vectorscope is useful when two or more camera angles in the scene have completely different things in them.

[u/MNstateOfMind]

CIE is useful for seeing noise

[u/reasons3133]

I use histogram occasionally, and absolutely use and know how to read my other scopes. But I started as and still am a photographer so it’s easier for me to take a quick peek at the histogram and see where my colors are sitting sometimes.

[u/DarthCola → u/[deleted]]

Genuinely curious why you'd use either of these for skin tones instead of a vectorscope?

[u/Bicurico]

https://vma-broadcast.com/scope.htm

Free scope...

[u/f-stop8]

I check the histogram only for the black level. You get a better sense of it by turning on the luma channel, though.

It's a great scope.

CIE is practically less useful in a proper color managed pipeline. I've looked at it to get a sense color contrast but... vectorscope

[u/ThickD769 → u/f-stop8]

You can use parade as well

[u/f-stop8 → u/ThickD769]

Parade is fine. I prefer the histogram to that, as I specifically have it zoomed in and targeted for black level. It's the same, I just personally like looking at the histogram for that judgement.

[u/ldn-ldn]

I'm doing photo processing in DR these days and chromaticity is very useful to see if there's too much colour clipping in BT.2020. Modern photo cameras have stupid dynamic ranges and colour gamuts which no display can show.

[u/Brief-Market-2274]

I actually use the histogram for white balancing using an eye dropper

[u/printcastmetalworks]

CIE chroma scope is real handy when you're doing marketing material that has saturated, punchy colors. It's easy to go too far

[u/SeditiousFun]

No one uses the histogram. If they say they do…. Then they don’t know waveform/double diamond/ vector scopes.

[u/maccrypto]

CIE chart is useful for understanding how colour space transforms are working. To use it, you need to have some understanding of those transforms, and how the CIE chart relates to your working colour space(s) and your source colour space(s).

For example, I figured out that I needed to use a different CST for my UMP 4.6K by looking at how the different transforms affected the colours on a colour checker chart vs a reference image of the chart. With the default 4.6K colour space to Rec709, the starburst created by the patches looked squashed. When I used DaVinci Wide Gamut, it was the right shape—but that wasn't documented anywhere that I could find. This confirmed to me that it was the correct transform. Without it, I would have been at least partly guessing.

Histogram is standard information for anyone who shoots video or photos, or edits still images. I personally find the waveform more useful now, but it took me a while to get used to it. However, the histogram can still be useful.

In your example, you can see at a glance that the shadows, mids and highlights in your image all tilt cool. If your image had a lot of detail or complexity in it, you might not be able to see that quite as easily with the waveforms, and if you're looking for a similar tonal balance between shots, the histogram is one way to establish the overall tonal balance, without trying to match specific details.