the future of histogram - 256 levels not enough

[Roger Larsson]

On Wednesday 17 August 2005 12.19, Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> On Wednesday 17 August 2005 12:03, Bart Coppens wrote:
> > What would you think about the following. Still have 256 bins, but apply
> > a range to it: instead that the 256 bins are scaled so that they fit the
> > entire dynamic range, let the user (for colorspaces with > 8 bpp) select
> > which range he wants to see in the histogram. So instead of seeing a
> > single bar as a histogram when all his values are between 0 and 0.001, a
> > user could say he wants the histogram to display only the 0-0.001 range,
> > so he sees a nice curvy histogram of that area, fitted to 256 bins.
> > Of course, this has an obvious drawback: we would need to reiterate over
> > the entire image each time the range is changed, resulting in a slow
> > process. Also this is probably too advanced for the regular user, but we
> > could hide this under an 'Advanced >>' button that would expand the
> > histogram dialog when needed.
>
> You could make it easy and approachable by calling it zoom. Select a
> section of the histogram, press zoom and see it in more detail.

This could work quite well.
One question, should pixel values outside the zoom accumulate in min / max
buckets? (a proper zoom would not do that, but a histogram on a limited range 
should)

/RogerL